I've read the new airport will open soon. I'm due to go home in July. Should I wait until the airport opens before I buy my ticket home, in the hope that there are direct connections with Europe? Or is it safer to bet on a flight over Beijing to Belgium first?
Or: when airports open, do they typically already have agreements with major flight organisations ready so I can fly the very day it opens?
That looks good. You have tried them, I take it? I'll give it a shot this or next week.
I recently heard that Kunming counts over 10,000 Vietnamese nationals. Why oh why isn't there a single Vietnamese restaurant (run by Vietnamese and true to the Vietnamese kitchen) to be found in Kunming?
I'm seriously craving some Pho, Nems, Com Rang and Ca Phe Da. There is a place near Baita Lu on Dongfeng Xiang that does good rice flour wraps but they're not what they were in VN.
Vintage Cafe has real VN coffee but they are not able to serve it iced. There seems to be more to it than just adding ice bits.
I read somewhere the man paid for sex and was subsequently set up. There, another spoke to the rumor mill and another incentive to shut up until you know what exactly happened.
On another note: racism is innate, natural and there is nothing wrong with it as long as you do not disadvantage the other person. In the west we have become obsessed with (being against) racism, this does not seem to be such an issue in China.
Live and let live and do justice to those who deserve it.
Maybe an odd question. I used to be a devout gamer but have since had better things to do and not been in possession of a computer that can handle high-end games. However, recently my old love flared up again and I've been dying to play some of my favourites: Team Fortress 2, Civilisation, Starcraft 2 ...
I have a very portable Thinkpad X200 which is unfortunately not powerful enough to meet today's games' graphics demands.
Now I don't want to spend a couple of thousand on a laptop that can handle those games. It's way too casual to justify such expenses.
Neither do I want to go to internet cafés here because I don't feel at ease when the time and the money are ticking away. Moreover, most of those cafés don't accept foreigners, the games are in chinese, and the settings are not customised to my needs.
I've tried OnLive, a service that streams games over the internet to your PC. It means you can play any game without having special hardware. That worked fine in Belgium over a 20Mbit connection but the 4Mbit connections in China are lacking and the GFW probably puts in its share of the lag too.
Does anyone know of a service like OnLive or any other way to casually play some high-end games?
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First and last experience. Absolutely horrible. I came in late with a big flesh wound. The doctor sewed it up and told me to come back in the morning "perhaps to redo it, and to change the bandage". When I did come back the next morning, they just changed the bandage and sent me off.
When I peeked at my own wound, I noticed it was horribly done. "Like a vet did the stitches," as someone commented. I then had to stay a night in a different hospital in order to do it right, with a 40% chance of getting infections. This cost me a lot more, thanks to Richland fucking up in the beginning.
Whatever X-rays were taken were not printed out and given to me so I couldn't go to another hospital for a second opinion or treatment.
The nurses didn't seem to know where half the things were and the doctors had to repeat orders to get basic things like scissors.
In the next hospital, it was noticed that I had fractured my jaw in two places. On the five X-Rays taken at Richland, they did not notice the fractures.
Pretty sure these people are not actual doctors and are therefore criminal.
Super place. Really cool interior, lots of good beers and drinks, fun toilet inside the telephone booth, and an interesting clientele.
Cons: pretty hard to find, no matching glasses for the imported beers, and home brews need some work.
Teaching and support lamentable.
Four people signed up for the highest-level class and got a teacher who does all the talking, refers to herself as 老师 and makes classes absolutely uninteresting. As of this moment, only 1 person is still going on a regular basis.
While staff is friendly, they are absolutely incapable to help out with visa matters in an adequate way. Lack of information beforehand, lack of support and lack of information during the visa process meant that I am waiting forever for my residence permit to be processed, without any information about why it's taking so long, why they can't get started ... I'd say this school is a good option if all you wanted is a visa, but they can't even handle this properly.
Anyone giving this school a 5-star rating hasn't been to any decently-run schools in Kunming, such as Keats'. The only redeeming quality is facilities and space, those are indeed excellent.
Have been studying at Keats for almost four semesters now and I'm very enthusiastic about the quality of the teachers and the commitment of the school's staff.
One point of criticism is that I think they could put in some effort to group people of the same level together, rather than base it on who was together in last semester's class.
I stayed here in the early days of March 2013. Dave and his wife are swell owners, the staff attentive, the food good, rooms in perfect order, WiFi fast enough... Much like the old hump, the entire place is an excellent place to relax and make friends. And that is what you come to do in Dali, after all. The location is a bit isolated from the old town, but nothing is really far away in Dali. Besides, it makes for a better starting point to walk up Cangshan.
Yunnan GDP third fastest-growing in China
发布者Peter99, stay off the drugs man. Indeed, a fast growing economy is not necessarily a healthy one (which is why countries sometimes try to put water on the fire). The article doesn't claim that it is, either. Of course, stable economic growth relies on small and medium-sized enterprises rather than on big business. But big business does contribute to the GDP, hence the impressive figures.
Getting a fast growing economy and high GDP only requires one thing: cheap resources. In Australia's case it's natural resources in the mines of WA, in China it's cheap labour and badly protected worker rights. So it's actually a symptom of the sickness of this country: the income gap, as Alien suggested above, is ever increasing and that's just a recipe for instability.
China's leaders are nicely putting their cash on Caribbean accounts (The Guardian today), for when this can of nitro-glycerine blows.
Myanmar to Tibet: Hiking the Dulong, part II
发布者Unfortunately we have not a lot of information on this walk; but there are people who do, such as A Luo (in Bingzhongluo). All we know is that you need to know the trails very well, that you'll have to camp or stay in shelters (no real villages) and we can estimate that it'll be a two to three-day walk.
Mountains are _very_ steep so if you end up on the wrong trail you may have to turn back unless you want to risk your life. It'd be an interesting thing to do if you have a tent, time and a GPS.
Yunnan's Stone Treasure: Shibao Mountain
发布者I'm with flengs on this one. I guided a tour group there last year. Even though I'd prepared, I was able to lead the way but not to explain beyond the very basics the worth and significance of these grottoes and treasures.
If you want to understand what it's all about, what the things you see mean, then you need a guide or at least a fair amount of insight in the history of Buddhism.
If you just want to see a bit of nature and snap pictures of some temples and relics you don't understand or don't care to understand: go ahead, you don't need a guide.
Changshui once again closed by fog
发布者I inquired a bit the last time I was held up by fog. It was a clear and bright day in Kunming. Turns out the fog was at my destination airport of - waitforit - Beijing. I inquired a bit further. Turns out 80% of Chinese airspace is reserved for military use. That means that when there's difficult weather conditions in those small corridors, planes have no way around it.
Myanmar to Tibet: Hiking the Dulong, part II
发布者We didn't see any live monkeys but for the one having a good time counting his legs near the Myanmar border (see part one). I think they're mostly shy outside of parks where tourists give them food or an opportunity to steal. Sneaking up the hills in the northern section, you may catch some snub-nosed monkeys.