Unless you feel like splashing out 155.000 kuai for your two kids for the first year at KIA your better choice would probably be to find a regular quality Chinese non-Christian school. 155.000 kuai can buy you an AWFUL lot of private tutoring and language training considering that you can hire a Chinese person with qualifications full time 60 hours a week for 2000 a month. Throw them both into a regular Chinese school and they'll probably be close to fluent after a year.
I went to Mangshi for the Water Splashing Festival and it was indeed very funny as well as interesting. I went to Xishuangbanna a few months ago so this time I opted to see the festival in Western Yunnan instead.
Mangshi during the festival had only a bit of the Jinghong tourist feel I don't particularly like. I'd avoid Jinghong like the plague but I might go back to Mangshi some day. The city is nice and spacy and has the distinct South East Asia feel that the Dai people brings to certain Yunnan cities.
The festival as some of you know ofcourse takes place in a big central square and my guesstimate is that there were 15-20.000 people dancing and throwing water around. It was great fun although we all quickly ran low on accesible water. In the whole city you can not go out without being completely soaked between 12 am and 6 so cell phones and cameras had to be left in the hotel. The fire dancing in the evening was also a barrel of fun,, especially for the locals since I apparantly was the only laowai there who attempted to move around in something that was meant to be dance.
Mangshi without the Water Splashing Festival might not be worth the trip for the city alone though.
I went there on Tomb sweeping day and it was a pleasent surprise. I don't think many of the expats have been there and it's a shame really. The ticket price of 100 kuai is a bit steep,, especially since people born in Yunnan can get in for 30 but you can get legit tickets from the private vendors just outside the entrance for 80 kuai if you feel like haggling. Bus 69 goes there and it is only a 15 min ride from Ren Min Zhong Lu. Line 71 also.
The area is pretty huge and you can easily spend a full day there. The best part was the province gardens area the worst was this touristy feeling you usually don't get in Kunming. It felt like being back in Beijing when someone wanted 120 kuai for a pair of crappy sunglasses. They have a circus performance 2 or 3 times a day and it was ok but apart from that I wouldn't recommend bringing your kids there. After the novelty of the place have worn off they'll be bored to bits.
Nice area for a day out with the girlfriend since Kunming definately is lacking in the romantic-places-to-go department.
"Kunming has been awarded the honour of hosting the prologue for the Tour de France 2010 in a close contest with Barcelona in Spain and Berlin. Mayor of Kunming Yang Rui was extremely happy yesterday when the announcement was made. "We have been fighting hard to get Tour de France to Kunming for some time now and with the financial backing of the HongHe group we finally achieved our goal. This will help to promote Kunming globally as the financial and logistical hub of Southwestern China".
The prologue which will be held on the 21st of Juli will start in Anning, go along the outskirts of Kunming with a small detour to Dian lake before the teams will turn on to Ren Min Lu and finish in Kundu Nightmarket outside of Sohu.
Due to his long commitment to cycling Friedhelm Goering of The Hump bar was in the organizing commitee of the Kunming Tour de France 2010 group. "I am over ze moon today" the jolly German said in a comment to our reporter. "Now we will do our best to organize a team that can take part in ze 2010 race. Arun and I have already started preparations and we intend to recruit at least 7 more riders amongst our regulars and business associates."
Maybe I am missing something obvious but I can't seem to find Tengchong airport on any flight search engine. Baoshan seems reasonably close but it would still take a long busride to get from there to Tengchong. Is the new airport there open yet and if so, does anyone know which airlines fly to there from Kunming? I read somewhere that China Eastern is operating on that route but at their website there is no mentioning of Tengchong at all.
I assume this test only involved a very limited amount of traffic since the North-South traffic in Kunming today was worse than imaginable. Cool that the IMAX is ready to go. They are awesome.
I've had a phone stolen in 61 myself. Kinda had me reconsider my previous stand on people beating up thieves. I don't know how to spot all the kinds of thieves but I am getting better at it. The more pro kind usually work in pairs. They are probably somewhere between 18 and 25 yo and never wear a bag. They usually try to blend in with darkish casual clothes. Be aware if you see two guys waiting for the bus who clearly know eachother but when they enter one goes to the back and the other stays at the front.
I'd love to see you punch one of those guys if you detect them but the Chinese say that most of them carry knives so it might be better to play it cool. Anyway you never know if the thief has a partner in the bus who is prepared to help him (the main reason he is there is to create confusion and loudly vouch for a detected partner in crime - just enough to have time for the bus to reach the next stop).
Another kind my gf has encountered a couple of times is the single elderly man or woman with one arm covered by a jacket. They'll move close to you and try to fish something out of your bag or pockets with the hidden hand, pretending to have bumped into you by mistake if discovered.
Although the way the chengguan are going about their business can sometimes be questionable they actually have important work to do. Who are we to say that there should be no regulations for streetvendors and snacksellers and no reinforcement of the law? There are hundreds -if not thousands- of streets in Kunming designated for late night street food but one of the problems is that the popular streets get filled up completely and no cars (and hence no emergency vehicles) can pass. That's not even mentioning the "quality" of the food that the amount of competition just keeps lowering.
We all know that a law not enforced here in China is no law at all so lets get a more qualified and well trained cheng guan to get things rolling.
"While in Yao'an, Hu inspected rubble from this month's earthquake. Hu agreed that it was in fact rubble thereby ending a week long standoff between rubble supporters and rubble deniers in the area."
They have recently tightened up the rules for in which hotels foreigners can stay as well. I actually ran into a psb officer at one of the hotels I tried to book at. He said the tightening of procedures were to protect us mentioning Xinjiang and Uighurs and stuff like that.
Went there yesterday and it totally made my week. Nice decor and friendly staff and a real salad bar. Sadly we both wanted mexican food so I can't really say much about their other courses. The food was great but just a tad spicier would have improved the dish. The best thing was that we almost had the place to ourselves and we could have a quiet conversation without shouting, spitting Chinese people in the background. I realised how much I had missed that since coming here.
We went to Chicago Coffee a couple of days ago and it was a nice experience. The place is cozy with soft comfy chairs (I realized how much I have missed one since coming here) and they have a nice little collection of English language books in the corner consisting mainly of classics and travel litterature. I was looking forward to trying their advertized tortilla bar but it wasn't up and running that evening.
Instead we went for 2 12 inch pizzas -roast chicken and pepperoni- but we quickly realized that 1 would have been enough. Those things are heavy. I am mainly into Italian style pizza but Chicago's double layered pizzas are well worth a try. Their coffee seems to be a bit on the expensive side but people say good things about it and they have got a nice selection. I wouldn't mind dropping by again some day,, hopefully when they've got the tortilla thing going. English speaking staff btw.
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Yunnan news roundup
发布者I assume this test only involved a very limited amount of traffic since the North-South traffic in Kunming today was worse than imaginable. Cool that the IMAX is ready to go. They are awesome.
Yunnan news roundup
发布者260 yuan?! Ridiculous.
I've had a phone stolen in 61 myself. Kinda had me reconsider my previous stand on people beating up thieves. I don't know how to spot all the kinds of thieves but I am getting better at it. The more pro kind usually work in pairs. They are probably somewhere between 18 and 25 yo and never wear a bag. They usually try to blend in with darkish casual clothes. Be aware if you see two guys waiting for the bus who clearly know eachother but when they enter one goes to the back and the other stays at the front.
I'd love to see you punch one of those guys if you detect them but the Chinese say that most of them carry knives so it might be better to play it cool. Anyway you never know if the thief has a partner in the bus who is prepared to help him (the main reason he is there is to create confusion and loudly vouch for a detected partner in crime - just enough to have time for the bus to reach the next stop).
Another kind my gf has encountered a couple of times is the single elderly man or woman with one arm covered by a jacket. They'll move close to you and try to fish something out of your bag or pockets with the hidden hand, pretending to have bumped into you by mistake if discovered.
Kunming's chengguan suffering image problems
发布者Although the way the chengguan are going about their business can sometimes be questionable they actually have important work to do. Who are we to say that there should be no regulations for streetvendors and snacksellers and no reinforcement of the law? There are hundreds -if not thousands- of streets in Kunming designated for late night street food but one of the problems is that the popular streets get filled up completely and no cars (and hence no emergency vehicles) can pass. That's not even mentioning the "quality" of the food that the amount of competition just keeps lowering.
We all know that a law not enforced here in China is no law at all so lets get a more qualified and well trained cheng guan to get things rolling.
Hu visits Yunnan stressing importance of ethnic unity
发布者"While in Yao'an, Hu inspected rubble from this month's earthquake. Hu agreed that it was in fact rubble thereby ending a week long standoff between rubble supporters and rubble deniers in the area."
Kunming warily hosting postponed academic conference
发布者They have recently tightened up the rules for in which hotels foreigners can stay as well. I actually ran into a psb officer at one of the hotels I tried to book at. He said the tightening of procedures were to protect us mentioning Xinjiang and Uighurs and stuff like that.