the Thai side of China
Sunday, December 7th, 2008My sleeper bus into Jinghong was long and painful, mostly because I was just a little too big for the beds and also I was in the middle row of bunks and had people on either side of me camped out in the aisles. But after 15 hours we pulled into Jinghong, main city of the Xishuangbanna autonomous region which is home to the Dai people plus lots of other tribes. Down in Banna it basically feels like South-East Asia and is very Thai-like with temples and buildings all reminding me of the Thai wats. Life is also a lot slower than the rest of the china, its warm humid and loads of tropical forest filled with hill tribes which cross over a lot with Northern Thailand. So lots of fresh fruit and coconut curries, very good!
But of course underneath it all it’s still China. On the bus I had met 2 American guys, Ben and John who were studying Chinese so I happily stuck with them as they translated everything. We grabbed a taxi to a guesthouse with raised bamboo huts and spent the day wandering around trying to adjust to the new heat and humidity. Along our street was Mei-Mei’s cafe which we quickly worked out was the cool place to hang out with other tourists, there I met Stuart who I had shared a room with in Dali and the other guys had trekked Tiger Leaping gorge with so we hung out together for the next few days. In the evening we visited the night market and had a few cheap beers and dinner out and about and sorted out hiring a car and driver for the following day to go to a waterfall.
So the next day we bundled up into our car and about an hours drive through lush green jungle we pulled up to a village and hiked the hour or so to the waterfall, we got lost a few times trying to find the totally unmarked path which surprisingly had very few people on it.
But we eventually made it to the totally secluded and remote waterfall after following along the hills. It was really beautiful and we swam a bit and jumped off the rocks before drying in the sun and heading back to the car.
Great day trip and good to be able to share the cost with the boys, went through amazingly beautiful jungle and hardly anyone around which is rare in China, walk was good, not too difficult at all so good day, we just should have taken food with us as we were starving by the end. Back in town we ate more food, drunk more beer and stalked a guy who Stuart swore was an English paedophile who had escaped prison.
The Americans took off the next morning to Laos and Stuart was leaving in the afternoon to another village so we spent the morning biking around. Apparently there are lots of villages and things close to bike to but we didn’t quite make it there, saw the Mekong and dodged a bit of traffic and carried our bikes through a few bits before finding a nice quite path through scenic fields.
Stuart had to leave on his bus after lunch so we dropped the bikes off and I spent the afternoon sorting out money and bus tickets for my early morning start the next day heading into Laos. I was actually in Jinghong because there was supposed to be a boat that went down the Mekong right into Thailand, but of course it wasn’t runing the week I wanted and with m visa about to expire I needed to get out and Laos was the easiest option to get into Thailand quickly…well so I thought…
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