How we started in Kunming, the nationalities village and the West Hills

This year's annual trip we begin in China. The Yunnan province has several places that we want to visit, so the plan is to start in Kunming and then move up the mountains to Dali, Lijiang, Tiger Leaping Gorge and eventually get to Shangri-La, which is situated at 3200 m altitude, close to the border with Tibet.

Before meeting Oleg and Lena in Kunming (this time we are travelling with 4 of us), we had to fly to Beijing first and then take a domestic flight to Kunming. Beijing airport turned out to be a huge hub with the whole bunch of incoming flights arriving almost simultaneously. 

Because we had to take a domestic flight next, we had to go all the way through passport control, security check, customs check, get our luggage, get out in the arrival terminal, go back to the departure terminal, check-in, go through passport control, customs control, security check and finally, into the waiting area for the next flight... It was a good thing that we had 2 hours for that, any less and we would have missed the second flight. Never saw a more complex transfer procedure before :-)

In all the hustle we still noticed a funny thing about Chinese airports, they all have a special facility for hot water, and every Chinese passenger uses it to make either instant noodles or tea.

We arrived to Kunming at 12:30, 3 hours ahead of Lena and Oleg, so the plan was to get to the hotel we booked as quick as possible and catch a couple of hours of sleep before the guy's arrival in the afternoon. 
From the airport we took a shuttle bus, really good and cheap way to get to town. 

The whole ride to the hotel took about 40 minutes, but once we got to the place, we saw this: the tall building being our hotel, surrounded by a huge construction fence, with no visible possibility to get to the building, and the building itself looking very much abandoned. 

We tried walking around it in different directions but the fence seemed endless and we really couldn't find the way in. We even tried calling the hotel, but there was nobody their speaking English, so we couldn't explain the situation.
Finally we gave up and called booking.com for help. They got some Chinese speaking colleague to call the hotel and to send someone to pick us up at the corner. 
By the time we got to our room, Lena and Oleg already landed, and we had no time to catch any sleep(( After picking them up the same way we were, we decided to go downtown to get some food and to walk off our jet-lag.

Downtown Kunming turned out to be quite a modern area with lot's of shopping malls, hotels, tall buildings and... absolutely nothing to do...

Everybody was hungry, so, as usual, we first decided to look for some street food.

This one looked really great but all the tables were busy.

We settled for another one next door. 

My personal note - everything is very, VERY spicy and nobody speaks any English to understand my request for non-spicy food ((( Even tried using the pictures, but it only gets them confused...

After our quick bite we wondered around the streets some more. 

Sleeping quarters, all windows are being fenced. We thought that they might have a lot of break-ins here. 

For dinner, we decided to find an actual restaurant to eat hoping for an English menu this time. One seemed really great and contemporary, however inside, we were, again, given an all Chinese menu, and nobody around spoke English. Seeing us struggle with the menu, one of the staff members probably felt sorry for us, and found someone who could translate - a chef from another restaurant :-)

He eventually helped us order the food. 
The culinary highlight of the evening was - a pigeon!

It doesn't look like much, but it was really tasty :-))
After dinner we got back to the hotel and called it a night. 

The next day plan was to visit the minorities/nationalities village and the West Hill - both a "must see" according to the guide book.

Getting a taxi proved to be another challenge. Again, nobody spoke English, but luckily we were prepared and we had all the names of places we wanted to go to written in Chinese just in case. 

We started with the village as we could get to the West Hill from there by cable car.

Every single place of interest in China charges an entrance fee, in some cases unreasonably high, and some even charge multiple.
Visiting the village, for example, costs around 14 EUR, quite high compared to the overall price level.

The idea behind the village is to illustrate the history of various tribes living in Yunnan province. 

Really liked the national costumes

Some tribes are a minority with over 500.000 people... I guess by the Chinese standard it's really not that much. 

Another kind of minority)))

There were practically no European looking people in the park, so at times we really did fill like a minority.

Altogether, the park is quite beautifully made.

It took us almost 2 hours to get to the cable car station on the other side of the villages.

The ride with the cable car across the lake to the other side is about 20 minutes. It brings you to the low entrance of the West Hill - another sort of park with lot's of temples scattered on the side of a hill.

Getting across the lake is not all, to get all the way to the top you still need to take yet another cable car, a much older one this time.

Touristy lunch in-between))

This ride does offer some great views.

Once all the way on top, the idea is to walk all the way down through multiple stairs along all the temples.

This one is the most famous - The Dragon Gate - not sure why. It is very small and very crowded.

Apparently you need to touch the arch on the way out.

More stairs...

... and more temples

I looove the roofs, each of them is like a peace of art.

We even found this year's very last magnolia flower

Temples have very beautiful gardens.

Every temple here has a separately paid entrance, which the boys refused to pay, so Lena and I went alone.

I also loved the carvings on the doors.

Most temples are still in use and there are monks living on the premises.

They keep the temples gorgeous and well taken care off.

It took us over 3 hours to get all the way down the hill again. We struggled to get a cab at first but then, luckily, one finally showed up and we could get back to downtown. 

In the evening we needed to get to Kunming railway station and get the night train to Dali, our first train in China. 
Security here is very strict and you can't get in unless you have a ticket. 
The waiting hall was  really full.

You can't get on the platform, unless the train is already ready to board, so everybody hangs out in front of the boarding gate, just as at the airport.

We liked the way everything is organized. Very well controlled and no chaos. 

The train was great, clean and we could sleep quite well. 
In the morning we arrived to our next destination - Dali.

Next: Dali Old town and on motorbikes to Erhai Lake