Downtown
We had scheduled one day in Kunming during our vacation. There really is nothing to report on it, as it was a typical Kunming kind of day. What does that mean, you ask? Well, I guess it's a small town kind of experience. When I was growing up in the Windy Suburbs, we got our daily needs--groceries, gasoline, etc.--met in our hometown. Sometimes, if we needed something special, we'd travel out to the appropriate store. I remember making post-Christmas forays to the city of Elgin to get our new outfits altered to fit properly. If you needed something really exotic, or wanted to visit a museum or catch a ball game, you'd need to head downtown to Chicago. That was something we rarely did, and it was always a big event. That is, until I grew up and became a honest to Ghandi urban dweller.At this time in life, I've taken a bit of a step back. Our day to day needs are met just fine. But if we need to head "downtown", then we go to Kunming. There are three main things we seek out in Kunming. The first is transportation. It's the hub for the airport and buses, so if we do any traveling, we pass through Kunming. The second is our company. Since Kunming is the center of the province, and the location of our local office, we gather there every three months or so to meet with our colleagues and take care of any business that we have. The third need we fill in Kunming is for the exotic. Of course, in this case, exotic is things like hamburgers and spaghetti noodles. In our town we can get fried chicken or Snickers bars, but we can't find cocoa or corn flakes. So just about every time we visit Kunming, we have to visit Carrefour's, Metro, or Paul's Shop just to get a bag or two of Western groceries. (Though actually, we've been pretty much stocked up at home since getting a couple of care packages around Christmastime.)
So, this time through we had a typical visit: arrive in town, head over to the hotel and check in, grab dinner at a Western restaurant, do a bit of grocery shopping, and schmooze with our teammates. The only drawback was that I didn't get the hamburger I was craving. The barbecue chicken sandwich at Salvadore's made for a good second best, though.
posted by John @ 6:42 AM
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