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So we have arrived in China!!!!
Wow it is soo different here compared to the rest of South East Asia. Not a singal letter of English can be seen here never mind the hearing of it!
We eventually found our hostel after an eventful day of travelling by bus to Kunming's outskirts and then a taxi ride in to the city centre. That makes it sound easy but it certainly wasn't! A lot of guess work was done and hand signalling! But we made it!
Kunming's highland scenery is beautiful and compares to that which we have just seen in Sapa. Kunming is also home to many ethnic minority groups living on its outskirts.
Everything here is absolutely humongous it's crazy! We didn't see a single Westerner until reaching our hostel, and then there was only a couple of us, the rest were all Chinese! The Chinese LOVE to stare at us, it makes us feel pretty special actually! And they love to spit, ALL the time - it's pretty discussing!
Our second day in Kunming was spent visiting The Kingdom of the Little People a theme park that features comic performances by people with dwarfism. Ash and i actually didn't realise this place was a 'theme park' but naively I thought that it was where a large group of dwarfs had set up home together and was interested in seeing the dwarf sized houses that these people had built for themselves. I was so so wrong! And got a huge shock on arrival.
The park claims that it provides employment to people who would otherwise be unable to find work, but both of us were definitely unsure on this. Still undecided to whether the whole thing was exploitation or not. Yes these people looked happy but they were all dressed in fairy tale outfits and dancing around for us! It is without doubt the strangest thing we have both ever seen in our lives. The weirdest experience of our whole trip definitely! There was even a dwarf king who looks after his 'empire' - he has been chosen as their king due to the fact he is only 1 meter tall. This place was so wrong in so many ways, and of course the Chinese loved it! Laughing and pointing - we felt pretty awkward and left early! Not knowing whether to laugh or cry!
Trying to stay up late tonight as we have decided to book ourselves on a 22 hour train journey tomorrow morning and need to pass some hours by sleeping on it!
I've asked Ash to write about the butterfly place we also visited today connected to the dwarf village called 'the world ecological centre for butterflies' he refused, I think he is still annoyed about the whole day!!! I'll let him tell you when we get back!!
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