Kunming

After arriving by raft halfway through Guilin I jumped into the bus to the main road where the bus to Guilin would pass by. I rejected some offers for minivans and tuk-tuk's and after about half an hour this bus did turn-up. While it was kind of full; all seats taken, all improvised chairs taken, the only spot left was next to the bus driver on the floor. So I enjoyed the ride from that position. (I was offered a chair, but when you're travelling cheap you sometimes have to suffer the consequences.) After arriving in Guilin I dumped my bags at the train station and did some seightseeing in the city. It is a nice city with mountains in the middle and next to the main river is a good place to relax, even though I made my way back soon, after seeing something I did not want to see.

The train was comfortable a hard-sleeper jammed between a bunch of kids (14-16) coming back from a holliday, a Chinese family and a French family. With my basic knowledge of Mandarin I managed to fool around for a bit and enjoyed another night in the train.

After arriving in Kunming I found the bus to my preffered guesthouse. Soon I noticed they could arrange bus tickets to Laos, leaving me with one worry less. The first day I went to the so called muslim corner and enjoyed some kebab skewers. That night I played some pool with my roommates and this time I ended up playing a Danish drinking game (7 or less).

The next day me and my Danish roommate (Per) went to the park next to the lake. The park was nice and the lake was green, green as paint, the surface even was as thick as paint. Therefor I decided not to eat any seafood in this city. While walking around we saw a go-kart circuit and went for an irresponsible spin, looking at the people before us it was allowed to hit each other.

That night we went out with a nice mixed group of people; Per, an American, A Canadian, An Indian, an Afghan, some other European and me. We did some bar hopping, in the first club we noticed that some dancing foreigners are a good way to gather a crowd. At the following club a girl invited me to join her for a dance on stage. Next we where jumping around with a police officer. It is good to be a tall blond foreigner in China...