Kunming, China

Kunming is a real city, maybe not as big as Hong Kong, but a city it is. From the bus station we took a cab to the Kunming Youth Hostel, Rutger told us to go. However, the hostel turned out to have moved. After a while we found the new location, but it was fully booked (that is: the cheap room were fully booked, the $20 rooms were available. However, the girl was so nice to call another option from the Lonely Planet guide ahead and ask if they had some available rooms which they had. However, when we turned up at the Kunming University Hotel, the girl at the counter told us that we were at the wrong place (we couldn't check the name since it was in Chinese ;-), so we headed out. On the street we saw a Western couple that turned out to be Dutch. We asked them if they knew where the hotel was (since the girl at the counter had not really been that helpful other than pointing at the door). They told us that it was the building we had just left, and that they had had the same experience that morning. The second the time we entered, the same girl all of a sudden helped us! Welcome to China!

Next morning, we decided to hook up with Joris and Mignon (the couple that had helped us secure the room) and find a way to travel to Vietnam. First we went to a travel agency to see whether we could book a flight to Hanoi. However, these turned out to be somewhat above our budget. Joris came up with the idea of renting a van together to travel to the Vietnamese Border while allowing us to visit the XXX rice fields. The Lonely Planet directed us to the office of Mr. Lee who could indeed arrange such a trip. For $170 we got a van, a driver, gas and toll paid for a nice scenic trip to Vietnam!

However, that trip would not start until we had seen some of Kunming. The Blackpool park and some nice temples.