User profile: blobbles

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > get from Hekou to Kunming

Just did the Hekou visa run, thought I would update this thread as it (and others) are a bit old and out of date. Vietnam visa picked up at the consulate 2 blocks north of the train station. 385 kuai for 3 day service if you have a passport photo, 395 if no passport photo. You have to pick up 3 days later at 5-5:30pm. Not sure what will happen if you show up early/don't show but you get the idea. Easy to get and the staff speak English/Chinese/Vietnamese.

Bus leaves from East bus station. You can take some buses to get there, I couldn't figure out which one so caught a taxi from the north for 30 kuai. Bus ticket easy to get - took 8 hours to get there with a stop for lunch at a dirtbag town somewhere. I recommend taking some fruit with you for lunch as the dirtbag town has a monopoly on crappy food. You can also buy a drink there and you won't get ripped off much. About 50km from Hekou there is a police checkpoint where everyone has to show their passport/ID card. They will take your passport off the bus in order to write down your particulars so don't worry. They do the same on the way back to Kunming.

Arrive in Hekou the situations a little different. The bus dropped us off seemingly in the middle of a road with a bunch of taxis waiting to take us to the border. With 2 other passengers in 1 taxi it cost 10 kuai each for about a 3km ride (a rather big rip off, so beware those on a budget). The border crossing on both sides is straightforward. Watch for people trying to rip you off on the Lao Gai side, they are insistent and highly annoying. They will try to steal your things (the hat I was wearing in my case) and will ask for spare change and be generally annoying. At this point you can turn around and come back in or go on to Sapa/Hanoi for a few days, whatever.

Back into China and interestingly all the Entry/Departure cards on the Chinese sides had the Departure section removed. Not sure why or if this will cause me issues when I try to leave next.

Coming back into China from Vietnam a whole stack of motorbike dudes are waiting to take you for 20 kuai to the long distance bus station. Bargain one down to at least 15 kuai because its definitely not worth it for the distance and the danger (no helmets, a bit mad the riders on quite powerful bikes). The long distance bus station in Hekou is pretty new and quiet. Easy to get the ticket to Kunming and again is 8 hours back to the East bus station with the stop in the fleabag town. The buses are fairly comfortable and will stop on the side of the road if you need to pee (or more likely if 2 or 3 of you need to pee). Advise getting some yummy tropical fruit for the trip back to Kunming on the China side (much less likely to be ridiculously ripped off) from the Hekou township before heading to the long distance bus station as they only have those bad Chinese snacks for sale at the station.

The buses during the day are fairly comfortable and you go through some pretty nice areas (Shilin, a pretty gorge half an hour north of Hekou). Also they will play 2 or 3 movies of varying quality during the trip on screens above the aisles. They seem to be fairly concious of when a laowai is onboard and played movies with english/chinese subtitles only and even the recent Prince of Persia, when I went. Actually its quite a comfortable trip and I recommend it especially if you spend a couple of days in Sapa and need your double entry visa renewed. You could easily do the trip in 2 comfortable days staying overnight in Vietnam/China depending on your preference.

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Forums > Food & Drink > Bread in Kunming

There is going to be a royal rumble of all bread makers in Kunming.

First up is French cafe wielding dual bagguettes. They have good reach and once opened, quite sharp edges. Their snarky waitresses form the vanguard of their attack spitting looks as dangerous as their bread strikes (i.e. not as bad as everyone says). Slice of heaven will come into play with some slightly denser breads, hollowed in the middle and worn like boxing gloves. Barbara is quite a formidable opponent, she might look like your mum, well she hits like her too. Yonder we see the Chinese entrants, there are many of them, but prefer to keep their distance from the stronger bread of the westerners. They will be throwing their bread slices from afar, hoping to blind their enemies with sugary crumbs, we don't give them much of a chance.

Wait! In walks Omgiri and Jia Jia from As you like. Their bread is stone ground, but for the fight they have left some grinding stones in their bread. This might get ugly as they fight in a pair watching each others back and the edges of the baking slices on their bread are razor sharp and capable of being thrown.

But wait, the Germans. Their bread is thick, dense and so heavy they can barely lift it above their head. Rainer has made a special batch for the fight, with a hole clear through the middle. Enlisting help from fellow German compatriots at Metro, into these holes will be slid Metro baguettes. The result is wicked looking bagguette hammers. However the weight of the hammer head may prove to be the baguettes downfall as it may be crushed under such German engineering.

Who will win? You can find out when the rumble begins tomorrow night, 2am on Wenlin Street. Live footage will be streamed to O'Riellys so we can watch the glutenny carnage with a beer in hand.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Google Earth blocked?

I think my observation is not completely unfounded and it isn't exactly a dramatic conspiracy theory. Think about it, currently probably the biggest sites that could contribute to Chinese insecurity are western news sites which are almost always bashing Chinas human rights abuses (while often ignoring very similar things in their own backyard). I do realise these are occasionally blocked, but mostly they are free to access.

While the main western sites which are blocked or unreliable are places like youtube, facebook, google docs/map/search. Yet all of these sights have their own policies to stop abuse of their sites and will remove content deemed inappropriate - porn, personal attacks, bad language, anything deemed "offensive content". Hell, try to post on Facebook that you are going to kill the US president and see how long that remains live... there was a story a while back about a guy who was not allowed into the US because he said he was going to "tear up" the US... meaning "party hard" but it was interpreted as a terrorist plot by the CIA... that is clearly government control of these services.

China in turn has a massive internet user base which if their clicks were "given" to western corporations would enrich western (mostly American) companies - essentially sending money out of the country. If the Chinese government was really serious about these sites, they would close down and not allow similar sites in China. But we see weibo, QQ, soku, baidu, etc operating pretty freely.

Why is that if only to keep the millions generated from the advertising from billions of clicks a year in the hands of Chinese business? To me it is clearly a type of protectionism, the same as Frances Common Agricultural Policy or the US passed to use American steel in its big infrastructure projects. I think it is less likely to be someone "screwing up" as they have had rather a long time to sort out the GFC - it should be quite a mature IT system and be fairly good at testing its own blocking services. A more likely scenario to me is that someone wants these western websites to appear to be "unreliable" to customers which will mean they will convert to using the equivalent Chinese provided service.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Google Earth blocked?

Got the same problem here for a lot of foreign sights and I aren't in a school, a home based connection. Hotmail, cannot connect. www.stuff.co.nz cannot connect. yahoo.com cannot connect.

I guess since GoKunming is hosted in HK its not quite a foreign site...

I do wonder if the GFC is not used just to "ensure harmony and stability in Chinese society" but as a type of protectionism against foreign based internet firms. Weibo and QQ are virtually indistinguishable from Facebook and I bet Facebook (who don't have a "don't be evil" motto) would quite willingly enter China and give authorities access to block users accounts if it meant more $$$. These are Chinese business that profit from the blocking of foreign sites. The same can be said for their mapping sites, baidu, email sites etc etc etc.

Who wins when GFC blocks foreign sites? Chinese businesses...

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When I saw the preview for this I thought "This has a 90% chance of being unwatchable". Now that it's been sent back for re-editing by (likely) the Chinese government, I revise my estimate to 99%.

Think you will find the Wifi is local to the train (travelling with the train) and if implemented may or may not allow internet connections. Wifi is different to mobile internet (GPRS/2G/3G etc) laotou, conflating the two is inappropriate.

Theoretically they could provide local Wifi which is only local, but could connect to an on train server which allows movies to be watched through the server, much like a plane but each connected device becomes a screen like on the back of long haul flights.

If they were to also provide internet they would likely need to run another cable along the train line with some pretty high tech devices to detect the signal. Alternatively (easier) is to use the power line itself as a medium to also transfer data. On board internet though is difficult and expensive to set up/maintain, my guess is it will never happen.

I have been in a few bike and running races with Chinese people before, I know exactly what you mean about them not racing smart! Funny because they also have the rabbit/tortoise story as one of their common idioms...

Reviews

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Wow, just wow. Possibly the best Chinese food I have had in Kunming. And in one of the nicest, traditional courtyard style restaurant I have been in. A woman dressed in traditional qi pao playing a gu zheng just adds to it.

We had okra, mushroom soup, dried beef and chou dofu. All top notch with the bill coming in at just over 250 kuai. But we could have fed 3 people for that so not too bad at about 80-90 kuai each. Not the cheapest but for the quality, it's damn good.

If you have people visiting and want to take them to a traditional Chinese style restaurant with Yunnan style food, or want a romantic night out with a gal, you can't go wrong here. Close to Green Lake (down a little alley) for a romantic walk... Just perfect.

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Pretty good place for getting all your documents translated and/or notarised. Note that there are a number of notaries in the building which you can find by going up the stairs (the elevators are impossible). But you have to find the stairs to do so... go in the door, head over to the right, go up the big wide stairs which head up a floor, turn right then right again into the elevator area and right again into the stairwells. Whew!

One point off for the elevators never being available and having to hike 7-9 flights of stairs (not good if you have to go 3-4 times a day like I often did!)

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This does not stop at the Jinanya hotel at Da Shang Hui as the flyers state (and is on the images tab here). They need to have another stop in the same area or else they are missing out on covering a big chunk of the city.

You can take another bus, the 919C, I believe, if you are nearby Da Shang Hui, which leaves from the bus station on HeHong Lu, nearby the Qianxing road intersection. This bus goes every hour and is white, found at the western end of the station. It is operated by a different company and takes about 1 hour 10 minutes to get to the airport due to a large number of stops especially near the airport.

Great bus though if you can catch it!

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Friendly people, even got to the talk to the vice consulate, who told me she had done a stint in Malaysia's Siberian Consulate!

English is spoken by some of the Chinese girls working at the desk who are pleasant to deal with. I assume they do Visa's as well but I wasn't here for a visa, this time!