CHINA!

Hello from Kunming!

So, we made it to China, yay!  We are currentlyin Kunming, tonight will be our second night and we plan to head out tomorrow.  The city is very big, and there isn't too much we want to see here, we are mostly looking forward to seeing smaller towns and more countryside, which should start tomorrow.  The trouble we have been having as far as planning from here on out is the fact that everything is SO far away from everything else! Plane tickets are an option, but really kind of out of our budget. Train tickets are cheaper, but if we are on one for 19 hours we want to have a bed to sleep in and apparently those sell out pretty quickly... thus we had an issue with our initial plans to head east as the trains were all booked.  SO we are going west, and adjusting to the change of plans, which isn't a big deal since we never really had any plans that were set in stone... that's the beaty of backpacking!  You just go with the flow and let yourself figure out where you're going while you're on the way.  So most likely our plan is to go to Lijiang tomorrow, and then head north towards Sichuan and then Xi'an.  I would really really like to see the rice terraces though, which are unfortunately quite out of the way, but we are going to look at some options tomorrow and see if it will be a possibility.

So far no one has gotten sick (knock on wood) which is fabulous, and we have only had some minor squabbles concerning the scheduling and the planning where to go next.  We all expected this of course, so it's good to get it out of the way!  Generally we are all just so in awe of the fabulously exotic culture we are experiencing and just having fun with all of the new sights, sounds and smells (and believe me there are quite a few new ones).  Our first reaction to Kunming was Wow, this is like a very polluted and cluttered Disney Land!  Mostly we thought that because there were a lot of neon lights, decorative lighting lining the streets and sidewalks, and lots of pretty flashing colors.  After walking around a bit today we saw more of the city, and were able to attest to the fact that give all of the people and clutter it is really quite remarkably clean and well cared for.  The traffic is intense, but everyone follows the rules, there is a lot of trash but it is quickly cleaned up by city workers, and the trees and bushes are regularly watered by a slowly moving truck that plays old fashioned Disney songs or Christmas carols (one hung out on the street by our hostel for about 20 minutes blaring "Its Small World" louder than an ice cream truck).  The people are very nice, and generally very accepting of the fact that we stumble of Chinese words slower than a parrot while rifling through the phrasebook and failing miserably at hand gestures.  We have about three words down pretty good, although everyone still thinks its a great joke when say any one of them, meaning we have pretty awful accents.  At least they smile and seem pleased that we tried, that's our goal.

Today we made it to the Flower and bird market, which was very fascinating.  It obviously had a lot flowers, most of them very unique and exotic.  The birds were really neat, especially in their wooden cages that were cautiously watched by old men crouched on the ground under the trees.  I took a ton of pictures, I'll put a few here:

This is at the Hanoi Hilton.

Just outside our hostel in Vietnam.

Wow that was way harder than I expected... slow computer, slow internet, also we have to use prozy ip addresses to access blogger, facebook or other social sites here in China.  That makes it difficult.  Plus I can't read Chinese so I'm using my ancient knowledge of Micosoft Windows and the format and type of questions I expect to pop up in those boxes.. then I just pick a button randomly and it takes a lot of trial and error.  Anyway I obivously have a ton more pictures but here and now is not the time to upload them.  I will do more as soon as I can!

lots of love,
Maia