Arriving in China

We were so sad to leave Thailand, but very excited to explore China! The night before we left, we asked the front desk at our hotel to schedule us a taxi ride for 5:30am the next morning. It took us 30 minutes to get to the DMK airport in Bangkok, which was 500 baht. This is equal to $13.83. For only a few cents, we could have taken the sky train a few stops to save us some money on a taxi, but we didn’t want the hassle that early.

We flew directly from the DMK airport to Kunming, China with Air Asia. This is a low cost carrier that will charge you for everything they can. Both checked and carry-on bags can only weigh a little amount and they will charge you for water, snacks, etc. while on the plane. They pack the aircraft with seats that are super tight, so we wouldn’t recommend this airline for any long flights. Also, when we received our luggage in China, our suitcase was broken. The handle was jammed and wouldn’t move up or down and there was a huge chunk missing from the top. We asked to be reimbursed for the damage, but they said no.

Before leaving the DMK airport, we had some extra time to spare so we did the most American thing we could. We got Starbucks and Krispy Kreme. Also, Taylor found a yummy smoothie shop!

Thailand doesn’t celebrate Christmas, so we were very impressed with their selection of festive donuts.

It didn’t take us long to get through the Kunming airport because there were no crowds and customs went smoothly.

Once we landed in China, we found our good friend Caitlyn, our driver, and headed into the city to find lunch! Surprise, surprise, we found a pizza place. It was called Brooklyn Pizza and was very modern and westernized. We ordered fresh mozzarella sticks (which were some of the best we’ve ever tasted), parmesan chicken pizza, and buffalo chicken pizza. We also ordered water, but in China they believe that in the colder months you are only supposed to drink hot beverages like tea and water. I couldn’t adjust to the hot water so I ordered bottled water the remainder of the trip and received the strangest looks.

We highly recommend this place if you’re looking for the comfort of American food and craving pizza!

Following lunch we headed to the train station for our 3-hour train ride into Jianshui.

The train ride was filled with incredible views, funny stares from locals, and a really cute child sitting beside us. We are so glad that we took the train because we were able to see a ton of the countryside.

Upon arriving in the city, we took our bags back to the apartment then hopped on mopeds and went for a ride to dinner at a restaurant in Old Town. The architecture was all from Chinese dynasty times and absolutely stunning. We ordered several family style dishes that were amazing!! We were too hungry to take pictures of the food, but it was all great.

After dinner we hopped aboard the moped again to tour Old Town under the lights. Taylor really enjoyed driving the moped around and was soon acclimated to driving in Asia. We wrapped up our scenic ride home and settled in for the night.

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