We had booked the 3 of us on a tour to Yunnan Province so that we could see a different part of the country.

Kunming

Our first stop was Kunming where only a few weeks earlier some Chinese terrorists had run through the station stabbing people at random. However, security is in place here now and all seemed normal when our plane from Shanghai landed at a fairly new airport and we were whisked off to the Red River Hotel for a couple of nights by our guide Pam.

Kunming is a large prosperous looking modern city in the south west of China. We wandered out to explore the town which like other Chinese cities has wide streets and guesswork traffic  although traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are obeyed by all but e-bikers and cyclists. The e-bikes are horrid at night as they generally don’t used lights to save battery power and are so quiet that they are upon you before realising they are there.  We found a superb restaurant that specialised in local cuisine and good Chinese beer so our evening was more or less taken care of.

Early next morning Pam collected us in the minibus and took us to visit this fascinating Buddhist temple at Qiongzhu, the temple of a thousand monks. The thousand monks are almost life size sculptures which were fashioned by an ancient master craftsman and his apprentices over a period of 7 years. Like the terracotta warriors, each is different as they were modelled on local people at the time. The variety of costume and accoutrements was interesting but the current monks have introduced a no photography rule so no pics. The temple is beautifully preserved with a complex of buildings around it where the monks live and where the 1,000 sculptures are housed.

Other wonderful sculptures were in abundance and colour, especially Buddhist yellows, reds and gold gleamed everywhere scented by the subtle planting of trees and shrubs.

There were few people here and it would have been a pleasant place to sit amongst the blossoms and the soothing music to while away a few hours as these old boys were doing.

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We drove on into a local village with an intriguing restaurant where we had lunch; this was very different. We have been in several restaurants where live fish, crabs and lobsters are chosen but Kaiya’s Kitchen had all its produce on open shelves as you walked in with bamboo baskets ready for your selection to be delivered to the kitchen and cooked however you wished. The array of produce was unusual, just as in the markets if it isn’t a fruit or vegetable, beef or port then it is probably live. In this case the live section included a variety of snails, caterpillars or grubs of various kinds and large grasshoppers or crickets. There were also frogs legs on the menu but we didn’t see any frogs.

These little squirmers look like silk worms but we couldn’t establish what they were.

Grasshoppers or crickets? We have seen locusts on other menus but these look too small.

These veggies were delicious, we established that they grow in water but are not the same as water chestnuts.

Our lunch, which didn’t include any live things other than sea food, was just perfect.

One of the oddest things about this restaurant out in semi-rural China was that we met another English couple whose son is at Leeds University, exactly where Hattie is doing her Masters course. Small world indeed.

For the rest of the day we were taken close by in the countryside to the “Stone Forest”, an area of impressive karst pillars …. a sort of limestone pavement on steroids.

Like other major attractions in China there are few foreign tourists….but lots of Chinese. As always everything is very well organised and managed. For instance cars are not allowed close to the main park but electric vehicles deliver you to the pathways. Fortunately our guide knew where the quieter areas were.

As in many places we visit with Peter, he became a celebrity because of his height and people often mistake him for tennis player Andy Murray. Lots of people ask to have their photograph taken with him.

Chris and Peter with our excellent guide Pam.

Chris and Lorraine

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