Day 23 - Drive from Shangrila to Kunming

Friday, August 17

The temperature increased dramatically as we drove from the mountains of Shangrila to Kunming.  The temperature was 12 C ( 54 F ) at 7:00 am in Shangrila and it was 31 C ( 88 F ) at 6:00 pm as we arrived in Kunming.

We left the typical mountain scenery and by midday we arrived in Dali. We brought the car to the Suzuki dealer to have the oil changed while we went for lunch. After we finished our lunch, we continued our trip to Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. We settled in to our hotel, and then walked to a local market area where we had a BBQ supper of beef, zuchini, lotus root, chicken wings, pork loin, chicken ligaments, duck tonque, duck intestine and duck liver.

After supper, we visited the market square area, where people were dancing, children were playing in small swimming pools filled with rice or oats ( instead of sand), musicians were playing music and artists were demonstrating different arts and crafts.

This province has a lot of fertile land and it has the highest population of ' non-Han ' Chinese. The people here look more like the people in the surrounding countries to the south and west and most of them have maintained their cultural heritages.

Tomorrow we will be continuing south.