We arrived in Kunming around 12:45 a.m. and cabbed to the hostel by 1:45 a.m. An older Chinese man met us at the cab and walked us through the alley to the hostel where we checked in with a procedure of him pointing at each step on a five-page check-in list written in Chinese with English translated under each section.
He points to the price section, then deposit, then room keys with bed and locker numbers. Then No. 16 says you'll pick up the passports at checkout in the morning.
We found our room and beds and it is 2:00 a.m. now and all other bunkers are asleep already. Aicia's phone is dead and with my 15% battery we use the light to locate our lockers where the pillows and sheets should be. There is nothing more than scraps of linen in the locker and it's late and dark so we took our backpacks in the hallway, changed then went back in and used jackets as pillows.
Some (insert explicit word here) lady left the door open and turned the main light on in the room at 6:00 a.m. She must have missed the course on hostel etiquette. Thanks to her, we woke up freezing and sleepless. We woke to check out and had a coffee with a lady from Switzerland while we waited for our passports. She had been traveling throughout Russia and Asia for the past three months. She said she'd recently retired and turned 60 on July 1, and by July 4 she was on a plane headed to travel the world. She said she'd done a lot of traveling in the past, but now she was retired and could travel forever. Switzerland is so expensive and has such a high currency that anywhere else in the world is cheap in comparison. I want to be just like her after I've worked all my life. We bid her farewell and wished we'd run into each other again in Dali during our travels.
We headed toward bus K-9 that would take us to the Kunming East Bus Station where we'll catch the bus to Shilin (Stone Forest.) When we go to board the bus there are no seats. The woman keeps telling us to go in and sit and all we can say is "méi yǒu," (none in Chinese.) We of course stand out and there is one seat left. A woman makes her son sit in her lap and now there are two seats in the back left corner of the bus. The other three Chinese, back row Baptists, gladly welcome us. We are back packers and our backpacks do not fit in the miniscule overhead space so they are in the aisle of the bus. The three people on our row are from northeast China on holiday. The one gentleman speaks English and tells us he manages a company and this is his wife, as he points to the woman next to him, and their friend, pointing to the gentleman to my right.
We have an hour and a half on the bus. I read, and Alicia dozes off and on. When the bus stops we see no stone mountains and the crowd from the bus has dispersed so quickly we are the only ones left standing. We walked to different desks, both of which were reluctant to help us, and were pointed in another direction. We see a swarm of buses outside and still no Stone Forest so are a bit confused at this point. Finally we are directed down where we see a large building and a screen of pictures flashing the forest so we assume we've made it.
Wrong! You must take another 25RMB bus to the actual entrance that's only 2kms away. We said, to hell with it, we'll walk it. Bad idea. We ended up on the freeway and a man in a tut tut picked us up and was going to take us for 10RMB. He took us alright. All the way to the train station, which I might add was sketchy as hell. So we show him the picture in the guide of Stone Forest and he shoos us back into the tut tut. We ride in the back for another 20 minutes and he has taken us back to where we started. We throw him 20 and thank him. It's not his fault and he is happy so we wave him off and try again.
We had maybe three hours of sleep the night before, or should I say in the early morning, so we were quite fed up and ready to check off Stone Forest without ever entering.
We bite the bullet and buy the damn ticket down only to pay another 175RMB at the entrance. These people really know how to make money.
So, for anyone who plans to go here in the future, just be prepared for the prices. We were prepared for the 175, we just didn't realize it'd be such a chore to get inside.
When we walk in, we're still quite annoyed by the previous half hour of our journey to Shilin. All I can say is, "This shit better be incredible." And Alicia is so annoyed she is practically mute, ha. The first portion is completely touristic and unnatural. However, we can finally see the promise of a stone forest in our future, so we pick up the spirit a tad.
We walk further in and stop for some fruit to fuel up. This woman wants 10 for an apple. I wanted to throw it at her. Even the fruit is outrageously priced. We settled fro three bananas. As many tourist attractions as there are in China, given it's history, so far all the places I've been to are not like other countries where the food and drinks are outrageously overpriced. This place, however, must be the Disney World of China because everything about it is overpriced.
We finally make it into the heart of the forest where there are only stones towering over us covered in limestone. They call it karst.
Southern China's karst topography is known around the world. The hills and mountains of this area are one of the most famous for karst landscape. The color and shapes comes from limestone. The decay and deterioration of certain chemicals and such. I apologize for not being a geologist or having more motivation to research the specifics. I do know it's 270 million years old and one of the most famous natural world wonders of the world.
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| Sideways: This is called "deep and narrow" |
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| HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY |
Obviously the paths were created when the forest became a national park in the 30's, but the rest is naturally formed from the limestone eating away the structure. It is truly beautiful in the heart of the forest. The further in we went, the less people we were surrounded by and it only became more incredible. Within 20 minutes, our grumpy frowns were flipped upside down. We are posing on rocks like Rocky at the top of the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We are squeezing through narrow passageways often having to back up, remove backpacks, and proceed forward again. Ducking, dodging and trekking- we are thrilled. There are caves and nooks and crannies all throughout the stones. At some point we stumble upon some goats foraging in the shrubbery.
And these spiders. Huge, colorful and occurring in infinite numbers. Many of the same in one web which blew my mind. They were everywhere. I'm not normally intimidated by spiders, but I had no idea what these guys were capable of so I did my best to run quickly underneath everytime they were in an over pass. They were only in the trees and shrubbery, never on or in and around the stones and pillars. I tried my hardest to find them online but no luck. Thanks for nothing, Bing.
We made our way to the walking path and headed toward the exit. Our two hours was up and we have a very tight schedule to follow. We make it back to the unhelpful bus station we arrived at, purchased our ticket back to Kunming and spent another hour and a half on the bus.
Sidenote: In the spring of this year, a massacre happened in the Kunming bus station. We don't know if it was the one we'd been in or not, but apparently some activists or gang members came in with machetes and killed hundreds of people. It was a tragic thing. Research it if you like, but I'll spare any details I know.
The girl at the bus stop in Shilin told us it'd be hard to find a taxi once back in Kunming because of this. Luckily, she was wrong and cabs lined up at the exit for passengers.
It was 4:45 and we needed to be across town at Kunming South Bus Station to catch a bus to Yuanyang. We make it to the south station an hour later in time to book our ticket and get some dinner.
We are taking a sleeper bus and have no idea what to expect. We walk on and can barely make it to our bunk from laughing so hard. It's bunks on bunks and everyone has already boarded except us. They hand us plastic bags to put our shoes in as we walk on. We head to the back and now have a space for five and there are only the two of us. We take a selfie because it's necessary proof and pass out. When we stop for a bathroom break I hit the trenches and have a conversation with two Israeli guys who are on our bus. They've just finished their term serving in the Israeli army and have been traveling Asia for the past two months with their other friend who's asleep on the bus.
I forget most countries don't have volunteer enlistment like the U.S. now does. These boys served from 18-21. Involuntarily. They didn't speak ill of it or anything. It's law for them and I suppose they always knew that's what they'd do after high school. Now there time is done and I imagine the whole time they were in the army they said to each other, "when we finish our term, let's travel the world." And they are. Just another reason to be thankful all my boys are able to choose whether or not to serve.
I wrote this blog from the back of the sleeper bus once I cam back in from the bathroom break. I was wide awake with excitement, but I eventually forced myself to fall asleep. We slept like babies. Those sleeper beds were more comfortable than the hostels we'd stayed in so far.
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