So we are back on the western tourist trail and it feels good but the beds are very hard (typical). Our hostel (Camelia Youth Hostel) is a converted hotel that was recently renovated. The rooms are huge, minimalist and clean with a bathroom containing the first normal shower we have seen in China. Last night was reasonably quiet but warm without air-con and the mozzies feasted on us (well me). After toast for breakfast (yes please) we headed to the Public Security Bureau to extend our visa. The main reason to be in Kunming was that we have only a week left on our visas and reports indicate that the process can take a week. The helpful officer at the empty PSB office told us that we need not apply until our last day (although if declined, which is unlikely, we would only have the rest of the day to get out of China) and recommended that we rather get the extension in our next stop (Dali) as their system is computerized and should take only one day. I hope she was not just trying to get rid of us because she wanted to finish her game of mahjong.

Kunming, albeit pleasant, is just a big city with few interesting sights for us so we jumped at the chance to get out sooner. We’ll probably be back here for 3 days to get our Vietnamese visa in any event. We strolled around a couple of city blocks in search of supplies. First stop was a book store (danger) to find some maps of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Second to a WalMart (a real one) to stock up. We left the WalMart with a 100% success rate (which is rare for us) including 40 instant tea sachets, deodorant (something you cannot get in China), mozzie spray and an electric mozzie mat with enough tabs to decimate Kunming’s mosquito population. I resisted the urge to buy a £10 electric fan to add to the facilities in our room. Exiting the store we gulped down a Red Bull in an attempt to stay awake and stumbled back to the hostel (BTW Chinese Red Bull is nowhere near as nice as the western one – for starters it’s not carbonated).

We spent the afternoon planning, plotting, doing chores and unsuccessfully trying to stay awake. We have been using a trick to make the granite-hard beds a little softer: Remove duvet from it’s cover (every hostel has a duvet even in 30C+ heat), fold it in half and stuff it under the fitted sheet so that your torso is supported. Some of the beds are hard enough for these measures to make a difference.

In the evening we wandered downstairs to get online – the entire reception area and courtyard were packed but deadly quite – the only sound being the whirr of laptop fans and the muted clicks of keyboards. It seems backpacking around Asia has become a teleconference. There’s no need to socialize when you can get online with all your buddies back home. I suppose we do exactly he same thing when we can but it is a little sad.

[Pictures: Have been lazy taking iPhone photos for posts lately. Promise to get better at it soon !]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi