Yunnan Trip 2010 - Kunming 15th May

2nd last day for this trip. Today we'll be visiting some of the sights in Kunming. and I must say that there are not much things to see in the city itself. If u really want to see places of interests, u really need to travel out of the city. And the weather in Kunming is really hot.... coz considering that the past few days the weather was cool... Kunming really is cold. Hahahha... in this trip i got to experience hot to super cold weather juz withing a span of 8 days.

these are the limestones tat u'll see along the way to Jiuxiang (九香)

Entrance of the Jiuxiang (九香) park

This old man was smoking a water pipe

anyway today we'll be visiting the Jiuxiang (九香) where we'll be taking a short boat ride in the gorge and following that we'll be walking into the caves to view the limestone formations.

Dad waving from the boat. we're going to cruise down the river in the gorge

The gorge

The tour guide told us that Jackie Chan filmed a couple of his movies here... coz he was very fascinated with the scenery. I can't really remember what were the films that were being filmed there.

and i tell u the walk in the caves was really really long.... and a couple of aunties thought that their legs would not be able to take the long hike, they decided to take sedan chairs. hahaha... interesting... but its a form of earning money for the Yi zhu (彝族) people.

Mum and the 2 aunties who took the sedan rides

the pictures taken in the caves didn't really turn out very nice coz it was a little dark in the caves. it was quite a distance from our hotel in Kunming to Jiuxiang. as we were nearing Yiliang region (where the Jiuxiang caves are), the vegetation and scenery also changed. That is when u look out the windows of the coach, on both sides of the expressway, u'll see lots of limstone structures/rocks formation sticking out of grass pastures. This place is also where the famous Shilin is. But we will not be visiting Shilin in our trip as that venue was not covered. The major ethnic group living in Yiliang county (宜良县) is the Yi zhu (彝族) people. 

I must say that the caves was really very majestic.... hmmm why i would say this is because.... the caves was really huge. and there were juz so many stalactites and stalagmites. also i saw 1 of the largest limestone terraces. its almost similar to the one i saw in lijiang and turkey. but this one is pretty well kept. but the waters in the terraces was cold... unlike the ones in Turkey, which was warm.

Entering the caves

Mini waterfalls in the caves

these are the terraces that i'm talking about

Mum & dad posing for pictures in the caves

after finishing walking the caves (by the way, you can only walk in 1 direction), we reached the other end of the cave. To return to the entrance where we started, will require us to walk the 3.7km... and i think this maybe too much for the old folks. At the so-called exit, we took a cable-car ride back to where we started. and this is not your normal cable car... its somewhat similar to those sort of cable cars you'll find at ski resorts. Yeah... the passengers are not enclose in a 'box'. this was a pretty awesome ride. But may not be nice for people who are afraid of heights. but this allows passengers to breath in the fresh air, take wonderful pictures. but one thing was... it was extremely hot. the sun rays were all beating down on us.

this is the cable car that I'm talking about. u get to enjoy the nature... hee hee...

Butterfly hard at work

A dam i saw on our way to lunch

when we got off at the entrance, it was time for lunch. we went to a well known restaurant for lunch. and lunch for today is the guo qiao mi xian, which my family already tried it on our 1st day in Kunming. the Guo Qiao Mi Xian here is not as good as compared to the one that we had previously. But this restaurant served some pretty interesting appertizers. Often in chinese restaurants the appertizers would be steamed peanuts. But for this restaurant the appertizers served was fried silk worms and bee pupae. Hahahaha... interesting!!!

of course i tried! how can i not try such interesting food... people who know me well, know that in my trips i would try at least 1 so-called 'exotic' food that the locals eat but when s'poreans hear it... they will cringe or shudder....

At the restaurant waiting for lunch to be served

I must say that they tasted pretty ok. quite like french fries... hahaha... nothing weird nor smelly... juz french fries taste. and heard that eating such bugs, provides super high proteins!
hahahaha... so the next time u need eggs and u run out of them... perhaps u can try eating some bugs??? =P
The restaurant that we had our lunch had a pretty interesting setting... sort of like mongolian sort of houses. hahaha... perhaps because the Yi people are pretty closely related to Mongolians... pity i did not managed to capture a picture of the bugs... otherwise i could have uploaded them here... anyway juz head there and try it out for yourself. =D

after the interesting lunch, we visited Qicai Yunnan Park (七彩云南公园). hahaha... sounds very nice... but its quite nice lah... i mean the scenery. if u count man-made scenery as scenery. anyway this park rear quite a number of peacocks. that's why its called Qicai.

Entrance of 七彩云南公园

Other than the caged up peacocks, there's nothing much in the park.

A peacock spreading his tail

Man-made water in the park

After this, we visited a silk making factory. hmmm... its the 2nd time for me to visit a silk making factory. the 1st time was when we visit Beijing. anyway the things there are super expensive... i think a couple of the aunties and uncles bought some products there. Otherwise.... we juz walk around and see and touch the silk. hahaha...

after all these walking around seeing not very nice things as compared to the past few days... we went to a place where the so-called chinese physicians were trying to sell us their herbal products and bao fu ling ( a sort of cream that can heal burts, piles etc) and we also get to have a foot massage by some TCM students.

me and mum with some 'go yo' at our temples receiving foot massage

after all these..... its dinner time! hahaha... seems like today we juz keep eating and walking huh... but tonight's dinner is susposedly fit for the king and 1 of the most expensive and a must-try when u're in Yunnan. we're having mushroom steamboat! hahaha.... unique isn't it?? yeah... the steamboat really is made of a lot different kinds of mushrooms i've ever seen in my entire life... hahaha...and this steamboat was really nice.

after the sumptuous dinner, we headed back to our hotel... and since it was still early.... we went to the shopping district nearby to walk around before calling it a day.

tomorrow will be our last day in Yunnan then its back to singapore. =D

Yunnan Trip May 2010 - Kunming 9th May

This is the 3rd time tat I'm on a tour package trip.... it was booked by my sister.... coz she got a voucher from her recent co. D & D... so she decided to use it for this trip. in fact wanting to get my parents away from s'pore for a short period... hahaha.... its easier to get rooms for 4 pple rather than 3 pple... so she asked me if i'm interested to join them. I've got intention to visit Yunnan province (云南) since last year... in fact my trip that I planned with another colleague was susposed to b a backpack trip... but we did not head up after planning... so i joined my parents and sis.....

U must be wondering why do i want to visit Yunnan province... simple enough... coz I like to see pple in their ethnic clothings, their culture, food, nature sights etc. i muz say that places like yunnan, sichuan, silk road, mongolia, peru, Laos, cambodia etc. are more fascinating to me than places like england, france, USA, canada etc. coz in these places, their ethnic culture are still intact rather than those metropolitian places. in fact in Yunnan itself, there are lots of minorities. there are 25 minority groups living in Yunnan province. Yunnan itself has it own dialect and it's very similar to the one in Sichuan and Guizhou but using much less third tone in Chinese.

when we reached 昆明, Kunming, it was almost time for lunch... but becoz our tour package did not include lunch... we thought we'll be heading out to visit one of the sights.... but the tour guide, Xiao Li, wanting to indicate to us tat she is nice & thoughtful....by arranging for our dinner segment up to become a lunch so that we'll not be hungry while visiting the sights later on....arranged for us to have lunch 1st. in fact on this trip... all the meals we had were chinese meals.

Kunming City - hahaha... sight of solar panels at roof-top. (taken from our hotel)

during meal time then i got to see the other pple who were with us in the tour group. i muz say 90% of them were all old folks... except me, my sis another and another lady (who was travelling with her mum). its ok.... as along as the trip is going to be good for me.

after lunch we went to visit 大观楼 (da guan lou). it was a nice sight... coz u see the chinese pavillon, lake full of lotus plants and all over u see different flowering plant species.

parents with sister posing in front of the flower dragon

Lake with lots of lotus plants

it was a nice and refreshing sight... and the wind was also cooling... really a great change from singapore.... (hahaha... time to take a break) in the middle of the park, there was a large lake known as the  滇池, (dian chi). is a large inter-land lake. Its nickname is "Sparkling Pearl Embedded in a Highland," and it was the model for the Kunming Lake in the summer palace in Beijing. Juz in front of the centre of the lake there is a large pavillon.

'Da Guan Lou' (大观楼) u can see the blue column. that's where the poetry is written on

The pavilion, with a history of more than three hundred years, is a three-floor square structure with flying eaves and golden-lacquered ornamentation. The top floor of the pavilion provides an all-embracing view of the vast Dianchi Lake and the peaks of the Western Mountains. A 180 character couplet is hanging down the pavilion, which is lauded as the number one couplet past and present. The Park is the most fascinating garden in urban Kunming.

After visiting 大观楼, we headed to another place... this time was to taste tea. Yunnan is most famous for her 普洱茶 (Puer tea). Goodness... its in here... that i got to know how good 普洱茶 is.... hahaha... but u never know is it real or fake... coz the pple definitely want us to purchase it... Anyway it was here that we were enlighten to the fact that the longer the tea was kept, the higher the price... hahaha.... in fact there was a group of 普洱茶 that was already 30 yr old (older than me!!!) and it cost about a few thousand Singapore dollars to purchase it!!! Coz they claim that the older the tea, the better is the tea effects. when we were treated to different types of  普洱茶, u can really tell which is the 1 yr old tea and 8 yr old tea. this gotta do with the aroma, colour of tea and the taste. the younger the tea, the more bitter it is and the lighter the colour. in fact the colour of the tea when its 8 years old was really brown and there was not bitter taste unlike the 1 yr old tea. and juz a few tea leaves u can use it again and agin to brew ur cup of tea. the ladies claim that a few tea leaves u can brew up to 30 cups of tea! imagine that!!!

'Tea' written in different language. Thought this was interesting decided to take a picture of it. But u can see my shadow coz the sun was behind me... hahahaha

Mum & me posing with map that shows how the tea was sold to other parts of the world from China 

after the numerous cups of tea, we headed to our hotel. along the way there.... our guide asked if we wanted to go and watch a cultural show that night and dinner will come with the show. only my parents, sis and i did not attend... the rest of the 14 people went. each person had to pay 210 Yuan. (expensive... luckily we did not attend coz the performance was not that good and dinner was so so) after unloading our bags in the hotel.... my family and I explored the streets near where our hotel was. we headed to some shops that was opposite to the hotel where we were staying... one of the shops was having a changing season clearing sales. my mum managed to get a pair of jeans for just 20 Yuan (that equilvalent to S$4). as we walked further down, we came across 2 very nice looking ancient gates... hmm... u can say that they are the gates of kunming.... we crossed the road to a hugh shop that was named as 牛肉米线. over here... we tried the famous Kunming 过桥米线 (gou qiao mi xian). I must say it must have been an interesting sight to the locals...

coz when u want to enter the eatery..... u've got to tell the cashier wat u want to eat and buy the tickets that came in the form of pogs of different colour to indicate wat food u want. then once u got the pogs, u gotta enter the eatery and head to the cook noodle, soup counter. where u're susposed to pass them the pogs. then after that u gotta give the receipt to another counter that is further down the line. and this counter is where the meat, soup, noodles are being collected by the waitress to bring them to the customers. 过桥米线 has a way of eating it... in fact all 4 of us had no idea what do we got to do.... 1st a super big bowl of super hot soup was brought to us. followed by a large plate wit raw meat, egg, veggies. then another bowl of cooked white noodles, which is the 米线. so we stared at the different platters and bowls wondering what we've got to do. we asked a couple of girls who were sitting at a table beside us. they told us to dump all the meat and veggies into the soup, followed by the noodles. stirred it a little before eating. however, when we eat, we've got to make sure that we do not touch the bowl as it was super super hot and we can get burnt. indeed, the meat and egg were cooked after putting them into the hot soup. and i must say this 过桥米线 is indeed very delicious! hahaha... even the soup tat was quite oily was really tasty... and we were really full after the meal. this meal cost about 12 Yuan coz we also had another bowl of beef broth besides the 过桥米线.

after our dinner we walked around the small alleys. all the stalls were selling silver & tribal jewellery, clothes, chinese medicine etc. it was really very crowded. we came across a push-cart and bought a necklace which the lady claimed was made of real silver... we told her tat i'll wear it and after 24hrs i'll kno whether it was silver or not... coz i'm allergic to all metals except silver... coz rashes will pop out in the region that non-silver is placed. but tat necklace was pretty cheap... it was 20 Yuan. after walking around the alleys... we crossed the road and went to the other side where all the big shopping malls were... and as we walked... we happen to see lots of pple wearing lab-coats standing or sitting with chairs. or pple sitting in front of them.

Street with pple in white coats

these were the blind messeurs! i went up to a blind messeur and got massage from my head to my waist... and it cost 20 Yuan! my parents and sis also got massaged. after our massage, we headed back to the hotel to call it a day. coz tomorrow we had to wake up early to head up to 大理, Dali. the next city.

In kunming, the girls are being addressed as Ah Shi ma (阿斯馬) and guys are known as Ah peng ge (阿朋哥)