User profile: Geogramatt

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Weather around Yunnan

Count on rainstorms, but not necessarily day long ones. Even in the rainy season, the sun will come out at least part of the day. Also look forward to some beautiful valley fog inversions (the so-called "cloud sea" or 云海 effect). Southern Yunnan is subtropical and tropical, but it's still mountainous, and the mountains can create their own microclimates and shelter you from the rain if you're lucky.

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Ruili & around

In Yunnan province, you'll find youth hostels in Dali, Shaxi, Lijiang, Lugu Lake, Shangri La, Tengchong, Jinghong, Yuanyang, Wenshan, Jianshui, and Bingzhongluo.

No hostels in Ruili. But dude, hotels in second/third tier Yunnan cities are cheap. You should be able to find a private hotel room in Ruili for 50-100 RMB. Obviously, you get what you pay for, but for 100 you should be able to find something perfectly decent, and for 50 something slightly less than decent.

Bus tickets from Kunming to Ruili are over 300 RMB these days. It's a long ass ride (~15 hours). Your'e better off breaking it up with stops in Dali, Baoshan, and Tengchong.

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Tencent maps - Street view

I just discovered that Tencent (QQ) maps have a streetview function just like Google Maps does in western countries. They don't have every street in China, but they have every street in most cities, as well as several country roads, including several in Tibet, which is pretty fun. You can follow the highway all the way from Kunming to Lhasa using this.

Just go to map.qq.com/ then click 街景 and drop the cursor wherever it is you want to see

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Comments

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@dolphin
Yes, I think the shit will hit the fan. By which I mean China is facing at the very least a prolonged recession, or worst. Something akin to Japan's "lost decade" (in reality lost *three* decades). There are just too many forces for this to not happen. Demographic, structural, developmental, geopolitical. The dang knows it, that's why they're preparing people to "weather the coming storm". It's just not normal to have 30 years of nonstop growth. If China wants to have "capitalism with Chinese characteristics" then it can't avoid the periodic crises that are inherent in capitalism.
I'm in China at the moment, but based outside China long-term, and as @lemon lover surmised, I've got no real money to "transfer out".

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@Ishmael and @Liumingke1234
Not to sound like a capitalist pig here, but this is not a government project. It's a private sector project by a Hong Kong-based property developer. Property developers are in the business of developing property, not funding poverty relief, education, health, etc.

While I don't disagree with you that Kunming has a glut of of unnecessary luxury shopping malls, the urban planner in me has to defend this project purely based on its location. This project is located right on top of Kunming's first and so-far only subway transfer station, at the confluence of the main North-South and East-West trunk line subways. A location like this makes total sense for a big, magnet multi-use project like this. People will be able to come here by subway, reducing the amount of car traffic downtown. This is much better planning than the more suburban shopping malls like those around Dianchi which are more auto-oriented than transit-oriented.

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Great article as always.

One little geographical typo, though, in the 8th paragraph.
The county referred to as "Diqing" (迪庆县) should in fact be "Deqin" (德钦县) 。 Diqing (迪庆州,  or 迪庆藏族自治州 in full) is the name of the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture to which Zhongdian (中甸) aka Shangri-La/Xianggelila (香格里拉县),Deqin (德钦县), and Weixi (维西县) Counties belong.

Reviews

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This is a really nice new restaurant in Dali. High quality vegetarian and vegan food, varied menu, daily specials. They make their own kombucha, too. The environment is very chill...multiple layers, floor seating, an outdoor courtyard and terrace balcony overlooking the the roofs of the neighbors in old Dali

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Serendipity is an honest-to-gosh American style diner, a concept I don't think I've ever really seen before in China.

They do salads, burgers, and pasta dishes, but the true stars of the menu are the breakfasts, which are served all day.

No measly hostel breakfast sets, these ones come with heaping servings of bacon and eggs and bottomless coffee.

No table seating. Everyone sits around the counter, where you can see what's going on in the kitchen and chat with the friendly staff.

The fresh donuts are the best I've had in China

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The 68 kuai Saturday night all-you-can-eat buffet is a terrific deal.

Steak, pork loin, chicken schnitzel, pizza, two kinds of salad, creme de caramel, cheesecake, and lots of other stuff.

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Recently experienced both very early morning departure and very late night arrival at Changshui. Was worried about making the connection to and from the airport, but both turned out well.

First, the departure. It was 7:30 am. I arranged a taxi to pick me up at 5:00. That he did. Cost: 100 yuan.

The departure was scheduled for 12:30 am, was delayed, and didn't get in until 2:30 am. I was sure I'd have to find a black cab, and wasn't even sure if I would find that. Instead, I was delighted to discover that the Airport Express Bus was still running! For 25 yuan it took me to the train station, where I then caught a cab for the short ride the rest of the way home. I was very impressed by this late night bus. I'd thought the buses only ran till around 11 pm-midnight. I don't know if this is a regular occurrence or not. Maybe, knowing my flight was delayed and there would be hundreds of passengers looking for a ride home, the airport dispatched an extra bus. If so, kudos to whoever was responsible!