Day 25 We woke up on the moving train and arrived in to Kunming at 10:40am. It was the beginning of the all important national holiday so the place way busy, because of a language barrier in Emie we couldn't book our next set of railway tickets so we did this at the Kunming station. We didn't manage to get the dates we were looking for- which was the 6th, so ended up booked tickets out of Kunming on the 10th, meaning we get to see more of the Yunnan province so more planning needed! Our railway pick up from the hostel hadn't arrived- surprise surprise, but luckily I'd written down directions so we made our own way there! We dropped our bags and headed straight out. The square our hostel overlooked was packed and highly decorated with flowers, we bought some spicy beef skewers and had a walk round the market next to the square which was full of bric-a-brac. There was a small noodle place under our hostel with no English at all and after asking for rice we were given a bowl or plain noodles and encouraged to fill it with what ever we wanted from the counter -our first experience of over-the-bridge noodles. We headed back to the hostel as we knew we had a lot of planning to do, we were given a free coffee voucher on arrival so we took advantage of that and knuckled down. We booked our bus tickets to Yuanyang through the hostel as the station was a 2 hour bus ride away, this was stressful as there was 2 members of VERY busy staff at the reception and another 4 playing ping-pong who refused to help! So after half an hour and £3 commission later they were booked and we were feeling relieved. Feeling hungry we left in search of food, we walked for a while but couldn't find much. We decided to stop at a strange looking restaurant that served over-the-bridge noodles, all of the ingredients were served on a tray and you poured it in a bowl of hot broth. We were sick of noodles so just stuck with rice and a tray of 'goodies', we felt like we had bought a kinder surprise. Back at the hostel they were celebrating the 12th birthday of the hostel, this was pretty much just a party for the staff and their friends, the only drink offer on was buy 12 beers get 6 free! So we decided to have 1 drink with 2 people from our room then head to bed.

Day 26 We decided to get up early for once and we headed back to the train station to book our tickets to Dali, We had planned a good route the night before so we were feeling happier. Once that was done we headed straight to Green Lake Park, the place was heaving, full of people on holiday. There was big inflatables in the lake and colourful decoration added to every statue, the Chinese love the fake Disney inspired Chinese look so this was basically the theme. We walked for ages before sitting next to one of the lakes for an hour or so just relaxing. We bought some spicy chips and walked to the Yuantong temple. The temple was beautiful, we have seen so many temples in China but this one was a bit different as it was surrounded by water with a little bridge. There was a service on so the chanting in the back ground was lovely as we walked around. We had no idea which bus to take back and since the timetables are impossible to read we decided to walk back. After an hour we found ourselves in the square over the road from our hostel and it was packed with food and market stalls, music and games. We had a walk around and bought some dumplings and meat skewers for tea before heading back to the hostel.

Day 27 We had covered most of Kunming so decided to jump on a bus out of town and visit a temple we had read about. The Bamboo temple had been described as a lovely place filled with sculptures carved out of bamboo. After a bus and a mini van up in to the mountains we arrived to find just another temple, no sculptures, nothing special just a temple. We didn't stay long! After the mini bus back down to the station we got some street food and found a really cheap supermarket so stocked up and got the bus back to hostel. We chilled out there for the afternoon, had a coffee and some of the snacks we bought, planning bits of Shanghai and Hong Kong. One of the girls in our room had mentioned a duck noodle place in the Bird and Flower market that was really nice and gave you real pieces of meat- not just bone and fat. We headed there and after about 45 minutes of walking around the market we found what we believed to be it. I ordered a small and got loads of duck breast, Lloyd ordered a large and got loads of duck breast plus some chunks of the head and neck too, once again we got to add what we wanted and not knowing what anything was we both ended up with very spicy but delicious noodles. We headed back to pack before bed.