CHINA is not Japan. In terms of my initial impressions though, Kunming felt similar to Osaka and Tokyo in the same way that all the SEA cities feel kind of similar to each other, to my untrained senses.
We left Luang Prabang on the 9:49 train and while there was some confusion about J's exiting on one passport and entering on the other at the border, we got through without being detained. Because most of these blogs are read by people planning on making the same journey, I should give a few details on the border crossing. The train stops in Boten station on the Laos side where you exit the station and then re-enter in order to to through Lao exit procedures, then get back on the same train. You have to take everything with you for customs of course. Then back on the train you go through a long tunnel, which has coloured lights and a projection of the Lao and Chinese flags on the wall so you know when you cross the border, and then you stop again at Mohan on the Chinese side where you go through Chinese entry procedures and then once again get back on the train. There's a little eatery place with instant noodles but the payment didn't work for me through Alipay or VISA so be aware of that. Also be aware that the rice bowl that you can order on the train is not worth it.
In Kunming, we joined a French 19-year-old, H, in trying to use the metro, the cheapest option to get into town, and discovered that we couldn't use Alipay to pay for it if the underlying payment method was MasterCard or VISA. Luckily there was a foreign exchange machine and we were able to change some dollars into RMB as the ticket machines did take cash. The metro took forever so we had a chance to get to know H - he was nice and not your typical tourist. It took longer than it should have done because J had not realised that the place we had booked was a chain and we were just headed to a random one not the one we wanted - so we went two stops more than we should have on the metro, walked a few minutes the wrong way, and went into a McDonald's, before realising we were going to the wrong place. Fortunately the 26 minute walk to the real place was quite pleasant and we got to see the famous gate and walk through a pretty night market where some people were performing with a guitar and another instrument that was like a guitar but wasn't. And now we're in the hotel and from one perspective it's not as "nice" as the ones we've been used to in SEA - the rooms aren't as big and are definitely lacking in character - but from another perspective it's nice to be in the sort of predictable, pretty soulless but pretty spotless chain hotel that we're used to from home. And the shower is enclosed - that is to say the shower area isn't the whole bathroom.
Pics of Kunming:
So that's a wrap on our travels through the SEA region - 4 countries for me (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos) and 6 for J (Malaysia, Singapore). I'm not about to make a sweeping conclusionary judgement on the whole area of course so there's not much else to say about that. I guess it should be re-emphasised that there have been years of widespread unspeakable tragedy in at least 3 of these countries and there is much blood on the West's hands for that. As a portion of the trip, this has been better than the first (London to Marrakech) in the respect that my phone wasn't stolen and I've been constantly accompanied by one or two of my closest friends. Thanks for reading this blog post and any others that you may have read and if you haven't read any others that's fine. Finally, I am not pleased to announce that this site will remain ad-free because Google Ad Services judged our content too low-quality to be eligible for ads.