April 27 Experincing Kunming and getting pissed on a train

Kunming was even bigger than Jinghong. A huge metropolis of a zillion people
scurrying around on bikes amid the taxis, buses and motorbikes. Using my
guidebook, I choose a budget hotel in the "old" part of town where there are
supposed to be markets and lanes that haven't changed in decades. A
moto-taxi (a motorcycle pulling a seat behind it) drives up and the driver
asks me if I want a ride. I tell him the name of the hotel and we try to
negotiate a price. "Do sha tsien?" I ask. He holds up two fingers. "Er
kwai," is the answer. (Two yuen.) Well, two yuen seems like a rather small
amount so, to verify, I hold up two fingers and repeat. "Er kwai?" He nods.
I get in and in about 15 minutes we're at the hotel. I hand over two yuen
and he looks at me, astounded. "Ershe kwai," he now says, holding up the
same two fingers. It is only now that I hear the little "she" added on,
which I'm sure he did not say before, meaning "ten." Ershe means two times
10 so he actually wants 20 yuen, far more than I would have spent on the
ride to begin with. I argue, uselessly, that he only held up two fingers and
asked for two kwai earlier. A crowd gathers. No one speaks English. I'm
tired and still don't have a hotel room. I throw a 20 yuen note at him and
vow this is the last Mandarin lesson I'll learn in this way. I only learn
much later on that two yuen would be "liang kwai" and not "er kwai." I'm
sure this distinction was invented to bilk tourists out of 18 kwai.

As it turns out, the "old" part of Kunming looks newer than the new part
since most of China has been on a renovating campaign that would make
" Changing Places" look like it was moving backwards. This means that hotels
are twice as expensive as in smaller cities and eight times as expensive as
in my guidebook. The "budget" accommotation I go after has single rooms
starting at $30 US but I am in no mood to go looking for other accommodation
and I wouldn't even know where to begin so I am forced to opt for a dorm bed
for 30Y (about $4 US). While the dorm accommodations are great -- clean,
comfortable, providing lockable storage areas, with kitchens, washing
machines, hot showers, etc. -- the reason I hate dorms is driven home as
soon as I try to catch up on badly needed sleep. Three backpackers come in
to check out the accommodation and one girl says, in British accent, "Well,
they should be nice considering how much we have to pay for them." Someone
obviously forgot to tell her she's in China. They then start to settle in as
noisily as they can, oblivious to the poor soul in the upper bunk who just
spend a sleepless night inhaling secondhand smoke and listening to a cat
complain to its owner all night about being cooped up in a little box.

Kunming does have a gorgeous park in its center, though, and after what
little snooze I can muster, I head over for a first hand look at Sunday
afternoon gaieties -- people singing, playing strange instruments, fan
dancing and gazing for hours at the fish. In the evening, I head to the
train station to get a train out the next day to Nanning. The process is
amazingly smooth, even though the ticket agent speaks very limited English.
I get a hard sleeper, middle bunk.

The next day, refreshed, I decide to take a city bus down the main street --
Beijing Road -- to the train station and, using a local map, have to only
pay one yuen for the trip that cost me 20 the day before. I am almost
prancing with pride as I make my way to what I think is the train station
platform next to the ticket office. There is no platform. There is no
station. There is, however, a large construction pit the size of Seattle.
Construction that causes massive chaos beside the main train station is a
phenomenon that seems to repeat itself all through China. In some areas
there is the valid reason that a new subway is being built; in other areas
there seems to be no reason whatsoever. In Kunming, the actual train station
is on the other side of the pit about a mile away from the ticket office to
which I have just pranced.

I make my way through throngs of crowds, taxis, buses, yadda, yadda, yadda
to the front door. I think I have made it. I am sorely mistaken. Once
inside, there is another mile-long walk, through the main lobby, down a long
hallway, through one waiting area, back up another long ramp to the second
level, across another waiting area, down a flight of stairs, back along
another corridor, around the corner and up yet another, final flight os
stairs. It's much like finding your way through O'Hare in Chicago, without
the moving sidewalks.

On board, I make my way to my bunk. Sleeper trains are much more comfortable
that sleeper buses, the beds being a little softer, longer and wider. There
are sections, with three tiers of bunks on either side, that are open to the
corridor. Arriving at my section, I am met by the very interested glances of
the five men with whom I'll share the little section, sitting on the two
lower beds, puffing away on cigarettes, turning our little "cabin" into
another airport smoking room. Wanting to make friends, I sit down on end of
a lower bed and ask for a cigarette. Then I pull out my little pocket
dictionary/phrasebook and try to make conversation. Asking each in turn (and
forgetting immediately) their names, the third person responds by taking an
identification card out of his breast pocket. "Hello, my name is Jason. I am
pleased to welcome you to Wallmart," says the card. It turns out, all the
men are Wallmart employees on their way to a new store opening in Nanning.
And they are not alone; the train car is filled with them.

Using my phrasebook, I try to find out what they do. But the dictionary part
is sorely abridged. From what I can tell, they protect fires. Either that,
or they protect the stores FROM fires; it was never really clear. But,
sensing my friendliness, they invite me to partake in some food and drink
they've brought on board. The food is some wonderful roast beef. The drink
is hideously stong rice wine. I take one sip and smile as the liquid burns
my throat, runs immediately to my toes and then back up again to my head,
telling it at once to stop. But my new friends are not the stopping kind and
they raise their plastic cups every five minutes for a toast in which I am
expected to join. In half an hour, I am pissed and, unlike with the Lao Lao
in which I partook in Luang Prabang, not feeling that well at all.
Thankfully, it was getting dark and, making the excuse of being a tired
traveller, I gingerly climb the ladder to my bunk and face plant in my
pillow.