Days 203-204: Kunming, briefly

Kunming was a bit of an anomaly in our itinerary. Originally the tour spent a day in Kunming to visit a rocky region known as the Stone Forest, but due to some schedule changes and rearranging the Stone Forest got dropped and a very long train ride from Kunming to Guilin got switched to a much more comfortable airplane flight. We got to Kunming by taking a fairly lengthy public bus ride from Dali.

After a few hours on our own to explore we met up to go out for "Crossing Bridge" noodles. These come as a hot broth and a plate of noodles, thinly cut raw beef and vegetabes and an egg. All these ingredients are dumped into the broth as you go and the temperature of the broth cooks everything. Afterwards a few of us went out for another snack/meal of delicious spicy crab with our guide.

The next day we took the city bus to visit the big park in Kunming. It was an interesting park, and there was lot to see there, but certainly nothing that warranted all the time we spent in the city.

After taking the bus 90 minutes out of town to the airport we had a bit of excitement as Frank realized that he'd forgotten all our passports back at the hotel. He frantically hopped in a cab while we waited in the airport and managed to get all the passports and get back in time for all of us to check in. Once in Guilin we piled onto a bus for a final bit of travel to Yangshou, where we would be spending the next 3 nights.