Getting off of the plane in Kunming we were quite the spectacle. The airport here is an international airport, but it is pretty old and pretty small so most flights don't actually pull up to a terminal. The plane parks out on the runway and then you climb down the stairs and board a bus which takes you to the terminal. After that, the bus drops you off at the terminal and then you have to walk the rest of the way to the entrance and then on to the baggage claim area. With our nine (maybe more) carry-on bags, two strollers (none of which actually had a kid in them), one car seat, and two small boys, it was quite the adventure. There was no shortage of people, though, who were willing to help us. They either took pity on us or just wanted a closer look at our two little blue-eyed, blond-haired monsters. Either way, it was very appreciated. Outside of the the terminal is a mass of people just waiting for friends and family to arrive. Once we fought our way through that, we found a driver with a little van to take us to our hotel.
We thought that after we were at the hotel we were in the clear, but then I went to the front desk and found out that they didn't have my reservation in the system. Thus started off a conversation in which we tried to figure out what went wrong. It was a mix of me speaking broken Chinese and them speaking broken English. They were about to go ahead and give us a room at the rate we had reserved when a worker came up and ask what dates we had made the reservation for. They then did a search against those dates and found my reservation under the last name "Suller." The Green Lake Hotel (翠湖宾馆) is a very nice hotel but the rooms (at least the ones we can afford on our temporary living allowance) are a bit small. Nice, but small.
We spent the first day looking around the local area, especially the Green Lake Park (翠湖公园) which is right across the street from our hotel. The second day I took Stephen and we walked down the street to Yunnan University (云南大学) so I could check in with the foreign student office. The guy there said he wasn't familiar with my case and suggested I come back on the 2nd when one of the administrators I had been corresponding with would be in the office. Thus kicked off four frustrating days of looking for apartments. The Chinese housing market is very different than that in the U.S. The economy here is in an up-swing so most people aren't interested in renting, they want to buy so the largest and newest apartments are all for sale and not for rent. Also, due to China's one child policy, the majority of families are three people and no more so the majority of apartments are tailored accordingly. The average apartment here is between 70-110m^2 (750 sq ft - 1180 sq ft) which is a good size for a 2 room apartment, but most of them are 3 and 4 room apartments which makes for some pretty constricted spaces. Additionally, we were looking for a place close to the university which is a fairly older part of town so when we did find an larger apartment, it was pretty old and run down.
We probably met with at least four or five real estate agents (中介) each day and looked at just as many apartments all over town. The standard reaction was usually "What's wrong with this apartment, it's pretty big. Why do you need anything bigger?". Additionally, I kept running into the problem of the 中介 not showing us the type of apartments we were looking for. I would tell the 中介 we were looking for an apartment that was at least 170m^2 and then they would tell me they had the perfect place. I would then ask them how big it was only to be told that it was only 130-140m^2. We took Sunday off to look around Kunming some more and then looked around a little more on Monday with the same results. Tuesday the 2nd I went back to Yunnan University and found out what I needed to do to get my residence permit process started and then we looked around a little more, again with no success. The next morning we went to the local international travel clinic to take care of the medical exam portion of our resident permit process and then continued our apartment hunt.
We found a pretty big place that was a little further away from the university than we initially had hoped, but when the realtor called the landlord (房东) he said he didn't want to rent to foreigners (in an area know for its heavy population of ex-pats) due to the language barrier. In the same compound, we saw another nice apartment, but it was filled with furniture and other personal possessions that the landlord wasn't willing to move out of the apartment. A day later, we found another similar apartment that wasn't quite as nice but just as big in the same compound. At that point, we were pretty much done with the apartment hunting process and figured that this was as good as it was going to get so we told the realtor that we would decide and call him the next morning with our decision, fully intending to call him the next day and tell him we'd take it.
The next morning I got a call from a realtor we had met with earlier who told me she had found a suitable place close the university we should look at. My first instinct was to tell her now, but I figured I had better run it by Kate first. Lucky for me I did and even luckier that Kate said we should look at it. It ended up being a good size and a great location. Right now, the only down side to it is that we can't move in until the 26th which means 16 more days here at the hotel. Other than that, our apartment hunt is over and we sign the lease and pay the security deposit as well as the first six months in rent (common practice here) tomorrow. Once that is out of the way, all that is left is to register at the local police station and then submit our paperwork for our residence permits. After that, we can finally get down to some traveling and maybe you'll get some interesting blog updates.......but no promises.
No comments:
Post a Comment