Arrival in Kunming (and postscript on Chinese Technology)

When I left Xi'An this morning it was raining, and I think I brought the weather with me.  It was overcast when I arrived at my hostel, so I picked up my free welcome beer (!) and sat out on the rooftop patio, at which point it immediately started pouring rain!

When I arrived at the Kunming airport I asked the lady at the information desk what is the best way to get to my hostel, and she said something like "taxi over here ... something something go downstairs something else," so I just punted and went for a taxi.  As we were driving into town I saw a high-speed LRT that looked like it might go to the airport, so I'll have to look into that for my exit.  We were on meter and the cabbie made me pay the toll fare (10 RMB), not sure if I was getting scammed or not? On the way to the Xi'An airport (which was MUCH smaller than I expected for a city of 6 or 7 or 8 million) the cabbie paid the tolls, but I was on a flat fee ...

Postscript on technology over here - I observe that everything here is based on an immense amount of manual labour.  And the technology doesn't seem to be in an effort to replace people, just to streamline the process and make things more efficient.  Two interesting pieces of technology that I've mentioned - the little "cell phone like gadgets" that the servers use to fax orders back to the kitchen, and the "prepaid" cards at some food courts and at the night market in Dengfeng.  (If you don't recall this one, you buy a card for 50 or 100 RMB, and then when you buy food at the different marts, they just "tap" the card and the proper amount gets deducted.) These make things run incredibly efficiently, and you gain  huge amount of respect for just how quickly and efficiently things get done.  Everything I see or read about ow things are done over here involves a huge amount of people and manual labour, but the processes are all streamlined and efficient.

Even "QQ" and "Weixin" - sitting down and logging onto a computer takes FOREVER and it's much easier to just pop out your cell phone and chat with whoever.  You can even do it when you're just standing around bored at work :-)

Well it seems to have stopped raining in Kunming.  So, should I go for  walk, or order another beer and enjoy the patio?  Tough decisions when you're on holiday ...

PS  Check out the cabbies filling up in Xi'An.  Crazy ...