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Forums > Living in Kunming > For you Chinese medicine people

Kunming Ju Hau Chun is the wholesale market for medicines. Try there. There are, I estimated, about 200 vendors there. Mostly for raw herb, but not exclusively. Shop around there

If you are an expat, and worried about paying over the odds get some little old lady to buy it for you. But there are so many vendors in this area, and it is a wholesale market, I doubt your order would be that big to them.

I would imagine that granules are always going to cost a lot more, as they are a factory processed product. But they do take the bother, and the smell, out of your life.

I don't know why cooking at home is a problem, but we have bought a thing like an electric kettle. Apart from the smell, it just sits on the kitchen worktop and bubbles away quietly.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Pollution in Kunming

Chatting with a local today.
There is a lot of dust being kicked up by the subway/metro construction that is making things worse downtown.
This can only add to the more car thing. One good thing about Kunming is the prevailing inshore wind from the south, blowing clean air into the city. Unless of course you live below the mountains in the north.

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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Travell kunming-Dali-Shaxi-Lijiang-Shangrila

If there is 7 of you, I would suggest hiring a 9 seat mini-bus and driver. If you can haggle in Chinese, there are loads of husband and wife driver guides and you can negotiate price. However, the guide will be a Chinese speaker.

If you organise through a travel agent they can do it all for you, especially if you need an English speaking guide. Try several agents, but I think the margins are pretty tight as competition is high outside main holiday seasons. I would not do any research now, as you will get the now price (Spring Festival). I would wait until a week or two after the hols. However, almost anything in China can be organised on the spot, as you probably well know.

However, there is a risk that if you buy a package they will drag you around all the markets to earn some commission from market owners. And so don't get sucked into a package deal. And avoid the cheapest deal, as they will have to make up the money somehow.

Seeing as you are travelling so far, it is unlikely that you will find a guide who knows all the sites. As such the most effective would be to find a guide in each location you go to, if you want in-depth interpretation. Or look at wiki-travel, lonely planet, etc before you go, and print stuff off.

We tend not to use tour guides. If they are from the site, they will often whisk you through quickly to get the next customer. Unless it is a very quiet day and she is a nice girl. My wife then acts as interpreter.
A good guide we will tip. This then makes it easier for the next family who not just focussed on price.

If the guide is not from the site, they will not know much more than you can find in half an hour on the Web.

I am not an expert, but that is how we have handled things when we travel. We hire a bus and driver, and look at a book for travel info. Only at some sites do we hire a guide.

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@ Peter, people have been jailed for handling stolen rental bikes, there was a news story on local TV a couple of weeks back, and I think people were jailed in 3 separate cases. I think in two cases it was 15 days, I think the cops are targeting this, as the whole bike thing is a government initiative.

There are also grass roots volunteer groups liberating stolen bikes, and reporting stolen bikes. I think people trying would get reported, unusual for china as that is.
These bikes are probably too highly visible and recognizable to just chuck on the back of a sanlun che, and ride them through a scrap metal dealer's gates.

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I visited Dali, 2-3 years ago, and cycling around the lake I could not believe that they had built hotels/guest houses along the shore side.
One also needs to think about the run off from the construction sites, going into the lake, with local small building firms doing the jobs.
I am glad that they finally jumped on this.

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A few years ago, someone told me that several thousand Chinese business men, on business trips, just disappear every year. I am sure that shipments of goods disappear at an even more alarming rate. I wonder how many truck drivers are hijacked heading south and west, once they leave China. Probably a very big business opportunity for a logistics security service provider, with experience of this kind of work; which FSG seems to have.

Reviews

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A reasonable choice of lumber that has improved over time. Fancy hardwoods like walnut, and mahogany are in abundance. There are some plywood and rubber-wood boards available. There are also some kiln dried imported softwoods and merbao available. Some of the lumber is very green, so look for the kiln dried if you need stable timbers.

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Echo everything said by others.
Breakfast great and the serve from 8am. Most other places say 9am and they still are not ready.
Sandwiches are cheap 22-32, and really packed full of filling. We got some sandwiches for a day out, the only mistake I made was ordering two, as this was too much. These are seriously good sangars, and they are wrapped in alu foil.

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In fairness to Metro, they are a wholesalers, and not really a supermarket. Hence the need for a card, which can be got around.

They have improved in the year I have been away. They now carry a more consistent range of imported foodstuffs and they also seem to have sorted out the mported milk supply.

They have a wider range of electrical appliances now, there is a coice of more than one toast. There is also a better range of seasonal non foods, like clothes, shoes, garden furniture and camping gear.