Day 1: Traveling to Kunming

My wife, Jay, is pretty amazing in many ways but relative to this diary entry, she’s really good at planning and executing travel plans. She’s meticulous about everything from booking our travel and accommodations to ensuring we have convenient means to pay for everything during our trip. Before we met, I’d never really done much traveling but now I’m in her world. Jay organizes everything and I’m along for the ride.

We’ve traveled to Vietnam, Hong Kong, Fukuoka in Japan and on this excursion, she decided it was time to visit somewhere in China to a place called Lijiang. I’d never heard of it of course but I was excited about the opportunity to see a bit of this place that everyone in the West seems to hate so much. Jay informed me that as a Thai citizen, she’d get a visa on arrival but as a US Citizen, I need to apply in advance. It was a simple online process and after a couple of weeks and a visit to their office, I received my visa ensuring we’d have no need to re-apply for the next 10 years should we decide on visiting again in the future (cost was a little over 5k baht).

The day to start our trip came, so, at 6pm, we took a bus from Chiang Mai that would arrive 9 hours later at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok. The destination was Kunming, the capital and largest city of Yunnan Province. It’s the beginning of winter and since we live in an area that has tropical weather most of the year, Jay had prepared us well with the necessary clothing required for our time in the region. So early that next morning, we strapped on our boots and winter coats then boarded the flight that took us to our first visit to China.

Kunming Changshui International Airport was massive and the weather was chilly at around 12°C. There was an auto-dispenser in the baggage area that provided room temperature and hot water at no charge which I thought was kinda cool. After baggage collection, we headed outside to hail a taxi but were a little confused with our options until we ran into a freelance guide named Will. He was Chinese but his English was fluent and after giving us his card, he helped book a sufficient car that would take us to our hotel, City Comfort Inn. 

We unloaded the private taxi and checked in just before 2pm. The room was unremarkable to be fair but it was decent size, had hot water, an a/c (for heat cuz it was cold) and a firm bed with a down comforter. After dropping our things, we headed out to grab a bite to eat at a restaurant just around the corner from our hotel on the main street. We were shocked at the size of the bowl of noodles and luckily didn’t order much. The staff were kind, helpful and vehemently refused a tip. Later we learned that tipping culture doesn’t really exist in Chinese culture but I suppose that may depend on location. On the way out, we came across a souvenir snacks shop that sold by the kg and decided we’d stock up on some unusual treats on our last day.

Thereafter, wifey and I split from our travel companions to explore some of the surrounding area. Shuncheng Shopping Centre is just opposite our hotel so that was our first stop. Jay finally saw trees that change color when the seasons change irl - one of many firsts she’d have on this journey - so of course we had to get a few shots of that. There was a really cool bagel shop selling cream cheese stuffed bagels in a variety of unusual flavors so we had to try one.

Our next stop was a tourist attraction called 金马碧鸡坊 that featured some old style gates and lots of souvenir shops where we got some fun memory shots and bought some tea made from flowers and dried fruit. This was the first place we noticed how there was a police and/or army presence in every location where large groups of people congregate. This was on top of the surveillance cameras everywhere. Whether this is a positive or negative aspect is debatable but we agreed it made us feel safe as travelers in a foreign country where very few of the inhabitants speak English or Thai.

Our last stop of the day was a small food plaza across the main street where we were staying. It’s not marked on Google maps but it was connected to Jingxing Street. There were a wide variety of food vendors but we weren’t particularly hungry so we just grabbed some barbecue and headed back to the room. We’d need to be up early the next day to go take a high speed train to Lijiang.

Stay tuned, I'll sharing more about out the rest of our trip over the next few days with subscribers. Hope to see ya there. Questions or thoughts? Share in the comments!