After we’d had our fill of food and drink, we headed over to Kun Du, the major clubbing district of Kunming. The place is enormous, wild, sweaty, loud, and an all-around crazy experience. Walking through it almost feels like you’ve been eaten by the gargantuan walls of flashing lights and monster-sized door frames.
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| "Disco," the gay-friendly club |
The first club we walked into was called SoHo. It immediately felt like we had just entered a very upscale machinery shop or something. It was huge and several stories. Despite its size, there were no open tables to be found so we headed out pretty fast. Nonetheless, I immediately noticed the atrocity of the music, which consisted of mostly outdated American songs that most people my age would say were popular when they were in elementary school.
My friends and I ended up spending most of our time (quite accidently) hanging out in a gay-friendly club called Disco. It took a good half hour or so for us to realize we were actually in a gay-friendly club, but after a group of men all took off their shirts simultaneously, we put the pieces together. (as an aside, they don’t really have any real gay clubs. Gay-friendly is as close as it gets).
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| 12 beer order minimum. Tragic. |
In Kun Du, it seems pretty much the norm that you can’t order less than 12 beers at a time. So essentially you have to go out with a substantial group or else you’ll have a pretty interesting time finding your way out of the maze of lights that make up the street.
Oh wait, that’s not all! About 45 minutes into our being at Disco, a woman (maybe man dressed as a woman? The jury’s still out…) did a strip pole dance on the raised dance floor! She was dressed in tight white revealing clothes, and had a white wig on. I can safely say that she was the best dancer on the floor that night. …although that’s not really saying much, I suppose, since many people here don’t seem to have any rhythm. Sorry guys, not trying to be mean. Just an observation.
On Sunday we decided to get breakfast at the Kunming Hotel, a fancy place right across the street from our school. We had heard a ton of good things about it from a woman that was studying at Keats a little while ago. To sum up the experience, it was expensive, not that great, and there were about 7 waiters staring at us the whole time we ate. Even better, we were literally the only party in the entire restaurant, which was large. It felt like we were animals being observed in a zoo.
To make matters even more uncomfortable, I got my meal first and was following the polite Western conduct of waiting till the whole table received their dishes before starting in. Doesn’t seem like that concept carries over around here; I waited about 20-30 minutes until my friend’s food had arrived (sooo long!), and by then my soup was cold. Not only that, the waiters decided they needed to watch us as we did not eat as well, during the time we were waiting for each dish. Awkward and not an experience I would repeat.
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| Lake Dian |
That afternoon John, Pete and I visited Lake Dian, a huge picturesque lake on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. The lake is enclosed inside a park, and includes a ton of theme park type rides as well. We didn’t really partake in the rides, but did end up going on the Ferris wheel, which went about a third of the speed as most typical Ferris wheels go. It was great to be able to look out and get a birds-eye view of the huge expanse of land in the park.
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| Entrance to Lake Dian |
We had to purchase tickets to get in, which wasn’t a problem but the experience did call my attention to yet another difference here: for children, rather than tagging ticket prices in relation to ones age, they go by the child’s height. Like so many other cultural differences here, I couldn’t figure out why at first, but have since learned that they do this because many people here do not actually know their age. The date of their birth has either been left undocumented altogether or simply forgotten.
The park had no less than 20 people flying kites of all colors. The whole thing was so picturesque, I felt like I was inside of a fairy-tale. We ate a picnic on the grass and just chilled there, talking and taking in the scenery for most of the day.
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Some random chick
posing in front of the Lake |
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| Our Ferris Wheel |
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| Lake Dian |
I thought it was especially funny when we passed by these big blow-up inner-tube toys on the lake. They were hollow inside, and kids would run around inside them. It reminded me a lot of hamsters running in a wheel. I took a really funny video of the action taking place but blogspot seems not want to cooperate with video files, so this picture will have to suffice:
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Inner tube toys at Lake Dian.
Kids go inside the middle and runrunrun! |
That night the school took us out to get Dai food. The Dai people are one of the 26 minority groups here, and their food is especially known for being sour and spicy. After last week’s painful hotpot experience, I decided to request that we get some dishes that weren’t too spicy. The teacher accompanying us ended up ordering ‘all mild’ which basically seems to mean ‘isn’t going to burn your face off.’ My American palate is clearly not quite ready for the intense flavor of the food over here.
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| Our Dai Food Meal |
Despite the teacher’s best efforts to make sure we could all comfortably eat the food at the restaurant, the staple of Dai food turns out to be pineapple rice. Basically they take out all the fruit part out of the pineapple and fill it with rice, which has been soaked in pineapple juices. As yummy as it sounds, I happen to be slightly allergic to pineapple. So much for that. I decided to pretend I wasn’t for the evening. No doubt it was very tasty, but it also caused my whole mouth to feel like it was about to shrivel up. I clearly don’t take my allergies very seriously…
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| Dai Restaurant |
One really cool thing about the restaurant was that it was made entirely out of bamboo. Bamboo everywhere--tables, chairs, décor, walls…basically anywhere you could look aside from the various plants. The private room we at in was essentially a little bamboo hut with bamboo chairs that looked like they had been made for a pre-schooler’s frame. John, who was with us, had a difficult time getting comfortable with his impressive 6’5 stature. Ouch!
If anyone is still reading at this point: Teaser for my next post: Movie Subtitle Madness, Is it Morning or Evening, Getting Chased and Robbed by Chinese Police (yes, actually), and ??? to come...
BONUS PICTURES:
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Coming out of the bathroom at French Cafe.
Don't pretend you didn't do what I know you did in there. |
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| Revenge |
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Advertisement on a public bus.
aka Baby doing downward-facing dog!
They start 'em with yoga young around here. |
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A cool alleyway next to the Bird and Flower Market
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LOL @ mr. T
ReplyDeleteyeah seriously, mr. t?
ReplyDeletealso, nice gun. yeah i said it.