The Stone Forest in Yunnan, China is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The stone formations were created as the limestone eroded.
The Stone Forest (South China Karst) area was a shallow sea some 270 million years ago (the Permian period) when the sandstone and limestone deposits were formed. The entire Shilin National Scenic Area (昆明市石林风景区) covers an area of 400 square km.
Duoyishu Village is in Yuanyang County, Yunnan, China. I took a private tour for my travels through Yunnan to make things easy on me (China and Kenya are the only places I have done this – because they are more difficult to travel by yourself than most places are).
I took these photos on my visit to Duoyishu Village. I enjoyed my visit. I will post again with more photos from the many surrounding beautiful rice fields.
I think this is an interesting blue truck.
View of green rice fields from my guesthouse in Duoyishu Village. The other photos are from close by, but some may be from a different village.
Yunnan Nationalities Villages is located on the east bank of Dianchi Lake in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. All photos in this post are by John Hunter.
The village covers 25 ethnic groups found in Yunnan with examples of traditional houses and guides dressed in traditional clothing. China has a total of 56 recognized ethnic groups. I don’t remember which houses and traditional clothing are which ethnic group (please comment if you have information to share).
Grand Mosque of Shadian in Gejiu City, Yunnan, China is one of the largest mosques in China. The mosque can hold 10,000 people for prayers. It is patterned after the Nabawi Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia.
One of the things I enjoy about traveling is the exploring local areas and finding interesting sites that were not what drew you to an area. All the photos are by me during my visit in 2013 (see more photos by John Hunter).
The Mosque of Shadian was established here during the Ming Dynasty (1488-1505). According to the plaque it has remained in service since, though with several destructions of the buildings. The version of the mosque seen in the photos was completed in 2010.
Grand Hall, prayer room
Jianshui, Yunnan, China has several tourist destinations including an old town with a restored Qing Dynasty mansion and garden and the Jianshui Temple of Confucius. The Jianshui wet market is primarily for the locals with a few tourists, like me, that take in some local culture.
The market isn’t really much different than many such markets all over South East and East Asia. They each vary a bit but are pretty similar.
Some of the rest of this post might be a bit much for some, so if you are squeamish you might want to skip it. One of the interesting things about traveling is seeing how differently people think and how our culture guides our thoughts and feelings.
As a tourist I don’t usually do a great deal of research in advance. I do like to find out what are some of the most popular tourist destinations. And to look for those things I like a great deal, such as hiking.
I useful find myself with a list of things I want to do and a place to stay. Sometimes I had an idea of where things we located and what might be good to do on the same day. But often, I did not. I would sometimes get a list of good restaurants but I would almost never actually get to them.
I do like walking around in a new city and getting a feel for things. Using a good old fashion map worked for this. But I would often waste a fair amount of time when I got lost. GPS mapping seemed like a perfect solution for my travel needs.
While I have been using the internet a long time, I have never had a smart phone. But I got an iPad mini and decided to test out my idea of using GPS and mapping as I walked around. Looking at the options, I decided I would rather create my own map so I could have the details I cared about.
I tried in out (I bought an iPad mainly for this mapping function but also to use as a book reader) in China (Hong Kong, Guilin, Yangshuo, Yunnan and Shanghai) and it went very well. Here is my map for Shanghai:
I am now making Curious Cat Tourist Maps available online. I used Open Maps (and umap) which I am very pleased with (Here is a link to the Curious Cat Hong Kong Tourist map as another example). I can include those items that interest me (tourist destination, lodging, eating and transit) and include background info (like what subway stop for a particular designation etc.).
The scenery in Yangshuo (near Guilin), China was great. Floating down the river on bamboo rafts was wonderful. I floated down a second river the day after the first because I liked it so much.
I was happy with, Amy, my guide for Yangshuo. Her son was the driver. I don’t usually use guides but for China I am glad I did (it is very difficult to get by compared to Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.). Th costs were much more than those places without a guide but the charges were reasonable. If you can afford it, I recommend getting a guide and Amy was good.