Kunming
In pain. We changed hotels due to the bed, hoping to get a softer bed that didn’t seem as if we were sleeping on the floor. No such luck. We are in a nicer place, but the bed is the same. If this is standard it could be a long trip around China.
We also had to track down a sim card for the phone today. This was not too bad.
Leopard mounting waterbuffalo ?!? WTF…?
There are plenty of phone shops, but the sale of sim cards is regulated to the telecoms themselves. We made our way to the large China Mobile building, and started the process. Luckily we had a friendly guy that stayed with us for the entire process. This meant going to a computer, picking a phone number (which I did at random. Not too many 8’s or 9’s for us) then selecting the plan.
Pancake dinner.
After this you are supposed to wait in line until your number is called, but we did get a bit of preferential treatment here, and skipped the cue. Now it was passport and photos. This took a few more photos than necessary, some with the assistants phones (probably to prove to their friends that they had served a weird foreigner). Paying for it and then waiting for the sim card to be created. All done.
From start to finish about half an hour. 100 yuan for the card and some starting credit then 39 yuan a month for 300mb data and about 1000 minutes talk time!
That obstacle done, we walked across the city to a couple of pagodas. These were a bit disappointing as they are brand new, and not that detailed, but was still a good walk through different parts of the inner city (Kunming is at least 4.5 million people)
Then a bus back to where we were staying. Not much for the day, other than a close encounter with the bureaucracy and a very long walk!
-
- Leopard mounting waterbuffalo ?!? WTF…?
