Forums > Food & Drink > Blood Cuisine I bet Heavenly Manna has blood in their sweet and sour sauce and their 'russian soup'; it sure tastes of it. In general they probably have blood dishes on the menu given how large it is.
东二Something小餐厅, the next restaurant I'm gonna review on my shabbiness blog, also has blood dishes on the menu (one, at least, and this is know for certain). It's located inside a 小区 directly east of the food street east of Yunda. It's also happen to be Kunming's supreme restaurant in terms of value-for-the-money, so definitely worth a visit.
Makye Ame also used to have basically everything that's weird and animalic, but they recently streamlined their menu and took away some of the really odd items (I think they don't have yak testicle soup anymore, for example), so I dunno if they have blood dishes.
Forums > Food & Drink > Seeking clean restaurants in Yun Da area I agree completely with the previous speaker. Go eat at Shípíng Shāokǎo a few times and you'll be immune to everything except cyanide:
kunmingsshabbiest.blog.se/[...]
That said, you could always pay attention to the Food Safety Grades ratings. Though I have yet to find one single A-rated restaurant in all off Kunming, making me think it's mostly about bribes. (I've made a shortpost about this too, here: kunmingsshabbiest.blog.se/omfg-omfg/ )
Sure, I could maybe recommend some restaurants where I myself have never, to my experience, gotten laduzi or food poisoning. However, since I eat at Shípíng Shāokǎo and the Wenlin muslims, my stomach is probably iron-coated by now, so that might not be too useful advice for you.
Though...I have neverheard any laowai ever who claims to have gotten food posioned/laduzi'd by the canteens of Shida and Yunda, -despite- their food being buffets. Unfortunately these two both have rather horrible food, but at least it's cheap. However, In the dormitory area of Yunda, hidden inside a neighborhood directly east of the bustling food street running west-east from Yunda's east gate, is a great and unbelievably cheap restaurant (with an enormous meny, to boot) that few laowai seem to get sick from. It's called 东二something餐厅something, I'll review it on my blog shortly with more precise directions.
Forums > Living in Kunming > Flat or campus? It depends totally on your budget. If you wanna live really really cheaply the dorms are okay (at least in Yunnan Normal University), and you'll really save an enormous amount of money - no other accomodation anywhere in Kunming will be even nearly as cheap. This is assuming you live in the chinese/asian dorms where you share a room with people, if Yunda has dorms intented for westerners they'll likely be horribly overpriced.
The other options are to either get a room in a flat, or a whole flat for yourself. Small flats are hard to come by in Kunming, so probably sharing an apartment with somebody or renting a room in somebody's apartment are more realistic options (unless you're rich). If you want a cheap, small flat for yourself you'll likely have to live in a shabby neighborhood far from the city center.
Come august, there'll be loads of room and apartment ads here on GoKunming, so finding a place won't be difficult, but most of the rooms/flats on this site are very expensive for what you get; a room in central Kunming really don't need to cost more than 6-800 yuan per month. So be careful with what you chose; it might be better to go here first (cheap hostels and dirt cheap shabby hotels are very easy to find) and then look for a room/an apartment.
Forums > Food & Drink > Tibetan food in Kunming? Makye Ame is not cheap, sure, but certainly not very expensive either. If you avoid the few most expensive dishes, a dinner in Makye Ame'll end up around 60-70 yuan per person, and much less if you don't eat meat. Not that bad for something tagged as 'fine dining'.
Makye Ame's yak meat in nepali spices is the single best dish I've ever had in Kunming, even after more than a year of actively exploring the restaurant scene. It's an absolute must, even now that the yaks in northern Yunnan are sick and eating yak meat might be risky.
Forums > Travel Yunnan > Where to find cheap tents? Me and my friends need a couple of CHEAP tents for a mountain trip next week. Does anybody know where such tents could be lent, bought or rented? We will pass by Dali and Gaoshan in Nujiang on the way to our destination, so it would be possible to pick up tents in any of those places, + Kunming.
The tents would, of course, need to be water repellant, as we're going to hardcore mountains in northern Yunnan.
Thankful for any advice!
Getting Away: Guandu Old Town
Posted byHenri: from the square before the Kunming train station (昆明站), walk east along the road that goes in that direction, past a small bus station on a corner on your left. Soon afterwards, again on your left, will be a small bus stop for a K something bus (maybe K5?), hidden beneath a few trees. One of the stops on the sign will read 官渡古镇. Get on this bus; it's an express bus that's rather comfortable and stops just right outside Guandu Old Town. It'll take forever to get there, but eventually the bus'll pass some archaic-looking gatetowers on the west side of an extremely long and straight road; this is where the Guandu Old Town starts, so get off here. (The speakers will hopefully say 'Guandu guzhen', otherwise, ask the driver).
Getting Away: Ximeng's Wooden Drum Festival
Posted byXimeng is a very nice place, with beautiful scenery and amazing barbequed fish; most of the interesting food is located in stalls just outside the gorgeous but overpriced Longtan park (sneaking in without paying wouldn't be very difficult, though). There is decent restaurants in town as well, but it's true that they're not that special.
However, in the end, I have to say Ximeng isn't really worth your time unless you know locals (with cars) who can take you to the ton of interesting-but-unknown places in the area. There's village festivities, beautiful waterfalls and lakes (for bathing!), Dai buddhist temples, sacrificial grounds, local shamans, musicians and instrument makers, forests with (fake) rock paintings and bisarre and enormous trees, etc, but I would never have found or been able to go to one single of these things without having local friends take me there.
Therefore, I feel that I must actually, and regrettably, discourage people from going to Ximeng, unless you have access to a car and local area knowledge. If you do have these things, however, Ximeng can be amazing, just like many other remote, off-the-beaten-track parts of China.
Mystery man posing as Beijing official in Yunnan
Posted bywell, the cool thing is he doesn't seem to do it for monetary gain, so we're imagining some kind of idealist fuck-the-system-guy here ^_^
Mystery man posing as Beijing official in Yunnan
Posted byWhoever he is, he's awesome.
China considered Myanmar drone strike during manhunt
Posted bywell, the guy might reasonably have been a threat to individuals in China, which makes him no different from the way terrorist are a threat to the US; no terrorist organisation are in any way an even a remotely serious threat to the US as a nation, the only thing they threaten are the lives on individual americans, and that would arguably make this drug lord comparatively dangerous, as he has apparently ordered various large killings and stuff. There is no particularly strong dividing line between terrorists, rebels and large-scale criminal leaders, and one is not necessarily more dangerous to civilians than the other, with terror-like methods being employed even in situations like the drug war raging in Mexico. What I mean by this is that notions like 'drone strikes should be reserved against terrorists' are rather problematic, as there's not always that much separating Al-Qaida from drug cartels, not to mention various insurgencies, whether their cause is perceived as legitimate or not.