I had a few things to arrange before I could leave Kunming. First of all I needed to find a bank or preferably an ATM to get some more Yuan for my travels around China. There is an amazing number of banks on every major street in Kunming so that was not such a big problem. It is possible to use VISA or MasterCard cards in ATM’s of Bank of China even though they don’t advertise it with stickers on the actual teller machine as I am used to. You can however confirm whether or not you can use your card on the main screen of the machine.

Among other things I needed was an oil change for the bike. I got that plus brake fluid refill and oil filter change (my own spare) for 50 Yuan all up. 6 bucks here easily beats even the price in Thailand.

Even though I was successful in finding a bookstore where I wanted to purchase a road atlas of China and although they had three, all of which said “Road Atlas of China” on their cover, there is no English to be found inside. Such atlas would not help much.

Being on the topic of English in China… From everybody I heard that there are no signs in English in whole of China and that was what I expected. And even though I did not see any signs in English the first 200 km, admittedly there were no turns possible anyway. When I reached the first important intersection in the middle of nowhere to my nice surprise the place names were also in English. Only thanks to this sign I took the right road. And the expressways so far are just perfect in this respect.

I also had my first chance to test the supermarket for prices and I’m happy to report that it also seems to be much cheaper than they say in Lonely Planet for budget meals. The prices in supermarkets are from great to amazing and pastry and fruits fell like they are almost free. I paid a visit to a bakery shop and wanted to try a few products, having no idea about the prices. I indicated that I wanted one of these, one of those etc. and she started to put everything on scales… Yes, they seem to sell pastry by weight, not by piece. I ended up with more pieces of each of several types of pastry even though I tried to “explain” that I wanted only one piece of each. At the end it all cost me mere 3 Yuan!! 30 US cents for the lot!!! I couldn’t believe it.

On my way back to my hotel I also wanted to buy a couple of peaches from a street seller. He also obviously could not comprehend that I would only want two pieces and he gave me about 2 kilos instead. That cost 2 Yuan, or about 35 US cents. 35 US cents for almost 2 kilos of peaches!! Can you believe it? I couldn’t.

Just before I took off from the hotel a man passing by started talking to me in quite good English. He admired the bike and what I’m doing. Thanks to this encounter I now have a couple of sentences written in Chinese that I’m already finding very useful. The “Where is the cheapest hotel in town?” is sure to prove to be a trouble saver.

On my way to Stone Forest I also used a sentence from this man to make sure that I had not passed it. Stone Forest was actually a bit disappointing affair for me even though I have some nice photos. I mean it is interesting if you are just passing through as I was anyway, but I definitely wouldn’t make a special trip for it. If you are in the area here are the coordinates: N24.86143 E103.32777.

Since I left Kunming quite late, then had to go back 28 kilometers on the highway since I took a wrong entry point and after I got off the highway (for which I for some reason didn’t have to pay – hurray!) they didn’t let me on the next one so I had to ride the windy local roads I ended up in a village after riding only 260 kilometers. I returned to a place I just passed that looked like it might be a motel or whatever they call it here, ridden into their front yard and asked with the international gesture for sleep. The people looked at me like I just fell from outer space, which made me realize that I might have actually been in a private front yard. Anyway, they tried to communicate with me by now so I couldn’t simply leave. After about 10 minutes of looks and gestures I pulled out the piece of paper with the useful Chinese sentences and showed the right one to the man closest to me. In a while they brought a girl. I almost thought they were going to offer her to me again and was preparing to leave. At the end however, she brought a friend of hers and together they invited me to stay in their house. The first girl was actually a daughter of the man I showed the piece of paper to and the other one was her university roommate visiting her. Of course I couldn’t refuse an offer to stay with local family and have the chance to get more into their culture.

By the way these girls have it 10 days by train to go to their university! It just shows the size of China.

We have spent a very enjoyable evening together, starting with dinner. Rice, potatoes, vegetables and something that looked and tasted like well prepared pig skin were on the menu. Normally I wouldn’t probably eat something so fatty like the pig skin, but on this trip I need some fat for energy and it actually tasted very nice. The only problem I had to deal with was a growing pile of food in my bowl as everybody was adding things on the top of it for me.

By the end of the evening I was invited to stay several days if I wanted.

One interesting thing that I remembered just now that I learned during the evening was that for the price of Volkswagen Passat (of which there is a lot on the roads here) you could buy 4 Chinese Dong Feng lorries.  …I just thought I might share this… ;-)