Our flight from Shanghai took us to Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province and where we had a connecting flight to Zhongdian (Shangri-la). We stayed at Kunming on our last travels and we were pleased that this time we knew the peculiarities of this strange airport. On disembarking it is necessary to actually walk out of the airport and back in the front section to book in for our next flight!

The airport was now familiar to us, as were the huge displays of beautiful tropical plants that are so much part of Yunnan Province. In fact the whole airport is decked out with colourful tourist promotions of this tropical and exotic Indo-Chinese influenced region.

The Water Splashing Festival of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture is also very famous and very much part of the Kunming airport tourist promotions. The festival apparently washes away the dirt, sorrow and demons of the old year and brings in happiness for the new. We often wondered about its attraction as we could think of nothing worse than being drowned in water whilst fully clothed.... 

Yunnan Province is of significant ecological importance and the jungle areas in the south are home to a vast array of unique and often rare plant and animal species, including tigers, leopards, elephants and golden-haired monkeys. 

The province is home also to fascinating and diverse minority populations; in fact a third of all China's ethnic minorities reside here.

It was exciting to be back in Kunming, even if just for a connecting flight.

Waiting for our flight to Zhongdian we chatted with two interesting passengers, May and Feipko. They live in Shanghai city but have a "holiday house" just being built in the old part of Zhongdian. We had a fascinating time talking with them about the 30 years they have been living in Shanghai and about their beloved get away destination of Zhongdian. "The air smells so sweet in Zhongdian" I remember May saying to us. We would meet with them several times during our visit to Zhongdian and have also stayed in contact with them since this trip.