Travel 4 - South East Asia (China)

Recently, I returned from a very long visit to South East Asia, specifically, China, Bangladesh, and Thailand.  Here, I shall write about the Chinese part.

After a very tiring 3-day series of flights from London (Ontario) via Los Angeles, and Hong Kong, to Kunming (Yunnan Province) I signed in to a comfortable youth hotel.

Headquarters of the Kuomintang before
they fled to Formosa (Taiwan) in 1945

Long May Youth Hotel, Kunming

Initially, I was met at the airport by a helpful old friend who thought that because it was only the afternoon, he should drive me around town to meet people ... after my sleepless time traveling across the ocean, that was the last thing that I needed, but it would have seemed very rude to explain.  Actually, once I was back at the hotel, it was evening and my tiredness had disappeared, so I took an evening stroll around Green Lake Park and my favorite Yunnan University campus.  Suddenly, it felt as if I had only been away for three weeks rather than the actual three years.

Cui Hu (Green Lake) Park

Unfortunately, most of my ex-students were unavailable for me to meet due to there being no means of communication put in place, but a few wonderful friends made contact.  Nevertheless, I was at a loss most of the time due to my very poor grasp of the Chinese language.

Car drivers were still dangerous ... they seem to adopt Buddhist practices, that is;  We have no wish to hurt you, and if we do, there is always the next peaceful life.

My visit coincided with a May Day parade.  It was extremely interesting because of an extraordinary number of minority groups in their colorful ethnic costumes, not to mention a noteworthy number of gays.

Yuan Tong Temple, Kunming

Later, my very good friend, Li Hua (Robert) invited me to join his family on a long drive to Fu Xian lake, the second deepest freshwater lake in China.  But I was disappointed to learn that the Chinese navy uses it for submarine experiments, and there are huge tourist resorts being built everywhere around it ... obviously without sufficient sewage controls.

After a few weeks, I was pleased to be able to fly to Dhaka, Bangladesh (The originally intended destination) meet my favorite ex-student, and begin work auditing the language faculty of a private university (To be explained in Part 2).