Kunming

Greetings from Kunming - the regional capital of Yunnan province, China. My guide book says about Kunming that with Chengdu it's the the most relaxed regional captial in China. I wouldn't know about that, but it's certainly laid back. My first impression of the place was that it was Grot City. But then I arrived late and hadn't noticed the trees. It's not the tidiest of cities, not the most orderly, it's actually quite grubby, but it's certainly fun. In fact, the outskirts reminded me of Bangkok - rust, concrete and billboards. There's not all that much to do or see here, but that suits me. The Yunnan university is very pretty however with neo-classical buildings, green lawns, bamboo, avenues lined with yellow ginko-tree trees, and so on.

Today I opted to get a 'cooking class' which took the form of me paying a small sum to my hostel, the staff then took me to a local market in the morning to buy ingredients, we cooked lunch together, and then we cooked several dishes for dinner. The market was fun, full of bustle, grot, people and vegetables and parts of animals I never knew existed. Cooking involved little more than putting too much oil into a wok at high temperature, adding ingredients, serving. My menu was as follows:

• Tomato with egg - a favourite in China
• Gong bao chicken - chicken with peanuts
• Mapo tofu - spicy tofu dish
• A kind of potato pancake

When you travel you find you tend to bump into the same people again in random places - in fact this happens so regularly that it raises serious questions about the nature of the Universe. Anyway, in Kunming I met a cyclist who I last met in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. He's ridden from Germany to Kunming, and lost over 20ks in the process. We went for Indian food.

Not much more to tell. Today was a sunny day. It was warm - and we're still at 2,000m above sea level.