Day 2: Eroded rocks and a Touristy Shoppingplace
Excerpts from my notebook:
7:23, Hotel room - So I think the real fun begins today, as we're actually going to go somewhere. I'm giving the digicam battery a quick top-up before I go. The bed isn't bad at all, in fact it's quite big - enough for two somewhat skinny people - and comfortable. Breakfast is downstairs, but I must remember two words: 'Fat Camp'. And maybe an extra one: 'diarrhoea'.
20:45 - Just got back. Am tired. Did not actually have much fun today at all. Went to the Stone Forest, which was really quite beautiful - it's full of big, weather-eroded boulders. I would have enjoyed it if I hadn't cracked my head on a rock and almost been stepped on by about 50 people. I just wanted to get out. Then we went shopping. Mom went crazy buying salted pork, and all I could do was tag along on aching feet. Salespeople here are terrible. They follow you around and go on, and on, and on in Putonghua, even when you're obviously too poor to afford a $100 lump of salted pork and are just looking. And even when it's clear you're pissed and don't understand a word they're saying. I took a reasonable number of photos today. Yunnan has beautiful scenery, and you're so much closer to the clouds. Those big, fluffy white things somehow seem bigger and fluffier over here.
First full day in Kunming. After a buffet breakfast (which was every bit as inedible as the plane meal), we got on the bus and bumped two hours on a dusty road to see the Stone Forest. The rocks are huge, and the stairs are quite slippery from having been walked on too many times. I didn't look and walked into a jutting-out piece as I was trying to navigate my way down the slippery steps, and almost gave myself concussion. Some rocks here are meant to look like certain things - we saw a tiger rock and a rat rock, and some others as well. There's a fishpond absolutely stuffed with koi between the main Stone Forest and the Minor one, which is filled with smaller rocks. For 2 yuan you can buy fishfood. I bought a pack and watched the scaly things fight it out. I love feeding fish.
Afterwards we went to this Touristy Shoppingplace, which has no English name that I know of. It's a complex with seven buildings and each one is a large shop. I ate an ice cream there. Mom bought a lot of salted pork. It's called 'wun tui' (cloud leg/ham). Strange. My legs ached when we got back to the hotel.