User profile: Alien

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Flying the frugal skies

Thing to do is to return to the idea of TRAVEL, not waste time and money on so much teleportation, avoid 95% of air travel, save natural resources, see something of the world as she is on the ground where real people live, pollute the air less, etc. You'd be surprised, if you've never tried it, just how much you can learn and experience from traveling and staying off airplanes - the world may be inconvenient, but it's really quite interesting. Take the earplugs out of your ears and get off the music haze too.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Over-Charging Foriegners; Slave Labour

Back to the point: if you were overcharged at either the Wicker Basket or the French Cafe it was a mistake by the staff, not an attempt to rip you off. The price of coffee is what it is because those who own foreign-oriented cafes etc. in Kunming can get it. And yes, staff of such places are usually underpaid, though less underpaid than plenty of other restaurant workers here. Underpayment of staff is a product of competition in private enterprise, which often produces what in the short run appears as 'efficiency'.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Pizza Hut,McD,KFC

What Tommann said. And why would anybody help concentrate the world's wealth in the hands of the people who own McDonald's, KFC, etc.?

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Is it just me, or?

Perhaps some of you folks need to clarify differences between discrimination and racism. Take Brazil - there is prejudice in favor of light skin, but there is a great range of terms to describe skin colors, but no single racial dividing line. In North America, however, people imagine 2 different 'races', and then talk about race mixing, mixed bloods etc.

Recommended: The Race Concept, Michael Banton and Jonathan Harwood, pub. 1975.

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Ocean, you may be right - I recently had similar trouble at the West bus station - as the traffic situation worsens, taxi practices are perhaps changing for the worse.

Justice is an ideal, ultimately probably unattainable. Vengeance might be the best approximation of justice under some social conditions, but they are not the same thing. I find the knee-jerk identification of the two concepts in China (and in many other places) when considering murder to be unfortunate - a product of history, like everything else, and not some moral rule embedded in the structure of the universe. We don't have to pretend we're living in the woods, or under battlefield conditions.

However, I have to admit that the worsening traffic situation has recently led to somewhat of a decline in cabbie-customer relations - waiting in traffic must surely hurt cabbies' incomes, and trying to pry a cab out of the machine rivers that once-pleasant streets have become - where cabbies have to work - certainly doesn't improve the attitude of either fare-payers or drivers.

I have had better experiences with Kunming taxi drivers than with those anywhere else I've ever lived - a few times some driver has screwed up, but I've never been ripped off by a cabbie here, and I have learned a few things sitting in the front seat and chatting with them (have also been bored by the usual repetitive questions & comments concerning foreigners etc.) - I'm not in a position to say that everybody's experiences are good, but it could be you're doing something wrong.

However, taxis are just as damaging to the traffic situation as private cars are - hence the requiem for the period that ended just a few years ago, when buses, bicycles - and cabs when necessary - were more than sufficient to get everybody where they needed to go, reasonably dry, in reasonably good health, and with a reasonable degree of mutual social contact and cooperation.

Reviews

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Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.

As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.

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Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.

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Really good pizza and steaks. The wine machine fuddles me when I'm a bit fuddled, & seems unnecessary. Good folks on both sides of the bar.