The satellite image is from Google, but the road data is from OpenStreetMap.org — Google has not been updating their maps for China for years now, as they have no mapping partner in China anymore.
There is a relatively new direct road between Qiubei (the county town a few km from Puzhehei) to Guangnan, which goes through sparsely inhabited karst land, no need to go back to the expressway. That road is just a bit over 100km.
Both busses will arrive sometime the next morning, I would estimate the travel time to be 12-15 hours: about 6-8 hours to Puer (Simao, all expressway), then another 4-5 to Lancang (a smaller road with not much traffic), and another 2 to Menglian (another smaller road, plus the bus might stop in Lancang for breakfast). Sleeper busses sometimes take their time, but you should be there before noon the next day.
If you wanted to travel faster, take a plane to Simao (can be pretty cheap), then a bus from there. If you took a morning flight, you could be in Menglian in the evening.
Menglian is one of the furthest destinations from Kunming and one of the few county towns that does not have a day bus to Kunming, however AFAIK there are two sleeper busses a day from the southern station, one leaving around 3pm, the other around 6pm.
Photos of the time tables from the southern station at www.yunnanexplorer.com/transport/station/kunming-south/
Best to buy tickets in advance from one of the ticket agents in the city center, but if you do not have time for this, just head down to the southern station which is a long way from central Kunming. Should the busses be sold out, you can also travel to Lancang 澜沧 which is only one hour from Menglian and connections are easy.
Jim Goodman, the veteran researcher and writer who was recently featured on GoKM, has just published another book, this time on the people of the Red River area, called "The Terrace Builders: the Hani and their Neighbors in Yunnan's Ailao Mountains".
Available for the Kindle: www.amazon.com/[...]
No results found.
It is rare to find good approximations of western food anywhere in China and their lamb-chops (listed as lamb T-bone steak or so) were the best I have found so far. They came with good fries and the beer was cold. I liked the way that they serve the gloopy 'black-pepper sauce' separately, so one can just skip it. Pleasant and quick service too.
A pleasant modern eatery. The menu claims the chef worked for a large Chinese chain of Thai restaurants, but the Thai aspect of the food is difficult to find.
I gave the 'boneless chicken feet' a miss and had some spicy beef which while not bad was closer to the usual Sichuan fare than anything Thai. A dog under the table quickly lapping up any dropped food complemented the Sichuan experience.
The spring rolls were not bad though and together with a beer the bill came to Y58.
Easiest improvement would be better rice.
Easily the best bread to be found in Yunnan with friendly and efficient service. I have made detours to Dali just to pick up some bread on the way back to Kunming.
Nobel laureate Mo Yan's Yunnan connection
发布者Apology accepted, sometimes in the heat of the moment we do things that we know are not right and regret later.
However, there is a different aspect to this story, which prompted my original comment. Certain countries try to erase unwelcome people from their collective memory. For writers this means: their books never published, their plays not performed, their names not mentioned. In the case of Gao Xingjian the official Chinese response was to deny that he is Chinese and he has become one of those unmentionables: so for the Chinese media, Mo Yan is the first Chinese to receive the Nobel prize for Literature.
I can accept that GoKM tries to avoid anything that is even remotely controversial (even though that is a marked change from the previous owners and GoKM appears to be more Catholic than the pope by even not mentioning Kunming events that are widely reported in the Chinese media, the most recent involving a Fujian official and a Kunming newspaper). But I do draw the line where this policy turns not just into statements that are not true, but that collude in the practice of erasing dissidents from collective memory.
There has been another Chinese writer receiving a major literary award with two more than tenuous connections to Yunnan. Searching for 'Friedenspreis 2012' will give you a few more details.
@Liumingke1234
thank you for accepting the apology on my behalf. I did not know I had an impostor on GoKM.
Nobel laureate Mo Yan's Yunnan connection
发布者Correction: your original page said he is the 'Mo is the first Chinese person to win the Nobel Prize for literature'.
Double checked with the Google cache:
See webcache.googleusercontent.com/[...]
Shame on you, Patrick, for changing the article and pretending you did not.
Nobel laureate Mo Yan's Yunnan connection
发布者... 'as it clearly states in the article's final paragraph'...that you changed after I posted my comment.
The previous version said 'Mo is the first Chinese to win...', no mention of the cop-out 'citizen' in your initial version.
A mistake is one thing, a stupid mistake is another thing, not having the integrity to own up to it is three steps down from that. Shame on you.
Gao Xingjian was born in China, wrote in Chinese, got his book published in Taiwan, wrote about his life in China and everybody understood the award as criticism of contemporary China/Chinese literature.
The guy is French, obviously.
Nobel laureate Mo Yan's Yunnan connection
发布者Gao Xingjian was the first Chinese person to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. China was not pleased about it and tried to ignore it happened.
Is this already too controversial for the new GoKM?
Golden Week: Planes, trains and especially automobiles
发布者Thanks for providing another sanitized view of Yunnan that bears little resemblance to what people say about their 'holidays'. It is also good to 'know' that Yunnan has one of the best road safety records in the world, with (if one would extrapolate) just 150 people dying in traffic accidents over a year in a population of over 40 million.
Most articles by you seem to be just sloppy copy and paste jobs from the internet - essentially collations of unchecked numbers. Sometimes I wonder if you actually live here.