Chiang Mai - Kunming

[ChouDoufu]

if you've got the time, want to see some countryside, plan to spend a day or two in

jinghong......or are just a cheap-ass bastidge, you can easily get to kunming by bus.

...if you don't mind spending 48 hours in transit.

CM->KM

minivan to chiang khong (350 baht) 10am pickup from your hotel, arrive by 4pm.

ferry across to huay xai (40 baht)

overnight in huay xai (guesthouses start at 40K kip for basic fan room w/o TV)

bus to jinghong (700 baht) the owner of friendship guesthouse will get you a ticket,

and have you dropped off at the bus station. bus leaves 7:30am

stops for lunch in boten, arrives jinghong around 6pm.

bus to kunming (200 RMB) buses leave almost hourly, catch any of the next three sleeper

buses, arrive kunming between 6-9am.

shuttle to kunming (4 RMB) jinghong bus will drop you at kunming's new south bus station,

half hour by shuttle (route #C71) to the bus station near

kunming's main train station on beijing road.

KM->CM

sleeper bus to jinghong (200-250 RMB) you can plan to arrive early am in jinghong. bus

station lobby is open as they have a guesthouse upstairs (single

room 60 RMB), and a small shop selling drinks and snacks just

outside.

bus to huay xai (120 RMB) ticket office opens at 6am. bus leaves 6:40am. arrives in

huay xai around 5pm. you might be able to ferry over to chiang

khong before immigration closes. or not. doesn't matter, as the

last minivan leaves at 5pm.

minivan to chiang mai (350 baht) ticket purchased from friendship guesthouse includes the

ferry, and tuktuk to namkhorn guesthouse from where the minivan

leaves at 10:30 am. arrive in chiang mai by 4pm, drop off only

at their guesthouse, thaepae road, soi 4.

[ChouDoufu]

sorry about the formatting.... note that the huay xai - jinghong bus runs daily except sunday.

[millwall_fan]

That's really useful information Chou Doufu. I often get asked questions like that behind the bar at The Olde Bell, so its always good to keep up to date with people 'in the know'

[davidgtr]

Curious if you have actually done this trip recently, as the last time I rode up the Houei Xai - Luang Nam Tha road there was 60 kms of road construction, making it somewhat unpleasant.

[ChouDoufu]

yepper, did this route by bus, both ways, this month. currently only 30km of roadworks,

only 10km or which would be unpleasant. should be even less by the end of july, when

i plan to bicycle back to china.

as for hwy 13 road conditions:

huay xai-km 160: no problems.

km 160 - km 150: some rough spots and old patched areas. not too bad. generally flat-ish.

km 148 - km 143: same as above, but more hills.

km 142 - km 139: very rough. gravel, missing pavement. steep downhill sections->north.

km 138 - km 132: very rough as above, but low, rolling hills or valley.

km 131 - km 128: a few rough spots, nothing severe. uphill->north.

km 128 - km 127: currently being repaved.

km 127 - china: no problems.

if heading south to odomxai at na teuy, road work begins 100m south of the intersection.

[davidgtr]

yepper, did this route by bus, both ways, this month. currently only 30km of roadworks,

only 10km or which would be unpleasant. should be even less by the end of july, when

i plan to bicycle back to china.

as for hwy 13 road conditions:

huay xai-km 160: no problems.

km 160 - km 150: some rough spots and old patched areas. not too bad. generally flat-ish.

km 148 - km 143: same as above, but more hills.

km 142 - km 139: very rough. gravel, missing pavement. steep downhill sections->north.

km 138 - km 132: very rough as above, but low, rolling hills or valley.

km 131 - km 128: a few rough spots, nothing severe. uphill->north.

km 128 - km 127: currently being repaved.

km 127 - china: no problems.

if heading south to odomxai at na teuy, road work begins 100m south of the intersection.

Thanks for the detailed report. Good stuff. How ere you recording the kms?

The Na Teuy - Oudom Xai road really sucked in Feb-March, but they were working on it big time.

Cheers

Edited May 19, 2011 by Maestro
Removed link to poster's website.

[luvthailand]

I took the overnight bus from Kunming to North Vietnam (near Sapa) in 2007 and it was the hardest trip of my life, and I have been to a lot of countries and made a lot of bus trips. It was a horrible road, the bus had no bathrooms and hardly stopped, and the conditions on the Chinese bus made it worse. I would never do it again. There were literally people crying out on the bus due to the bad conditions and lack of bathroom stops. And we were stacked horizontally in the back in tiny beds, 5 across. My feet were hanging over the edge and my space was the same as my shoulder width. There was no boundary between you and the adjacent person. Once when there was unexpected traffic, the lady laying next to me (who had refused to let me use my entire space because she had some kind of weird bag with her, until my Chinese friend yelled at her), ran off the bus and squatted to go to the bathroom on the road, in full view of all the stopped cars. Some of the bumps were so severe, that we almost seemed to hit the ceiling. As much as I hate to make the analogy, the term slave ship conditions comes to mind.

Also, in Kunming at the bus station, a guy got on the bus to talk to us. He targets foreigners and speaks no English. Anyway, we ended up paying him (my friend and I) the equivalent of about $4 US dollars each for overweight bags. It actually says on the bus slip (which is in Mandarin only) that you can be charged for overweight bags, and our bags did actually exceed the limit on the slip. My friend was a native Chinese speaker. Apparently, others knew it was a scam, including the driver, but said nothing. So don't pay this.

Actually, I thought Kunming was a great city in many ways. The biggest problem is that you really have to speak Chinese there. Without a Chinese friend, I would have had problems at restaurants, I am sure.

I absolutely loved the food in Muslim Alley. It is described in Lonely Planet.

[ChouDoufu]

that sounds tough, nearly as bad as the hanoi-vientienne busride from hel_l i've read about.

really no problems on this trip. i speaky chinese, maybe that helped. loads of hawkers at the old kunming station targeting foreigners, but only wanting to sell transport to dali. the new station requires that you show a ticket and run your bags through the xray scanner in order to access the waiting area and the buses. when you buy your ticket, they'll spin the monitor around so you can see the seating chart. don't take a rear seat. the five across on the bottom are mainly intended for families with kiddies. and it's over the engine. loud.

otherwise, the bus is comfy. ac works. bunks a bit narrow and short for regulation sized westernfolk, but if under 6 foot, you'll be fine. note that in some of the bus stations, there is a charge for using the toilets. be sure to have some small bills (5 mao) on hand. you really don't want to accept change from the attendant.

km-jh bus is mostly on new smooth highway, except for the last bit near jinghong. it made half a dozen potty stops, and one meal stop. of course, given the state of the trough potties, i'd just as soon pee in public.

jh-hx was more of a local bus. stopped at a distribution center in mohan to load stuff in the lower compartments. bus would also stop in any village when flagged down to pick up passengers. and their stuff. no live chickens this time. plenty of bathroom stops, and of course the driver will stop if asked.

[Greenside]

Chinese sleeper buses must rate close to the top of all time nightmare travel experiences unless you're blessed(?) with the stature of a gnome, a capacious bladder, impaired sense of smell, indifference to claustrophobia, no money, and zero imagination.

I did one about six years ago: Guilin to Guangzhou and the memory is still all too vivid. I'd seen these buses plying the route past the place I was staying and thought they seemed pretty cool - after all, why put up with one of those semi reclining seats when you can have your own little bunk, right? Right.

There were three rows of two tier bunks separated by two narrow (very narrow) aisles running fore to aft - maybe 36 or 42 berths in all. With not a little experience of surviving the rigours of ultra economy class travel (I once flew as freight with Laker Skytrain) I booked early and, with the aid of my little electronic dictionary and a lot of pointing, secured a top bunk about halfway down the bus on the basis that it had a window and was as far from the likely impact points as you can be. As you might expect, bunk size was more orientated towards people of an Asian build but even they looked like they were having a struggle to fit in, especially with their overnight/valuables bags. In my case, width was the confining dimension but finding room for a bag full of lumpy camera gear didn't improve the length situation either.

I climbed on board and squeezed myself into the bunk, competing with neighbours at my head and feet who were clearly used to this mode of transport and had quickly staked out their territory with small brown canvas bags containing Extremely Sharp Things. I'd seen some stalls in the bus station selling these but sadly failed to recognise that they were used for crowd control.

Incidentally, for some unfathomable reason Chinese bus stations are designed to throw the Fear Of God into you. In the area reserved for waiting passengers, where all the seats were occupied by a multitude of vagrant like people most of whom passed the time by eating loudly, sniffing, belching or seeing just how much phlegm they could work up in any given three minute period, were a lot of posters.

Don't Drink & Drive: sensible...

Stop at red traffic lights: sound advice...

Use the crosswalk: OK...

What's that one over there?

Holy sh*t! A hideously mangled bus with dead bodies lined up beside it on the highway and enlargements (I kid you not) of the most gory bits. No pixelation here; one even showed a 50ft smear, evidently all that remained of some poor soul who got caught under the wheel while another featured police leading someone, who I could only assume was the driver, away in handcuffs.

So what's that all about? The drivers don't get to see them since presumably they're round the back, holed up in some dingy smoke filled locker room having one for the road to summon up enough courage to get back behind the wheel. Maybe it's to get you to buy some additional protection, although the bus companies that insist you to take separate insurance usually make you buy it along with the ticket. I've asked lots of people and no-one has yet come up with a convincing answer. Anyway, back to the slave bus, as very aptly christened by Luvthailand.

Our bus filled up until every bunk was taken at which point the freight and steerage class passengers were crammed in so that every inch of floorspace was taken up with bodies and boxes and giant, ominously bulging, striped plastic bags. The people on the bottom bunks were completely sealed in and just the thought of that brought my claustrophobia to the fore – unfortunately the window beside me wasn't the opening variety or I swear I'd have climbed out and walked. At that moment we set off and the ordeal really got underway.

I recall feeling some relief that we didn't appear to be going very fast although the engine was roaring away fit to throw a piston. Unfortunately, the reason turned out to be that the bus was so grossly overloaded that in the city streets it struggled to reach any kind of threatening speed. Once out of town however, the driver adapted his style to take the poor acceleration into account by cranking it up to about seventy and refusing to slow down no matter what was in the way. He'd jab the brakes viciously at intervals carefully calculated to jolt you awake in a cold sweat, but the rest of the time we just wallowed around blind corners and passed horrendous drops in a way that you just knew was almost completely out of control.

Every minute felt like it was going to be my last and the tension of waiting for the inevitable crash was becoming unbearable when, by way of a diversion, the guy across the aisle lit up a crumpled half cigarette that looked like it had been rescued from the trash can at the bus station. Even though a couple of other people made complaining kind of noises in Chinese (so you know just how noxious it must have been), he doggedly smoked the vile thing down to a roach so small I thought he'd swallowed it and then went back to sleep pausing only to spit into a jar of what I thought was some kind of oriental condiment but hopefully wasn't.

It got worse as the temperature climbed and the smell of bodies became steadily more overpowering. There was one rest stop at about 4:00 in the morning but the aisles were so choked that it took the dexterity of an acrobat to make it to the front of the cabin although I braved it just to get a breath of fresh air. Back en route and the road had turned into a highway, allowing our driver to coax another 20 mph out of the engine until we mercifully (and miraculously) arrived at Guangzhou in the cold grey dawn.

So, if you ever contemplate the Sleeper Bus be warned that the happy looking passengers arriving at the terminus are smiling simply because they survived the night and their ordeal is almost over. Trust me on this.

Edited July 3, 2010 by Greenside

[ricklev]

Good story Greenside!

[Rice_King]

I am glad you lived to tell this harrowing tale Greenside. Your nightmare. Our entertainment. LOL!

[Greenside]

Glad you enjoyed the description more than I did the journey - other than flying as freight with Laker (for those too young to know, Freddie Laker's Skytrain was the very first transatlantic budget airline with a fare of £99 one way if I recall - my first eye opening trip to New York) it's all true and the memory lives painfully on.

No suggestions from anyone as to what the bizarre horror posters are?

[ChouDoufu]

don't know enough chineasy to read the posters completely, but

my understanding is they are a warning to keep to posted speeds

and maintain a safe following distance. then something about

destiny and monkey kings or something......

jinghong to kunming sleepers aren't bad.

must have a ticket to board. they are not overloaded

with passengers and other critters in the aisles.

no large packages inside either. many are carpeted,

drivers require you to remove your shoes, and they

provide plastic bag socks to wear.

kunming to pinguo (guangxi) a few years ago featured stewardi

(real hotties, no ladyboys) with free drinks and snacks. new buses,

in-flight movies, ac, on-board potty.

but when you get to the boonies, the ride is much like you described.

woman on the top bunk too lazy to ask the driver to stop for a potty

break, just held the lil' fellow over the railing so's he could tinkle in

the aisle. then a woman on a lower bunk changing diapers just rolled

the diaper up and chucked it in the aisle. paper towel wipies were

thrown on other passengers' bunks. there ya go, 5000 years of civilization!

[Greenside]

I have to say I'd not considered Guilin or Guangzhou exactly the boonies given a combined population of more than 10 million but my bus experience sounds a whole lot closer to that than the super luxury you describe. Hotties in uniform are definitely a step in the right direction