the kunming bus station. round two.

it is time to visit the kunming bus station again for our trip to the rice terraces, and although i had hoped to arrive at the bus with a note from the hostel to help us to board our bus without the difficulties we encountered last time, they weren't very sympathetic to the problem and wrote a basic 'where is my bus' note for me in chinese that didn't really convey the issues we were hoping to avoid. armed with this note and some thoughts as to how to handle another situation should it arise, we depart.

the usual bustle as you leave the taxi ensues, and after saying many ' bu yao's' to the solicitations outside, we enter the bus station. stephen inquires about our bus, gets directed outside, and my hopes that this gentleman only works at night for the sleeper buses to lijiang are quickly dashed, he is standing at the entrance to the bus to yuanyang with another man. i put up my hand to him in a very 'i'm not dealing with you' gesture, and stephen bypasses him to hand our tickets over to the second gentleman. we make it on to the bus and in to our seats, most likely without being accosted just yet as we have left our large packs at cloudland and have only our small packs with us this time. the bus fills up, and eventually this man comes on board to (of all things) hand out flyers to the foreigners on board for a hotel at the rice terraces. he abruptly says to stephen at this point 'japan!', to which stephen replies 'canadian' and brushes him off. the bus leaves shortly after, and it seems we have managed to avoid an encounter this time.

we quickly strike up conversation with another group of tourists traveling together to the rice terraces, and we discover why we weren't hassled, they were. there are six of them, some with fairly large packs, and our 'friend' tried to aggressively solicit money from them. luckily, two of them spoke pretty good mandarin, and as we discover, they all live in hong kong/shen zen, so are a bit more savy on the ins and outs of travel in china. in the end, only one of them paid, and it was a small amount, maybe 10-20 yuan. we explain our previous encounter to them, and all of us are fairly certain this is a huge scam. after our first stop a couple of hours later, the group tells us that they were talking to the bus driver outside, and he told them that the guy was not legit, and that they should report him. our suspicions are confirmed! round two over, we put it out of mind and are anticipating our arrival in xin jie. a bit more successful than last time!