Today is my mom's 64th birthday! She woke still not feeling great - she started having sinus problems yesterday morning. We decided to go to the Stone Forest today. We booked a tour but it was all in the local dialect so Leon had to do some translating.
The tour guide (not Leon but the lady guide) was screeching into the microphone giving us all a headache on the bus. At one point, I was stuffing tissue into my ears to dampen the noise. We asked her at the jade place to talk softer for the next round. The tour company made us stop by a jade place and a silver shop for an hour at each location. Then we ran into a traffic jam and had to sit in the bus for a bit. The tour also stopped at a place to provide us lunch - probably our worst Chinese meal - it was very plain and everyone was shoveling it in quickly so we could get to the forest.
We were the only foreigners on the tour. There were two kids - one was 18 months and one was 4 years old. They became fast friends and provided some entertainment while we were stuck in the traffic jam.
After scarfing down lunch, we finally headed to the Stone Forest. We had to catch a shuttle bus to the main gate and then walk quite a bit to even reach the entrance. The stone forest was neat. It is limestone formations that have trees and other vegetation scattered throughout. We saw the main attractions and climbed up to an observation tower which gave a nice view of the forest.
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| Tickets for shuttle bus |
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| Tickets to Stone Forest |
We then road back towards Kunming. It was neat to see all the farmland as we drove to/from the stone forest. There were goat herders with their herds and lots of corn fields on the sides of the mountain. We also saw some veggies growing under plastic and some cucumbers growing on trellises.
We stopped one more time at a high end jade place. They did some presentation and then gave us all a small piece of jade. We got dropped off at the old train station in Kunming and tried to find a taxi. This was an impossible task (they didn't want to drive us within the first ring road) so we got in an unmarked car that would take us to Leon's for 30 RMB ($5).
Teresa prepared dinner for us when we returned. It was some of the leftovers from the night before along with some fresh stir fried veggies. She also picked up a cake from a bakery for mom's birthday. We sang happy birthday to my mom and then dug into the yummy cake. After a long day, we were all ready for bed.
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