Welcome to Yunnan

We left Guilin on a rainy day and managed to find Sean right before he attempted to buy a train ticket with pictures (three stick figures) and a lonely planet phrasebook. The sleeper train was great- our car wasn't full and we met a cool group of kids who had been working at a rock climbing company in Yangshuo. They were also totally nuts (one dropped her phone down the toilet on the train) but made for good company on the train ride. We stayed up pretty late drinking Snow beers (!!!) in the dining car (then another one of them tried to steal a train conductor's hat and then after I woke him up, tried to return it naked).

I bought a camera charger yesterday, so photos of the trip onward will be plentiful. Kunming is a really chill city and it's warm during the day and a litle brisk at night. We walked around the public park yesterday and it was filled with ladies dancing, old guys singing, and kids playing. The funniest part was when a little girl yelled "外国 人!" (foreigners!) at the top of her lungs at Sean and Jenna. Her parents laughed and I nearly died! Then we had a really amazing Yunnan dinner (lonely planet never fails!) complete with fried yak cheese, prawns in a foil bag lit tableside, and chili battered fish.

This morning we got up early to head over to the Stone Forest in Shilin, about 120km southwest of Kunming. However our early start was negated when we took the wrong bus and then decided to buy our train tickets to Dali.

Ok so... the train station is already a zoo and it's one month until Spring Festival. There are huge gazebo tents and portable dividers outside the train station to sell tickets. There are even army guys with batons to direct people lining up to the next open window! I'm so glad I'm getting out of here next month.

Anyway, the Stone Forest took about 2.5 hours to get to and was also a whopping 170元 per ticket. The place was overrun with Chinese tour groups, complete with matching hats and whistles. The perifery was amazing though and the park is like looking at another planet. Imagine pointy grey rocks protruding from the ground... covering many hills.

We met a group of Germans that had been on the road for months, driving from Germany, through Iran, Pakistan, Tibet, Krygystan and now China. They had an orange van and this huge red sandcrawler thing which they have been driving around. Theyre going to Laos, Burma, and
Vietnam next, so watch out! Try orangetrotter.de or project-Asia.com to follow their travels.

This leg of the adventure was fun and a lot slower paced than before with pleasant weather and random people. tomorrow we take a morning train to Dali and should be there in the evening. Happy MLK day!