David's Big Adventure in China

I recently went to the Stone Forest (Shilin) which is a little over 2 hours south of Kunming by bus. It was a bit expensive to get in at 140 yuan (about $19) but it was worth seeing (see pic’s). The limestone pillars are quite impressive and they have made some very interesting paths under, around and over them…….one false step and you would be seriously injured! Yesterday I went to the Minority Village (like a small theme park) here in Kunming. It was interesting but probably not worth a second visit. China has about 56 recognized minorities and Yunnan province has about half of them within it. I really enjoy seeing the colorful clothing of the minorities. Perhaps next time I’ll post some pic’s from the Minority Village.

Last week I started teaching accounting to my Listening class students. They were much more interested in the accounting than they have been in the other lessons. One of the students had a copy of the textbook (240 pages) made for me at a cost of 16 yuan (about $2.15). Paper and copy services here are very cheap. The university does not provide me an office and I don’t have access to a printer or copier so I copy files onto my USB drive and take it to one of the local shops where I can print and have copies made.

It’s time for me to get my teeth cleaned and I’ve been asking around about dental care here. None of the foreigners I have asked have had any dental care here…..they are afraid to get it here and prefer to wait until they visit home. The locals that I have talked to tell me that they only go to the dentist when they have a problem. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll give the local care a try or wait until I’m back in the U.S. I’m about out of the floss that I brought with me from home so I tried to buy some while shopping and found that very few places carry it and it’s very expensive when I do find it. It costs about $3 for a small package of it. Even with minimal dental care and not using floss it seems most of the locals have decent teeth. I do so many people with badly stained teeth and that seems to be mostly from tobacco and poor water.

I have learned that apartments here in Kunming can be rented for $100 to $300 per month and can be purchased for $30,000 to $90,000. Kunming is still pretty cheap compared to the big east coast cities. Anybody want me to shop for one for you?? Well that’s it for now.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.