Welcome to Kunming Karina :)
Both restaurants and western groceries. For instance, 30rmb gets you butter at C4, a pasta dish at a western cafe, or one foreign beer. Or for 7rmb you can eat a bowl of local rice noodles or buy enough vegetables for a day.
Your package should allow you to live a decent life in Kunming. The difficult part will be saving money for traveling around Yunnan and China.
Sounds to me very much like restaurants. You can make some fine western dishes if you buy your ingredients and cook yourself. I mean vegetables are bloody cheap here: you can buy a kg bell peppers for less than a dollar. Don't see that happen in ANY western country. (In Los Angeles it was last year 1.29 dollar for 1 misserable bell pepper!)
Only thing more expensive is cornflakes here :(
On a side note, definitely do some small private teaching if you want to save up before going home (where food is probably expensive) or want to travel for a longer period of time.
Is it that expensive to travel around ? I can't really figure out how.
I am the backpacker style, going on cheap hostel and avoiding too touristic stuffs.
The train didn't seem that expensive to me, so accomodations are the problem ?
Anyway thank you all for your kind answers !
it is what they can get away with, first of all, why would they hire a non native speaker to travel this far to teach? (I assume you teach English".). when they can easily find native or non native english teachers here?, I also assume you are Caucasian which is good enough for the school to sell the "face" to students and parents..regarding the pay, it is low yes, but you accepted it, think of it this way, the low end pay here for english teachers in kunming is 100 an hour, you are paid about 50 an hour but you do get a package, so it may break even, but still not worth it in my opinion, I prefer hard cold cash myself. my advice is to work secretly somewhere else in your spare time and make 100 plus an hour on the side....you can easily make 10 grant a month....
@culture : I am not going to teach English, I will be a lecturer in university teaching my mother tongue, French.
It is actually almost impossible for a non-native speaker to teach English in Asia, because as you said, they already have a lot of people able to fill the position on site.
I assume as well that English teacher are paid more than the others. I think that is one of the reason why my salary will be that low.
I actually kind of freak out when I saw the other threads on this forum, but I realized after that most of you guys are talking about English teacher position, which usually make quite a difference in salary.
As for the tutoring, I was wondering how much I can ask per hour ? So it's about 100 RMB ? It is not legal right ?
It's still affordable to travel, it's just with so much to see in just Yunnan alone, you will want to do a lot of it! Add to that, the rest of China (and it's a huge country). Also, getting around isn't as cheap as before. You can't always take the train as it's sold out more and quicker now. Same for hostels. They raise prices during festivals or high season. Entrance tickets go up every year and new entrance fees sprout up all the time. So whatever Lonely Planet told you is out of date. It all adds up, but mostly it's the amount of traveling you will want to do.
Night-train to Chengdu with bed (takes 24hours): about 250 yuan one way.
Plane tickets can be same price as the train if you book at the right time.
There are busses (like Eurolines / Greyhound) traveling everywhere and anywhere :)
Decent (backpackers) hotel in Chengdu: 110 a night, can also be less or half price but don't expect luxury and too clean.
Went to Xishuangbanna recently (not Chinese New Year), brand new hotel: 100 yuan per night with great luxury.
Travelling around to the tourist spots and main towns and cities.
There will be lots of long distance busses and they they are cheap and easy to access. For busses you will need to be able to buy a ticket in Chinese, or have a friend who can, many bus tickets are not pre-sold. Alternatively get a travel agent involved and pay a bit extra.
A bus from Kunming to Dali (4 hours) was about 70rmb.
Accom in the small cities can be much cheaper. Some of the hostels here are dearer than the hotels and guest houses. Especially in Kunming. In May this year we were still finding rooms in Dali for 50/day. And nice places with a view for 60-80/day.
A tip, go to restaurants, beer will cost you 8-12/bt., instead of 30 in a bar. You can spend the difference on the meal, and sit outside and watch the world go by.
If you live the backpacker lifestyle and cook for yourself, food here is relatively cheap compared to Europe.
If you live in the Yunda/121 Da Jie area, you are close to the bar area of Wenlin Jie. Around there is Paul's Shop. You can find most of your imported foods there, we all need home food occasionally.
Teaching. Once you are in country, it will be easier to find work. Although the demand for French is still low, so is the supply of teachers. If you can pick up private tutoring 100rmb/hr is not unreasonable.
karina, french teaching should get paid as much as English if not more in my opinion, so yes I would say get paid for at least 100 an hour on the side, however, I am not sure if you are able to find lots of students learning french and judging by your english writing it seems like you are capable of teaching english, but depends on if you have a heavy accent or not. again charge at least 100 yuan to tutor students, and then you will have enough to go around to travel, and eat in macdonald or pizza hut all you like.
I teach French to a few adults, so you should be able to find French language students for that price. Plus Kunming has a lot of people and you are only one person, so finding enough students to fill up your schedule is possible.
