Yo The Mike. I bought my bike here this year by plane, no problem. Although if your bike isn't too flash and you are in the market for a new one... there are quite a few bike shops here that have the full range of bikes. The prices range from outrageous to cheap (for the same quality bike) so shop around.

There is a few of us here who MTB around the place and there are a few trails, though nothing maintained for bikers. Its mainly forestry and small farmer trails through the hills around the city. The city is pretty much flat though so no problems with hills around town.

If you are keen for a ride when you get here, put a message up on one of the cycling threads here and we can get a few people together no problems!

I agree with bluppfisk, anti-malarials are an overblown load of BS from pharmaceutical companies trying to make a buck. They are heinously expensive, have bad and long lasting side effects and don't always work. If you are young and healthy and get malaria, its highly likely you will recover from it, so don't worry so much. Like bluppfisk said, dengue is a much greater risk, but both can be avoided by minimising your exposure. If you are going to random places, I would suggest get a mosquito net before you go as out of the way accommodation sometimes don't provide them (covering the bed) or they are old and full of holes. Plus long sleeve shirts and long pants when outside from dusk until dawn backed up by repellent. You will still get bitten a few times but only a tiny percentage of mosquitoes carry the diseases so the chances are slim you will get any infectious disease.

Wow, I had no idea this happened. In sleepy little Kunming you don't expect such things. I am also amazed that you guys managed to carry on, particularly you Kris, good work!

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While true laotou, the system is insane for US embassies in China, the system here is one that is designed. The result is that it is insane, that is not the cause.

A government that designs an insane system for its entry requirements almost certainly understands what it has done and has done so for one reason. It doesn't want people to enter.

Then you must ask "Why do they not want people to enter?". That one is easy to answer: Fear. Fear that the people will rort the system. Fear that its own citizens that sponsor those that want to come aren't smart enough to know when their Chinese friends are genuine or not. Fear that its citizens are being paid off by the Chinese person even after they have proved their relationship beyond any measure of doubt.

The problem here is that there is no difference in regard to visa success between a normal Chinese citizen with no links to anyone in America and a high level academic, invited to America, with their American friends having been interviewed by consulate officials. I guarantee if you tried the same thing with people coming from New Zealand to the US, the visa success would be considerably different for each party (and in fact it was for my friend going from NZ to the US who got a rubber stamped 3 month stay as she was doing a study with MIT as opposed to my friend who had 2 interviews and got declined once for a 2 month tourist visa... both had similar educations and age and would have been assets to the US if they did overstay!).

Do you really think the US State department isn't paranoid??? You must be joking... and paranoia is the basis of the creation of Homeland Security - whose initial jobs should have been done by the FBI/police/coastguard etc. The one thing these other agencies don't do enough of however is spying on US citizens. And now they have immigration & natualization under their mandate... paranoia anyone?