Here comes the sun

Two momentous events occurred in Kunming

Firstly..... we actually saw the sun.

We had seen a hazy version of the planet (or is it a star?....I can hear the disbelief at my ignorance from a few select of you) at times, but for the first time in China we saw it in a clear sky. There was a continual haze over Beijing, but because the quality of air seemed Ok I don't think we once commented on the pollution issue.....maybe we were having too much fun! Likewise in Shanghai. It had been overcast elsewhere. So it did come as a shock to realise that we had been in China for 3 weeks without a clear sunny sky.

Secondly....... we had our first glass of chilled white wine....

I'll let you decide which was the most momentous....but we were pretty excited to visit a groovy little Italian restaurant, run by two gorgeous Italian girls, and sit outside on the footpath (much to the amusement of the locals) and sip cold, drinkable, affordable Pinot Grigio.

Kunming is a university town and has a wonderful bar and restaurant area which we frequented often in our three days there. It also has a beautiful park which we drove around in taxis getting to the bars, but no matter how hard we tried we just couldn't locate it on foot, every direction we were given, led us apparently near the park but never to it. One of those frustrating moments of travel!

Our walking in circles was rewarded, though, when Mandy stumbled onto an artists shop and , after much deliberation, purchased some beautiful wolf hair brushes.

The other reason we stayed in Kunming was to renew our 30 day visas. We found the visa office, filled in the forms and were about to hand them over when the "visa girl" said that, "it woulf take 7 days for the process”. We had no intention of spending another 7 days in Kunming so we asked the girl about options. She told us it may be quicker in Dali, our next destination. However our visas would be expired by one day by the time we got there. Would this be a problem..we enquired. The girl thought about it and suggested we might get on oral warning!!

Now, Mandy likes to do the right thing, so she was particularly concerned about an oral warning. I didn't think it would be too bad, as long as it wasn't an oral warning conducted in a basement room with a dripping tap!

We left Kunming en route to Dali in a VIP bus (enough of the local buses), a little nervous re oral warnings.