The road is not much faster than the train, taking around five hours. There is not much difference going via Chuxiong or Lufeng, the Lufeng road is a bit shorter, but then it is a little slower.
Technically, the fastest way would be to take a bus from Heijing to Guangtong 广通 to catch the 14:29 train to Kunming, which gets there in just over one hour.
I think for the expensive hotels, like Green Lake, it is worthwhile to check out something like ctrip for online bookings. You can get the Green Lake Hotel for about Y800 (depending on season) which fits into your original budget. For some reason I have never stayed at the GLH, but the location is hard to beat.
There is a car hire agency who supply cars with and without driver near Xiaoximen, which I have used in the past and the prices were what I would consider reasonable and the cars are good. Their phone number is 138 8885 9900.
But Yuanyang is a long way to go (both in distance and driving time), so you have to keep that in mind when you try to negotiate the price, plus you will have to pay for the drivers accommodation. I would assume somewhere in the Y2500 range not so unreasonable for what you are suggesting.
Hiring a car in Yuanyang itself is easy, local drivers there know the area and are better able to guide you to the right spots at the right time.
Try Dali. I have had my visa there renewed next working day and some have reported that you can get it same day.
I have never had any luck getting a visa renewed any faster than five working days here in Kunming — and since it is now weekend and May Day holiday coming up, you would be lucky to see your passport again before May 4th.
I have in the past renewed a double entry visa here in Kunming, but you will lose your second entry and will just get the usual extra 30 days.
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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.