Deep South

I've left Chengdu and just arrived in Kunming. Unfortunately, before I left Chengdu I lost my camera. I either got pick-pocketed, or my camera fell out of my pocket while I was in the taxi. Or I was pick-pocketed by the taxi driver, haha. Anyway, the Chengdu tourism office called all the taxi companies for me, but said they had no luck. I'm pretty sure it's gone forever. That's life I guess. Unfortunately, this means that all the pictures I took for the last 1-2 weeks are gone. I wish I still had the pictures from the village in the Sichuan earthquake zone.

Anyway, the train from Chengdu to Kunming had some AMAZING views. I love taking the sleeper trains. Besides cheap transportation, you get a place to stay for the night and some incredible views of the countryside, small villages, mountains, farms, etc. You also get to hang out with some interesting people. An African man and his Chinese wife sat close to me with their three bi-racial children. They had immigrated to America, but were currently travelling in China with their kids. The three kids spoke a mix of American English and Mandarin. The entire train was staring at their family in disbelief for the first hour or so. I met this other guy who was returning home from college for the summer. We started talking and found out that both of us play guitar. He had a guitar stowed under his bunk on the train so we jammed in between the train cars for a while. We sang “Hotel California” in the middle of the night while everyone else slept. He was a really good guitar player considering he'd only been playing for a year.

I arrived in Kunming today and was surprised by moderate flooding throughout the city. I had a little trouble getting to my youth hostel. Some of the bus routes were altered due to the water on the streets. I finally found a good bus that took me to the hostel. The water was knee to waste high on one street, and the bus driver just plowed through it for a couple blocks. It was awesome. Everyone on the bus was laughing or taking pictures. This afternoon I walked around downtown and visited a couple mosques. Kunming has a sizable Muslim population. One mosque had a really inexpensive restaurant at the bottom. I completely stuffed myself for 5 RMB (less than a dollar)! It is interesting to see so many Chinese Muslims.