reading signs

March 30th

Morning?

We woke up really early 7am, early for us anyways. Most of the trip I had no morning because we slept through it. We took down camp in only 30mins, 'On the road again'. We stopped for breakfast (hot noodles with toppings)in a small town only 5km away. I could read the sign!! small-xiao, middle-jong and Big-da posted on the wall!! I always look at the chinese signs and ads and see how many characters I recognize. It's going to be weird to be able to read all of the signs in Canada and understand everyone. I'm not ready for that.

Kunming (capital city of Yunnan province)
Buying a train ticket in Kunming...not so easy

We got to Kunming, it didn't take that long to find the train station and bus station. I thought that since I spoke more Chinese now it would be easier t buy a ticket but no...I lined up 3 times before I was in the right line-up. I asked people in front of me if it was the line to buy a ticket to Guangzhou and they just nodded. Ha I got to the front the first time to ask how much, when, and if I could take my bicycle with me. The dude told me that there was no train to Guangzhou but that my bicycle was free in very broken English like my broken Chinese. I lined up again in the next line-up and the lady sold me a ticket to Guangdezhou or something...so i refunded my ticket. Finally someone told me to go to line 2 to buy a ticket to Guangzhou. Then I had a lot of difficulty asking about bringing my bike with me. So I just bought the ticket. Alex figured out a way for me to bring my bicycle with me yay! It cost 55 kwai. I bought about 90 gloves for tree planting, man they're bulky but they only cost me less than 1 kwai each and in Canada they would cost 42kwai each at least which is about 6$ CAD. We shopped for some boots for Alex but didn't find any.