Kunming, Yunan, China 🇨🇳

When travelling to Yunnan the first stop for most is the capital, Kunming, because it has the biggest airport. We stayed near Green Lake Park which was perfect. This park was one of the best parts of Kunming as it had great people watching. Here locals were doing all sorts of activities from tai chi to playing badminton. It is also a great place to head to in the morning. Especially since our daughter enjoys waking up before anything else is open.

The city also has an old town/ historic neighborhood worth visiting and some nice temples.

Yuantong Temple

We also visited the Yunnan Nationalities Village. Here you can get a glimpse into the lives of all the minority groups that live in Yunnan by seeing sample architecture, dances, clothing and tasting food.

The ”must see” place in Kunming is really about an hour and a half away from the city. It’s called the Stone Forest or Shilin. It’s pretty nice but it isn’t worth a visit to Kunming just for this. Jiuxiang Scenic Area, a massive cave system with a river and waterfalls, is not too far away so we stopped there before going back to the city. Beautiful, yes; however, they destroyed most of the natural beauty trying to make more tourist entertainment. There was a water slide, arcade, karaoke and worst of all loud speakers where the were asking people to come take cheesy tourist pictures.

Shilin Stone Forest

Shilin Stone Forest

Shilin Stone Forest

Jiuxiang Cave

Jiuxiang Cave

All in all Kunming was a great city to visit. It is worth a 2-3 day visit to see the sights and get a sense of the city’s vibe.

Shuangyue Bay, Huizhou, China 🇨🇳

Since February, the world of travel has been at a virtual standstill. China has made good efforts to get the spread of COVID-19 under control. As of today, our province has had 0 new cases over multiple days. We are feeling fortunate to be in a scenario where the threat of contacting the virus is not on our minds 24/7. We still move with precautions (wearing masks on public transport, washing hands often, wiping down surfaces, trying to keep to outdoor activities) but the constant level of threat has dramatically fallen. Due to this, we decided to take a short two- day trip to the coast to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

Huizhou is about 3 hours from our house using a combination of taxi and train. We stayed at the Howard Johnson Sandalwoods Hot Spring Resort and it was better then we expected. We are not usually resort people, but now that we have a child there are just certain comforts that resorts offer that make them super appealing. Generally, resorts are family friendly, have several onsite food options, and staff can speak English.

We arrived at the hotel around 4:00pm and were impressed by our large room and hot tub on the balcony. The property of the hotel was spacious and well landscaped. We headed to the beach which was disappointing, but to be honest we didn’t have high hopes. The sand was super gravelly and the water was quite rough. Once you wandered past the hotel property there was A LOT of trash on the beach. Despite this, it was nice to take a deep breath of salty air after months of being in the house.

Along with the 7 pools, the hotel also had a kids play room, Sky Bar, several restaurants, and other indoor entertainment. It was a super relaxing couple of days. It was nice to have a taste of traveling again as it felt like things were headed back to “normal.”