Noodles and Absolut

Yet another overnight train down to Kunming in Yunnan province. More beers, more cards but the novelty of sleeper trains has definitely worn off. Particularly when you're woken at 7am by some Chinese dude giving a rasping hawk and gobbing into the bin in your cabin! Hawking and spitting is an ever-present in China but it doesn't matter how much you hear/see it, it doesn't get any better.

Anyway, Kunming is an intermediate stop before getting into some of the prettier, more traditional Chinese towns and villages in southern China. Everyone was starving by the time we arrived at 2pm, so tour leader David took us to a local restaurant for cross-the-bridge noodles - you get a big bowl of boiling chicken soup and then raw noodles, meat and veg, stick it all together, and get busy with your chopsticks. It was pretty good. But then we had 5 new members join the tour today so did the sociable thing and went for a group meal about 4 hours later. David took us to a different place and we told him we just wanted something light, so he rabbited away at the waitress in Mandarin and what should turn up 5 minutes later but exactly the same dish we were still digesting. You can have too much of a good thing. There was also some weird performance going on while we were eating which appeared to consist of Chinese people dressing in different world costumes (cowboy, Mexican etc.) and singing badly. So we repaired to a nearby bar and got stuck into a bottle of Absolut vodka. Everything seemed much better then.

written by

phileasdogg on November 3, 2008 from Kunming, China

from the travel blog: Planes, Trains & Taxiwallahs

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