Day 2 and 3

Here's what happened the next few days....

After the Super Bowl was over, we went out to find the local climbing gym. It’s located in an old courtyard community and we were really able to spend some time wandering the streets. I have never just walked into those very Chinese neighborhoods. Places that westerners live tend to be modern with modern facilities. There were fruit stalls, butcher stalls, tailors, people playing mahjong. When we finally located the very tiny gym, it was obvious no one was around and when we asked some people if they had any information about when the gym would be open, they replied that it was a Monday. Here's what one of the courtyards looked like. This is traditional Chinese housing... comfortable housing.... us westerners wouldn't make it a day.

We walked to a Yunnan inspired restaurant that was horrible in my opinion- bad service, dingy, not so tasty or fresh like Yunnan food is supposed to taste like. Chase ordered what he thought was beef and he got duck tripe. I ordered eggplant and corn. More on this later…

We made our way back to the park that is by the hotel and sat in the sun and planned out the rest of our vacation. Then we went to the oldest Buddhist temple in Yunnan. And that how Buddhism first came to China, through land and through Yunnan. The temple itself is undergoing huge renovations but as we worked our way back through the courtyards and minor halls, we found ourselves watching an afternoon prayer service, full of monks, Chinese Buddhists, and some tourists. It was a beautiful thing to watch and the chants were similar to Sanskrit chants in their rhythm but of course, not in sounds. Here's a picture of one of the side halls where it shows Siddhartha renouncing his religion, caste, and position as an elite member of society by cutting of his hair. You can see his clothing and embellishments are Indian. And then a picture of him enlightened. That's great art and I really appreciated it for a few minutes.

In the morning the next day my stomach was waging a war and I knew something was up. I didn’t want to make a big fuss about it so we went to buy tickets to Dali or Lijiang, where we planned to go next. The train station was a ZOO. Everyone in China will tell you, as a foreigner, avoid the train station during Chinese New Year holidays. And now we know why. Every single family travels back to their hometowns and it’s beyond crowded. There’s just no space to even move and there’s total chaos with people moving around, sitting down, eating, sleeping and they all have 7-8 bags each that are either hoist on their heads/backs or are sitting around. Some of what they carry are gifts from the city for the country folk. One such popular gift we saw was an electric stove top. Just a single top that plugs into the wall, but just think about how that will revolutionize cooking for their family member, grandma, aunt, whom ever, in the countryside.

Chase and I couldn’t secure tickets until the 13th so we opted for going to the Stone Forest which is 60km from Kunming for the day. It took us about 1 hour to find where the minibuses were to take us but by 11am we were on the road.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the Stone Forest which is a beautiful collection of limestone karsts. It was awarded UNESCO National Heritage Site status. The main part of the park is very touristy. The pathways around it are completely cemented and there’s non-native grass growing around the karsts. Chase and I took the route as far away as we could get from them. Then we were in heaven. The breeze was light, the sun shining, and we couldn’t hear the crowds anymore. Chase was like a kid in a candy shop because he wanted to climb all the boulders and get to the tops. I was just enjoying breathing the fresh air and take some shots of him and the scenery. Here's what I think is a great shot. I know you aren't supposed to shoot into the sun (it's bad for your lens) but it was worth it.

And that’s when it hit me. Those of us that live in Austin or have immediate access to the outdoors really take for granted what we have. I can’t remember a day in the last few months at least where I was surrounded by nature and its noises. No cars, trucks, people shouting, firecrackers, they have all become the background noise to my life and even when I practice yoga or meditation in my house, I am always tuning out those noises. How stressful on the nervous system it is to live in the city!

By this time, my food poisoning as it turns out was getting worse. We stopped into a pharmacy at night to finally get some medicine for me.

I had packed a First Aid Kit, but the only item I managed to forget was some Immodium. The pharmacy lady recommended three kinds of medication and it seemed like a lot. Chase inquired about the price because we thought maybe it would be too much. To our surprise it cost only RMB 9.90. That’s less than $1.50 people! The same medicines that you can find in America, you can get here for so much less. For example, not that I think that antibiotics are good to use, but Amoxicillin is an over-the-counter medication! I guess it stems from the fact that 99% of all drugs are manufactured in China.

Anyways, the medicines are working and I do feel better and hope that I will be back to normal by tomorrow. We have a flight to LiJiang which I am excited about.