Kunming (Yunnan Province)

I think most people start a tour of China in Beijing or Shanghai. Even our tour company had those cities in their “China Highlights” trip as the first place to start. The Yunnan Province is generally advertised to tourists as a return trip visit. 

But, we started there for two reasons. 

1) Ever since I read “The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane,” I’ve wanted to see visit this area. 

2) On a practical note: we were coming from Kathmandu, so it was just closer. 

Now that the trip is over, I can officially say that the Yunnan Province is by far my favorite. It’s tied with the nearby region of Yangshuo County, but more on that later. 

In Yunnan, we stayed in four cities: Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La. I’ll write about each of those separately.

It was also a packed schedule. 

Day 1 - Kunming

We started the day a little later because we had only checked into our hotel 11:30 pm the night before. A little later is 10 am. 

First stop was Yuanton Temple, a 1200-year-old Buddhist Temple. 

Then we headed to the “Green Lake Park.” In ancient times, this part was called “Nine Dragon Pond.” I really liked this park. It was pretty, and I enjoyed seeing what the people of Kunming do for fun. 

I LOVED the way these flowers were planted.

Tom and the kids joining some older ladies doing a "foot massage" walk.

Then a wacky unicorn train caught Lucy’s attention, so the kids and I hopped on and circled around the park.

 Afterwards, we stopped for lunch. Our tour guide had us look through the glass display case of vegetables and meats to choose what we wanted. We didn’t know many of the items were, so got a lot of help from our guide. We did, however, get the duck since that area is apparently famous for their roast duck. 

Then we drove east for an hour and a half to the Ancient Stone Forest (Naigu Shinlin). The day had already been fascinating and amazing, but this blew all our minds. I could have spent all day wandering these paths. It was absolutely worth the extra drive time to get here. 

We were so tired from the day that we barely ate dinner before we crashed for the night.