Day 12: Kunming, Thursday 2nd October 2025
Xingyao Rd Station, Line 1, Kunming Metro
24°, cloudy, fine spells, some rain.
NZ$1 = Y4
Y1=NZ$0.25
Woke up at 8am, down for breakfast at 9am. A mainly Chinese buffet, with eggs noogles, bread, cakes, etc.
Back to the room, got organised and then out at 10am. We walked to Huancheng South Road ( South Ring Road ) Metro station ( 15 minutes north of the hotel ( note: the Kunming Railway Station metro station was closest to the hotel, but as we would see later took longer to get to ). We caught the 2/1 line south to Xingyao Rd, arriving at 10:40am. This metro station was above ground, built over a main road. We walked for 25 minutes west from the station, through a residential area with apartment complexes, then along the Baoxiang River / Canal, then through an area of ‘proper chinese’ shops ( ducks hanging in the window, birds for sale in cages, traditional clothing shop, and most of the shops looking like they only started operating this morning, and might not be there tomorrow ).
We arrived at the east gate of Guandu Ancient town and walked in. The entry appeared to be free and like most other ‘ancient towns’ we had been to so far appeared to have been built / rebuilt in the last 20 years, but this one had done a good job of preserving the feel of an ancient town, and it wasn’t too busy. We were getting into the start of the Golden Week where most Chinese people all took holidays at the same time, so we were expecting things to get busier over the next week or so.
The Guandu Ancient Town was a mix of shopping streets, large garden areas, temples, food markets etc. and seemed to be being used by lots of families for picnics days out. We walked west through the town, went to a temple, then bought coffees from Luckin ( Y37 ), sat and got looked at a lot my passers by ( there were not many white people to be seen, but people were very polite and left us alone, but some took photos and a lot just stared! ). We had one girl brave enough to approach us and talk to us to practice her English.
We carried on walking through the rest of the shopping/hotel area then back to the east gate, then headed south and exited through the south east gate, then walked back to Xingyao Rd station via more main roads than those we used to get to Guandu earlier. We arrived at the station at 12:50pm. Up to the platform and then I got a drink from one of the many ‘honesty vending machines’ which are scattered around the streets and at most stations; it is a fridge with no lock on the door, you take the drink you want and using the QR code pay for it using Alipay. In most countries we have been to the fridge would be empty within 10 minutes and no money would be paid; but not in China.
We caught the next train back to the hotel arriving at 2pm. We exited at Kunming Station metro station to see what the route was like back to the hotel; it took about 25 minutes as we could not go through the Railway Station ( due to the need for a ticket to get in ) and the only route was around the station building through an underpass.
We rested for the rest of the afternoon. At some stage in the afternoon there was a loud racket outside the hotel and we looked out see large amounts of fireworks being let off ( the explosive type not the pretty type ) right in the street out side the local shops. We would see a lot of this over the next week as it was part of the Golden Week celebrations, as were the buying of moon cakes.
Headed out again at 6:30pm, looked around for tea, found a place on Beijing Rd ( we were normally looking for somewhere with pictures of the food or an English menu or QR codes on the table so we could order on our phones, and somewhere with locals eating in it. Tonight we were also looking for rice dishes which are not very common in this part of China ). We ordered 1 pork noodle dish and 1 beef rice, 2 beers and paid Y37. Very tasty. Back to the hotel at 8pm after getting supplies.
Zoomable Map ( pin is located roughly on our hotel location )