has travelled Asia!!

昆明

After eight fantastic days with my Chinese family in Beijing I took another 36 hours train. It appears Chinese trains are better than Russians, the blankets are like heaven and the staff is incredible: they are even closing the curtains for you and arranging towels and shoes in rank and order…

In Kunming I’m staying with a bunch of crazy US Americans. In general I stay only with natives, but this is working out great so need to regret anything! And I can hardly imagine I would have had that much fun elsewhere. Originally there is only three guys sharing the flat, but there is two others staying temporarily and then even more at the weekend ^^ Had some great fun doing a Train Rail Challenge (its a relay on rails but mostly its about drinking), pillow fights, playing Settlers of Catan and just hanging out in the great living room. Its just that we dont sleep, at least not at night…

Kunming is way smaller than Beijing but still massive! And they just building a metro so half of down town is a construction site. Therefore the traffic is awful, when I wanted to apply for my Vietnamese visa and was somewhat in a hurry I entered five cabs but all refused to drive me in the city. So I had to took a bus and it took ages… But I still arrived in time (and saved some money). On the other hand you can get the Vietnamese visa fast, but its costly. As you see I will do Vietnam, then Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. From there I will have to fly to Kolkata on December 16th, which costs 140 euro. Only after booking I discovered AirAsia.com, which offers flights for apparently only 90 euro… Keep it in mind and do better than me. Its so warm in Southeast Asia, I’m totally looking forward to that! And it allows me to finally use my camping equipment. And camping makes a good team with hitching. That will be great. In Kolkata I’m going to do a Vipassana meditation (ten days of silence).

Why do I fly? Cause its the most reasonable option. Passing Tibet is not only even more expensive but also its obligatory to have your own car, driver and guide. And it makes no sense to me to do 800 km like that just to avoid flying. Then there is Burma and actually its even hard to get in over land. Its perfectly fine to fly in, but everything else is nearly impossible. Even if you get in its going to be even more difficult to get out to India. And then India itself is very sensitive towards illegal immigrants.

Leave a Reply