Kunming and The Stone Forest

Thurs, July 23

Mike

Got up, ate a nondescript breakfast. We arranged with Tony Deng of China Kindness Tours to meet with him between 5 to 6 PM.

We took a bus to the bus station (right next to the railway station). Then, a 2 hr ride to Shilin (石林; literally "Stone Forest") - one hour to get 4 km or so to the highway, and the other hour on the highway.

The Stone Forest is a region of karst stone formations. Trails have been built throughout the park. We took the trail to the Lotus Tower and found ourselves on a narrow, exposed, slippery trail. Fantastic stone formations - sort of reminds one of Cappadocia, but here there is limestone karst, not basalt.

Back to Kunming - again the horrendous traffic.

Met with Tony around 5:50 PM. He is arranging Dan Oppliger's 2009 Tropical Sails eclipse trip, so he knows they saw the eclipse. Tony took us to dinner and ordered 7 dishes, local specialties of Kunming and Yunnan: 1. steamed pork chicken soup (qi4 quo1 ji1); 2. duck stomach (ya1 zhen1) crispy like pieces of pork; 3. fried goat cheese (ru3 bing3) like saganaki but without the liquor - salt and pepper instead; 4. rice cake with scallion (er3 kuai4); 5. beef with ginger and pepper; 6. steamed green pumpkin; 7. crispy potato (gan1 bei4 yang2 yu4) shredded potato, julienned and fried in a cake. Beer was Lan2 cang1 jiang1 (Mekong River beer). There was way too much food, but wow.
After dinner, Tony drove us back to the hotel. Now, to sleep.

Chinese cheese info:
http://www.ethnorema.it/pdf/numero%201/BRYAN%20ALLEN%20and%20SILVIA%20ALLEN.pdf

Curtis

We really enjoyed the Stone Forest (Shilin). It had incredible passageways that were quite tricky to negotiate, but really awesome vistas. I took bunches of photos. Our weather was quite pleasant, too, which was a good thing because some of the stone pathways could be disastrous under wet conditions. There are many otherworldly rock formations, some of which are given "pet" names for obvious reasons. The park attracts many tourists, and near the bus station you run into the usual onslaught of tour hawkers, and people selling all kinds of trinkets, including some very nice embroidery and other folk arts and crafts. These have their own unique local style based on traditions of the Yi and Sami people, ethnic minorities with long roots in this part of Yunnan Province.

After our return bus ride, Mike caught up with his travel agent friend Tony, who generously took us to a good local restaurant that offers Yunnan dishes. Most incredible was fried goat cheese similar to Greek saganaki. Also crispy duck stomach--very much like crisp bacon.

Tomorrow, after we do a little touring around Kunming itself, we’re planning on taking a bus to Dali. Tony says there is almost no damage in the old town from the recent earthquake. Also similar reports from travelers we have run into.