Our flight from Chengdu (Sichuan Province) to Kunming (Yunnan Province) was uneventful. Although the weather in Chengdu provided us with some relief of the heat, it is on our arrival in Kunming that we really felt the comfortable spring-like temperature. After recovering our backpacks from the baggage claim, we planned on taking the taxi into the downtown given its close proximity but to our surprise, there was a very long queue of people waiting for a taxi. We did not let that stop us – we opted for the city bus. Once in downtown, we took a taxi to our target hotel. Given the price of this first hotel, we decided to visit another hotel. As usual, Jenny walks-in to hotel and verifies availability, quality and price of the room and Victoria and I stay in the taxi. Well on our second hotel visit, Jenny came back to the taxi and confirmed that one of the room was acceptable, then Victoria and I walked-in to hotel lobby and suddenly the three hotel attendants looked at me and their face expression changed. They quickly explained to Jenny that the hotel could not accept any foreigners (laowei) as the hotel is not rated high enough for this. To our disappointment, we set out again in search of a hotel. After a few additional visits, we finally found a hotel by mid-afternoon.
After settling in, we ventured out in search of a travel agency that would help us get our Tibet entry permit. We learned in Chengdu that it would take between 3 to 5 days of processing to obtain such a permit. Every foreigners wanting to visit Tibet need to join a tour group arranged by a travel agency. As our travel guide book recommended a particular travel agent, we noted the address and walked a very long distance to realize that the address in the travel guide book was incorrect. On our walk back to the hotel, we finally found the travel agent, Mr Cheng. He promptly collected our travel expectations (sights, duration,..) and explained the realities of traveling to Tibet. We agreed to a four days visit and would be escorted by a guide during our stay in Tibet. It quickly became evident that the bragging privileges of saying that we went to Tibet had a premium cost. It felt just like a TV commercial from the Visa Credit Card… “A visit to Tibet … priceless” except that this travel agent does not even accept any credit card. The reality is that we’ve not been very successful at charging much on our credit card anywhere in China. After negotiating slightly the package price, we finally agreed on the price tag of this Tibetan visit. We left copies of our documentation and a deposit with Mr Cheng in order to process our Tibet entry permit and make our flights from Kunming to Lhasa (Tibet) and from Lhasa to Shanghai.
As arrangement for our Tibet visit were now confirmed, we took this opportunity to review our travel plan for the remainder of time in Yunnan for the next 8 days or so. We had initially planned to go south in the province, more precisely in the Xishuangbanna region (Jinghong), to relax and visit many villages of minority groups. Given that we wanted to avoid taking more flights and that Jinghong was a 10+ hours bus ride, we opted to go north and visit the cities of Dali, Lijiang and Shangrila. The bus ride to Dali was a mere 4 hours, 3 hours more would bring us to Lijiang and an additional 5 hours would bring us to the mystical Shangrila.
Given that we are planning to come back to Kunming around the end of this month in preparation for our flight to Lhasa, we decided to only stay one night in town.