March 29, 2015

We have just finished our 3 day visit to Kunming. Although it was a short trip, we had a great time. We stayed in a hostel which turned out to be (mostly) great. The room was nice and big, they had an outside seating area with plenty of tables/chairs, and they had a ping pong table. Hayden has decided that he loves ping pong. We had a hard time getting him away from the table to go see the area. The only bad thing about the place was the limited wifi and the fact that we only had hot water one of the nights.

Ping Pong!

The first day that we were in Kunming, we stated local to the hostel and just spent some time getting the lay of the land. We were pretty excited that there was an awesome bakery just a few doors down from us so we ended up going there each morning. They also had ice cream with chocolate waffle cones!! (We may have gone there a night or two). For our full day, we took the bus out to the Stone Forest…it was amazing. We had seen pictures and thought it would be cool, but the pictures don’t do it justice. It’s a huge area with Limestone rock formations that have been eroded into pillars over the past 250 million years. There are pathways wind all through the different rock formations, so you can see lots of different areas.

Top of the Stone Forest

Stone Forest

Stone Forest

Stone Forest

Stone Forest

In the middle of the park, they had an area where you could dress up in the local clothing and have your picture taken. It was too cute to resist paying that 10 Yuan (about $1.50) to let him dress up and get some pictures. Of course, they try to sell you the clothes after…Hayden wanted to buy them, but I’m not about to carry them along with us for the rest of the trip!

Local clothing

That night, we were hanging out in hostel and met a great family from Shanghai. The parents were both teachers at the English school and they had two kids just about Hayden’s age. Hayden and the kids sat and played with Pokémon cards while the parents all talked about traveling. They have lived all over the world, so they gave us some tips on Egypt and several other places.

Next, we are heading to Guilin to see the Li River and the Reed Flute Caves, they should be pretty cool!