{"id":503,"date":"2010-07-26T00:36:05","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T16:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/?p=503"},"modified":"2010-07-26T00:36:05","modified_gmt":"2010-07-25T16:36:05","slug":"two-new-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/?p=503","title":{"rendered":"Two New Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two New Experiences; a Sleeper Bus and a Chinese Dorm<\/p>\n

I took a sleeper bus from Dali to Kunming on Friday night.\u00a0 There were no sleeper train tickets available so I decided I needed the experience of a sleeper bus.\u00a0 What I had heard of them was OK so I wasn\u2019t concerned.\u00a0 I just forgot that I don\u2019t sleep on moving vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The purple line shows the route between Dali and Kunming<\/p>\n

I was told to report to the travel agency where I bought the ticket and I would be taken to meet the bus.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t too keen on that as the travel agency was in the centre of the old city.\u00a0 The old city is pedestrian only and covered in cobble stones.\u00a0 My pull along bag doesn\u2019t like uneven surfaces so it was looking like an ordeal.\u00a0 Soon after leaving the travel agency I walked past a leather shop and walked out with a new bag which takes cobble stones with ease. It solved the problem of inadequate luggage space and cobble stones, but has created new ones for when I have to lift or carry it.<\/p>\n

I arrived at the travel agency early and waited.\u00a0 I was then escorted to the edge of the city to meet the bus which had already arrived.\u00a0 Words and pictures in the travel agency showed smart looking German buses.\u00a0 What I travelled in was a Daewoo which was so old that the non slip steel plate on the steps had worn through. It had about 6 rows of double-decker steel bunks along each side with 5 rows in the centre.\u00a0 The back seemed to consist of a row of adjoining beds. The beds were narrow but adequate and the mattress was reasonably thick.\u00a0 The doona could have done with a wash long ago. I had asked for a bottom bunk and was allocated the one closest to the door. The bunk opposite me was for the drivers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of the interior of the bus<\/p>\n

The bus did not leave for over half an hour as it waited for late passengers.\u00a0 Passengers and friends got on and off the bus and it was a bit of a circus.\u00a0 More passengers arrived. Eventually we set off with 2 drivers and a conductor. We stopped at the new town of Dali known as Xiaguan where we collected a few more passengers and exchanged a driver.\u00a0 Fortunately he took his incense with him.<\/p>\n

We dropped the conductor off somewhere in Xiaguan and set off again.\u00a0 The resting driver sat on a stool and chatted to driver while they both smoked.\u00a0 Later he retired to bed.\u00a0 Initially we travelled on 2 lane toll roads (China is littered with toll roads) with a bit of a delay while all of the covered trucks, the bulk of the traffic, were filtered off by police for some sort of checking.\u00a0\u00a0Later we and every other bus and truck, of which there were countless numbers, turned off the highway onto a 2 lane mostly unpaved, potholed mountain road.\u00a0 We passed endless collections of small settlements and accommodations made from \u201cstripy bag material.\u201d (The same synthetic material that very large blue, red and white stripy bags found in shops in Australia are made from.) \u00a0Fortunately there was almost no traffic going the opposite direction.\u00a0 The buses age did not prevent it from overtaking everything it encountered.\u00a0 After some hours we stopped at a petrol station.\u00a0 The drivers swapped over and we set off on a 4-6 lane highway for the remainder of the trip.\u00a0 I\u2019d been told I would arrive in Kunming around 6.30am, but the driver\u2019s speedy work on the mountain roads meant we arrived before 5am. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A bossy woman bundled me into a minivan, after we\u2019d agreed on price, and I was driven to my hostel.<\/p>\n

It is summer time and tourist spots in China are popular and it has become difficult to get various bookings.\u00a0 Hence I was unable to have a private room for the first night.\u00a0 The only bed available was in a 10 bed mixed dorm.\u00a0 The room was large and the beds were wide with the bottom bunks, which I had, having good storage.\u00a0 However, like most Chinese dorm beds the mattress was fairly thin and as it was on a wooden base I found it hard.\u00a0 Combined with the heat it was not a particularly satisfactory sleep.\u00a0 Most of the others kept very late hours and while they were fairly quiet it was still not conducive to good sleep. I have my own room for 2 nights and then have to move to a 4 person dorm for one night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beds in the dorm.\u00a0 \u00a0It even had steps instead of ladders. The steps opened for storage. \u00a0An electronically locked cupboard was under the bottom bunk and available with each bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two New Experiences; a Sleeper Bus and a Chinese Dorm I took a sleeper bus from Dali to Kunming on Friday night.\u00a0 There were no sleeper train tickets available so I decided I needed the experience of a sleeper bus.\u00a0 What I had heard of them was OK so I wasn\u2019t concerned.\u00a0 I just forgot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,31],"tags":[97,52,32,42],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dali","category-kunming","tag-dali","tag-hostels","tag-kumning","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}