A Wobble or Two and a Good Day for Water Vendors
Yesterday I decided to explore some of the parks which are located down the other end of town. After walking the streets for two days one of my feet was objecting so after spying some bikes under the hostel stairs I decided to brave the traffic and ride. The traffic is much less here although few streets have the usual secondary roads for smaller vehicles. Many of the roads in Kunming had dispensed with them too. A sign of the times; need for more car road space.
While I was waiting for the bike seat to be lowered I noticed the weather noticeboard. Not an auspicious omen.
Nice leafy subsidisry road
Read the noticeboard
One of new the guests stopped to chat and said that she had returned from being out because it was too hot.
Anyway I set off with a bit of a wobble and 1200 mls of water. None of the streets to the gardens had the secondary streets so I rode on the footpath and wobbled every time I had to slow down for the numerous obstructions. Not sure if I should have been there, but it was the safest place for me. I wasn’t the only one there, but most bikes were on the roads. There are very few bikes here. Mostly, its cars and big scooters. Kunming was the same although it did have a few electric bikes of the sort which are the mainstay of my city.
The first garden I reached was the medicinal one. It was nice and green, well laid out and I was able to ride around.
Signs and captions were in English and Chinese. There were hardly any visitors although the parking lot contained many buses. It really was rather hot and I was glad I wasn’t walking.
There were no market stalls within the garden so I had to ration the water. I would have spent more time and paid more attention if I hadn’t been concerned about dehydrating. Just as I was near the entrance and deciding whether I could last a bit longer I saw an elderly Chinese man dressed only in baggy shorts walking briskly up and down an area of shaded pavement while moving his arms above his head rhythmically. Guess it was his daily or afternoon exercise. Staff live onsite and occasional signs pointed to “uptown staff.”
I exited the park into the parking lot.
My trusty stead in the orchid garden
There I found some tourist stalls, a hole in the wall refreshment shop and a mini tea processing plant.
The tea processing plant was set up for tourists and was complemented by vast numbers of spaces for tea tasting and a shop for purchasing tea and decorative items made from tea.
Frangapani from an enormous tree
Part of the tea processing plant.
Some of the artistic expressions available in tea
The next garden was an extremely large one of tropical plants.
I wasn’t allowed to take the bike. In retrospect I should have paid extra and taken one of the electric carts used by the Chinese. I and a Chinese bloke who was not part of a tour group were the only ones walking.
Some of the trees appeared very old and various grasses and plants had been used as lawn in different areas.
The real lawn was so green and smooth that some of it looked like carpet. And there were no smiling grass signs. In northern China grass usually has a sign on it effectively stating “keep off the grass.” However, it is often couched in terms of “the grass smiles for you not walking on it.”
When I asked someone why it was written that way I was told that the way I’m familiar with is too direct. However, Chinese can be very direct in other areas.
I was asked my aged in a hotel by one of the staff hanging around while I waited for her colleague to book me in. She was taking a long time to do little. I was feeling crabby due to the lack of action and because it was past midnight after a long dayso I refused, politely.
A few days before, while I was watching monkeys in the zoo a little kid ran up and without any preamble asked me my age. The night prior to that I had previewed a section of The King and I where the King of Siam asked Deborah Kerr her age. That really was the time when a lady didn’t reveal her age so she made up a preposterous number. I did the same.
So be aware what influences you because I would never have thought of it before. The kid ran off and the student who was with me but had wandered off heard the kid and told him it was not polite to ask foreigners their age. I’m often asked my age and occasionally my income.
This was taken 75 minutes after the other and the flower opened significantly more
So I don’t understand the smiling grass signs. Presumably grass grows fast enough in the south that it can cope with some foot traffic and doesn’t need the same protection as northern grass.
When it was closing time at the garden I headed off for a massage. I locked the bike and after reaching the top of the stairs the receptionist told me to bring it upstairs. So I had to lug it up half a storey. She said it was OK to leave it at the halfway point where she could see it.
After the massage I headed down the street in the wrong direction and found myself in the street which is closed off for a night market.
I’d never been there that late enough before so I got a quick look as I pushed the bike through. It was near a good restaurant and as I was starving I decided to eat there and deal with the issue of returning in the dark later. There is a dearth of restaurants or food stalls near the hostel so food at night has been less than ideal. One night on my return I thought I had found food, but as it was being made I realised it was a dessert item. I thought some already cooked pastie type foods would be suitable so I bought one too. However, when I bit into it realised I had two dessert items and no real food. Fortunately I’d had a very large and healthy lunch.
