The 5000 Project

I walked over the long bridge to china, customs tagged my bag after it got scanned, I opened it to show my fishing reel and had to mime fishing in order to convince the customs guy it isnt something other than what it is, with a positive chuckle he let me pass.

The china-side bordertown of hekou is a thriving trade port with absolutely amazing noodles, best I have tasted so far, peanuts and lots of weird green stuff, also had awesome tasting red stuff. The feeling of not knowing what I’m eating is kind of liberating. I booked a bus ticket to kunming, leaving at 6pm the same day, thankfully had to waste no further days and hopped on the bus after flaneuring the town for a few hours.

Departing hekou I noticed something very interesting, the parkland on the riverside was filled with chinese people doing aerobics, thats right, not tai chi. It seems that while the west is taking up tai chi in a big way, the east is finding benefits in the fast paced music jog-along.

The bus trip was once again a little too cosy, I was bunched up right in the back with not only one chinese guy, but 4. I made a mental note of ensuring that I don’t get the back beds anymore, else try with all effort to get myself a train ticket instead. Thankfully the 12hrs went quickly and there was no excruciating asia-opera-pop playing in the background.

I arrived in kunming at a bus station on the outskirts of the town, when arriving from laos during my last trip the bus station was right in the middle of the city. Not what I was expecting. I knew where to take the local bus, but only from the south train station, I mimed a train to a guy who grabbed my bags and threw them into a van without asking, he understood and before I hopped in I made the rubbing of fingers notion to ask ‘wait a sec buddy, how much are you going to charge me for this?’ he said 6, but it was in a chinese accent, someones when they say six they actually mean 18, or 10, or 27. After a 20min drive to thankfully the correct train station, turns out the 6 he asked for was actually 50, when I gave him 10 and he started to get really angry; I decided that 50yuan ($7) was probably worth the effort of not starting a fight; even though it was a highly inflated price for a seat in a full minivan.

In the city I noticed something quite amusing, on every second street corner there was a large intimidating black robot statue with a red button and police tags all over it, I figure if you need help its best to let the robot know and he will send for the police. Maybe they made it intimidating so that kids don’t keep pressing it…. actually I’m pretty sure the robot look would only entice children to mess with the system.

the black robocop

I recognized the area and remembered the bus and the direction that I needed to travel, even the obscure stop, in order to get to a western hostel known as ‘cloudland’ – which made life a lot easier than last time I was in this city. Unfortunately for me though, chinese school holidays had just begun, all rooms and dorms were full – not only that but they were full for all the western hostels in kunming. It is illegal for foreigners to stay in chinese hostels, I have heard stories of the police arriving to throw foreigners out; the only other choice was to say at an expensive hotel; which I had no intention of doing. After a while of moaning at reception, we struck a deal that I can stay on the couch in the cafe/bar after midnight for only 10yuan ($1.50). I quickly confirmed this most excellent unilateral business transaction and rested well ’till morning.

Seeing the sights of kunming in my prior trip (tai chi lake, etc), the only thing I really wanted to do this visit was to see:

1. The Kingdom of Dwarves (a theme park of dwarves/midgets acting out as people in a medieval community – a lot of people in the hostel didn’t think this was politically correct, I wanted to check it out before judging it) which unfortunately was too expencive to get to, being on the outskirts of the city, when only me and some dutch guy were interested in going there; and..

2. the fake apple stores which had been in the news recently, they come with fake apple products and fake apple hipster employees (who actually think that they were hired by a real apple business) – unfortunately for me, within the one week of it making the news, all of these stores in kunming were closed down or renamed/redesigned, not even worthy of taking photos.

Knowing that both these things could not be achieved, I took a relaxing and scenic 6hr train to dali for the same day, arriving on the very start to the slope towards the himilayas in a very chilled out city.