Kunming

We arrived in Kunming with the pouring rain. At this point we have been in China just under a month but we felt like we had been there for months.

Kunming, a promising city China

The traffic was horrendous - the airport is 25km away and it took us 2 hours to get there

We spent 3 nights in Kunming and we had heard there were pretty things to see but upon arriving and doing more research, everything is a bus ride away. With the cold weather (cold to us since we've been in summer weather since January in Fiji) and our lack of motivation, we just stayed close to the apartment we rented. Luckily there was a mall and Starbucks close by so we spent a lot of our time there. We would venture off to investigate weird places.

We saw a sign for "Modern Toilet Restaurant" and just had to check it out

There are toilets everywhere!

They are your seats at the table...no, we did not eat here

The mornings were filled with watching this scene:

PE class

Click here to watch how coordinated they are.

We took one field trip to the Walmart (Paul will discuss in his review) and on the way back a couple of guys tried to pick Paul's pocket. They used super large tweezer looking things. Since the streets are narrow we had to walk single file for awhile and since most people don't think we are walking together these pick-pocketers weren't paying attention to me. I saw the one guy try to lift something from Paul's fleece unsuccessfully (while the other guy was flanked on the other side of Paul, watching). When I caught up to Paul, I asked if he felt anything. Once I started talking to Paul, the two guys fell back. After that experience, we decided we shouldn't leave the mall perimeter and stayed in the safety of the apartment until we left for Lhasa.

On September 6 we headed to Lhasa, Tibet. This is the Kunming airport - large with waxed floors for your reflection pleasure.