Glen's Blog

The last night of the Chinese New Year we decided to spend our night in and have some delivery pizza from Annie’s which is always nice well recommended for those who like Italian food.

Then we went right outside to play with the fireworks which my wife had smuggled back to the flat...long story.

They were great fun and I was in charge of lightning them, my first time to do this but to be honest was easy enough.

After the mini fireworks display we went back inside to watch Madagascar 2 which was actually a good film. I don't normally watch cartoon films but this is worth a watch it’s from the same makers as Shrek so all the usual DreamWorks comedy which I like.

During the film we found out that the CCTV tower was a light from my understanding by a firework but the true reason has yet to be discovered as they are still investigating. As we don't live far from Guomao we decided to go for a walk and see.

When we got there at about 11pm the smaller tower was smoking and had a few small sections alight still. The fire fighters had already got the building under control and you could see the situation was much better than the news had shown 2 hours before.

The other main tower seemed to be untouched by the fire but at night it was impossible to tell from where we were standing.

There were many TV crews there reporting and also a lot of photographers some I'm assuming for newspapers or internet sites.

I recorded a bit of what was happening and have put it on YouTube link below. But there’s no sound as my camera is a bit crappy for sound recording.

CCTV Tower Recording

So it ended up to be a small eventful night out. I hope no one got hurt from the fire but to my knowledge the tower is still under construction so no one is using it yet.

So I have today finally renewed my residence permit for another year with a sigh of relief.

Let me go through the steps which I needed to do.

1. First, I needed to get a nice red stamp in my Foreign Experts book. For me this is a red book but from my understanding the new version is a blue book. Other than colour think their exactly the same inside.

Foreign Experts book

So I’m trying to get Windows Live Writer working with my blogbus blog now as its in English and so much easier for me!

So this is a bonus picture from my trip to Yunnan.

Well we (my wife and the in-laws) are finally back after our spring festival trip to Yunnan Province.

So we flew from Beijing to Kunming with China Air from Terminal 3. This was my first time in T3 it's much more modern than the older terminals in Beijing airport and a very nice design. Beijing is really moving forward quickly.

Mother and Father in Law at Terminal 3

So my problem was that I didn't have my passport due to my Visa expiring on the 24th it had to be given into the passport office in Dongjiemen. We were worried that I would not even be able to get onto the plane! However having bought photocopies of as many documents as I could (passport mainly) they accepted this with the yellow form which I was given by the passport office, with much relief.

So we were off! My mother and father-in-law very excited at the prospect of going on a plane. They had only been on a plane a few times and not recently. So they were like excited kids ready to get onto the plane..watching every single plane take off and land in awe and expectation.

The flight itself was pretty eventless to be honest. The food was pretty decent and of course I had extra helpings of food because they didn't want the rolls and chocolate...very happy man.

Arriving at Kunming late we had a mission to get to the train as soon as possible to get the 23:00 train to Dali. So we got our luggage and headed to the local bus stops having the usual people pestering for "cheap" travel and ignoring the Bu Yao's.

The city of Kunming to be honest isn't the most beuitiful of cities. Kinda run down look so my first impressions wern't that great. Fireworks going off all over the place we kinda felt a little uneasy.. being given wrong directions by the Police didn't greatly help either! However one Policeman on his little electric bike decided to follow and help us get there which made us feel much better.

Arriving at the station my wife quickly bought the tickets to Dali. We got the "1st class" tickets and headed up to the waiting area.

On the platform getting ready to get on the train

Eventually it was time to get onto the train so we all got on. To be honest the "1st class" area was kinda basic compared to the trains you get from Beijing to Lanzhou. But it was private so all was good.

This was a long train ride I think if I remember was about 7.5 hours or so. So we arrived eairly morning in Dali.

Wife and myself arriving at Dali looking knackered!

So tired from the lack of sleep (yes there were beds on the train) because of the train noise, we got ganged up as usual by the "cheap" travel sellers.

We quickly bought our tickets back to Kunming as my wife knew that it would be hard to get later.

Now we got the number 8 bus to the bus station and dropped our luggage off there and got the number again to Dali Old town.

We got immediately bombarded again with the sellers! oh well..

It was about 9am and we hadn't had anything good to eat since yesterday. So it was decided to have a meal..well you'll see the outcome of this idea later.

All you can eat at Dali!

The meal was nice had some traditional meats and fish which were both pretty good. In some small business which fit maybe 4-5 tables in it.

After the meal which we all enjoyed we went for a walk around the town. We got one of those tuck tuck bike things which the guy drove us around the main sights which made things easier.

Local Dali Tucktuck following us when we drove down to the lake.

The main town was very busy as this was 1st Day of the new year. Many many locals out and fireworks and kids playing with those bangers.

Happy New Year in Dali!

Later on in the afternoon we got the bus back to the bus station and headed onto Lijiang in a smaller mini bus.

This trip took about 3-4 hours and well to be honest it was an intresting event. Going over the hills the view was spectacular. But this came at a price for me, I mentioned earlier about eating lunch eairly.

By the time I had gotten to Lijiang I had a splitting headache and felt physically ill. I assumed that this was because of the altitude issues and this got me extremely stressed.

That night I was in a bad state. Very very ill and was pretty much getting ready to go home. But my wife and her parents managed to get me back on my feet ready for the next day. We think it was maybe because of the lack of sleep and food and maybe a little bit to do with the altitude which caused this problem.

So we walked around the two old towns Shuhe and Lijiang. Both very pretty and well worth a trip...photos below!

Shuhe lovely town

Bar Street in Lijiang

Me overlooking the old town of LiJiang

Many streams and rivers in the old town

Family Photo! (yes they wont be happy if they see I posted this haha)

Both of the towns were very pretty. What you could imagine old China to really have looked like all those years ago. It's somewhere which you have to visit some day if you really want to experience China.

We didn't go to Shangrila as this was too far but this will be somewhere we will go another day maybe from a different direction.

Travelling back we went to Dali and spent some time there. Having another meal and then going to Wallmart to stock up on some prezzies.

Having already got the train tickets (very lucky as it was crazy busy) we headed back to Kunming.

We arrived in Kunming very eairly about 4am and had to waste some time there before our flight. So we went to a park. My wife said that this was some famous park but I didn't have a clue! it was very pretty though with the flowers which Yunnan is so famous for.

The famous place in Kunming

So we came back on the 29th and the flight back was pretty much the same as going to be honest arriving late that night.