Yunnan I

3-12
My trip may have started out with a bad push-off from my apartment complex. My travel group of 40 obnoxious (many of them drunk) Americans filled a bus and headed to the airport. The process of getting on the plane was slow with a group so large but after an expensive airport espresso I climbed into an uncomfortable middle seat at the front of the plane.
Sitting next to me was a crusty old Chinese man with a thick Shanghaiese accent. This turned into a bit of a mixed blessing for me as for the three hour long flight the man relentlessly tried to strike up conversation. He was aware that my Chinese language skills were beginner to say the least but nonetheless we were able to communicate vey complex details about each other. I told him that my dad keeps a huge garden and my mom is a practicing doctor. It turns out he was a generator salesman from Shanghai who spends much of his time selling units in Kunming, the destination of our airplane.
Arriving in Kunming was rough, the air was thick and the pilots seemed inexperienced in the bumpy transition back to the surface of the earth. Getting out of the plane it was great to swallow some fresh air. Walking to our tour bus the group enjoyed a sunset that reminded me of the tropical endings to the days in Ecuador.
After a group dinner I went with a few friends to find a Ferris wheel that we could see illuminated from a distance. Kunming looked like a very basic large Chinese city with a maze of communist bloc buildings, small cheap clothing stores and a frenzy of KFCs. On the walk to the far off amusement park however I came to realize that Kunming was a quietly laid back city of canals with a lazy climate that felt great coming from the hectic Shanghai. The moon shined against the water in the summer-like evening—it was like walking through ancient Chinese poetry. We walked along water ways and passed bright night markets but when we got the gates of the Ferris wheel we learned that the place had been closed for many hours. I wanted to hop the fence but my friends told me it would be better if we headed back. On the way back we stopped at a nice snack shack to have a few warm beers by the canal.