Kunming - China

Kunming, although we didn´t know it until we arrived, is the gateway to enter Tibet. (If Ian had only known!) We were able to unexpectantly organise our Vietnamese visa´s very easierly here. This time it was my Birthday. Ian bought a couple of bottles of red wine (for the 4 of us - traveling with NZ couple, Jacque and Jason) and my request (a fantasy really) was to also have brie. We actually stumbled upon a huge french supermarket (believe it or not) and I got to have brie, a swiss cheese, french stick, feta and olives in olive oil. It was beautiful. We were supposed to also go out for dinner as this was only the nibblies. However we were all alittle drunk, so we just went down to the pub outside the hotel. I texted my bestest friend Wendy, and she rang, which was fantastic, to be able to speak with her. We went on an overpriced day trip to explore some of the temples in the western hills. One temple called Bambo Temple was really beautiful. It had 500 Buddhist arhat sculptures. The craftsmanship of each one was amazing, all life size and all having individual characteristics. They reflected the human personality and soul; their faces, stances and expressions. Some of them were even on surf boards - showing that they had a sense of humour. There wasn´t much more that we found to this city. Apart from being able to arrange our visa´s; as we were under the impression that there was only three major cities in China that we would have been able to do this. So big bonus!