Mar 19, 2005 - Day 256 in Kunming, China

Laura writes: today was a travel day. We rose early to catch our flight to Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan Province of the China. We experienced unpleasant turbulence but an authentic experience, complete with an airplane meal of dumplings, green beans, and a muffin. The Yunnan Province is home to many groups of Chinese ethnic minority groups. Our goal was to get to Lijiang, the home of one such group called the Naxi. Upon arriving in Kunming, we purchased our tickets to fly onto Lijiang. Charles and Sarah wanted to stay the night in Kunming, but I wanted to proceed onto Lijiang so we parted, arranging to meet 12 hours later in Lijiang! It was interesting if a bit confusing to fly alone in China. None of the signs were in English and I had a hard time determining when my flight was boarding. But I found enough people who had boarding cards that looked like mine to figure it out. Sarah writes: Laura is being kind… due to a minor panic-attack from the turbulence on our first flight I begged Charles to stay put with me for a night in Kunming and we would fly the next morning to Lijiang. Leaving the airport we had a Canadian guy tell the taxi-driver in Chinese where to take us since it looked as though the driver had never had an English speaker in his car. The Canadian guy told us to tell the front desk that “Goan Cho Cho sent us”. We did as he said and it some how got us a discounted rate at a hotel straight out of the movie “Lost in Translation”. Charles had internet access so he started to forgive my little episode at the airport.