My roommate Nikelle, our friend Brighton, and I spent last week vacationing in Jinghong, capital city of the prefecture of Xishuangbanna in Yunnan province. Known as the Thailand of China, this city lies about an hour from the Myanmar and Laos borders. It is the home region of the Dai minority, and many of these people still live in villages surrounding the city.
To get to Jinghong, we first had to take our local city bus to the main bus station, from which we would take a 2-hour bus to Guangzhou. From there we had a 24-hour train to Kunming, and then an 11-hour bus to Jinghong. We had to take trains and buses because Brighton's passport was stolen a month or two ago. She's in the process of getting a replacement, so for the time being she can't take planes anywhere.
Nikelle and I ran, literally, to the lunchroom before we caught the bus. It was pouring rain, as is obvious by this horrific picture. I'm only putting it on because it's a valid part of our journey.
Here are Brighton and Nikelle on the bus to Guangzhou.
The 24-hour train to Kunming.
This old man was sitting next to Nikelle on the train. He was so adorable and sweet to us, even though he didn't speak any English.
Somehow Brighton managed to fall asleep in this absurd position.
Isn't this an attractive picture? At least it's not very clear.
The train ride to Kunming wasn't bad. We sat across from this young Chinese woman with whom we made friends. She spoke English very well, and after we got off the train she took us to this fantastic noodle restaurant. We all ordered the same thing: a kind of hotpot noodle dish. You get a plate of raw meats and uncooked veggies, a small bowl of plain noodles, and this huge bowl of hot broth. You dump in the meat, veggies, and noodles into the broth and it's so hot that all the ingredients cook right there.
Before...
And after! This was one of the best breakfasts ever. When I first got to China, I had a hard time with the lack of cereal and waffles and stuff like that for breakfast. But now I crave stuff like noodles and jiao tse, or dumplings.
Me'n'my noodles. Caro, our Chinese friend is behind me.
Kunming is such a great city. The train dumped us off at 7:30 am, and we had until 7 pm before our bus to Jinghong, so we spent the day shopping and hanging out.
This man had a tv on the back of his bicycle.
I almost had a cow when I saw this cake. Seriously? A Hello Kitty cake? So cool.
This street market for food items was tons of fun.
This is a stand of flavored mushrooms. They gave us samples and they were delicious.
I think these are hazelnuts.
Dried, chopped-up fish stand! Smelly, but actually quite tasty.
The required kicking-a-statue picture. I actually had three of these total, but this one came out best. And yes, I'm wearing red running shorts. I brought only exercise shorts and grungy t-shirts on this trip. Didn't exactly make for the cutest wardrobe, but it was functional and comfortable.
Brighton snaps a photo of a picturesque alley.
This guy was hanging around a park with his dog.
Our bus arrived in Jinghong at 6:30 am, but the bus driver didn't say anything to us and as we were asleep, we didn't realize we'd arrived at our destination for an hour! The extra hour of sleep was nice, though. As we climbed out of the empty bus at 7:30, thoroughly embarrassed but laughing at the absurdity of our situation, I realized something horrible. The previous night I'd taken out my contacts. Unfortunately, because of the dark and bumpy bus ride, I somehow didn't get one contact into its case. To make matters worse, I didn't have a replacement set with me or my glasses. Yep. I spent the entire week with one eye. If any of you know how bad my prescription is, you can sympathize.
Jinghong is beautiful. It has a very southeast Asia feel. Here's a picture of Brighton and I posing with a statue of an elephant.
In preparing for our trip, Brighton and Nikelle looked up the website of this local place in Jinghong called the
Forest Café that runs jungle treks through the mountains. We made reservations for a two-day trek, and planned on leaving the first day we got to the city. After the fiasco at the bus station, we finally made it to Forest Café and met Sara, our guide. She's a Chinese woman who speaks fluent English, as well as a little of the local dialects, and guides tourists through the jungles to local villages. We also met our fellow travelers with whom we'd be spending the next two days and night. To my surprise, we were the only Americans doing the trek. There was a Swedish man and his Chinese girlfriend, two French girls from Shanghai, a French mother and daughter, and a group of four European students studying in Chongqing. They are pictured a little later.
Our journey began at the foot of the greenest mountain I've ever seen. Every inch of land was covered in lush foliage, minus the dirt road on which we walked. It rains pretty frequently in this area, and the road was muddy for most of the hike. It's pretty flat here, but 3/4 of the hike was very steep uphill. We hiked for about two hours, then stopped for a lunch break. Lunch was delicious, consisting of two slices of bread, a slice or two of tomato, a boiled egg, and a small orange. After lunch we hiked for another three hours before arriving at our final destination. It was a very challenging trek, but worth it in the end.
View of the Mekong river. It's brown because of the region's characteristic red dirt.
I was the first to arrive at the village in which we would sleep for the night. These children greeted me with a few hellos, let me take their picture, and promptly run away, giggling like mad.
There are only about 27 families living in this Dai village. All the homes are wooden and raised up about five or so feet from the ground. Chickens, dogs, and cats all roam freely about the town. As tiny and rural as it is, most homes, if not all of them, have running water and electricity.
We stayed in the home of one of these families. When we first got there, they had tea and fruit ready for us to snack on. In this photo, from left to right, are: Hannah, a German girl who is one of the students from Chongqing; Nikelle; Hans, also German and studying in Chongqing; one of the French girls from Shanghai; and me, looking decidedly exhausted. After we had a breather, we all took turns taking showers at some of the nearby homes. I was surprised they even had showers.
Day two of the trek. Pictured here are two of our friends from Chongqing - Hans and a French girl named Lou. Hannah is taking the photo. Also in their group was a French guy named Antoine, who is pictured later, and a German fellow named Torsten. He was feeling sick the day of the trek and so stayed in Jinghong. It was such a bummer that he missed out on our adventure.
This sickening spider was about two or three inches long.
Today I'm sporting the spandex shorts. Nice.
This rice paddy was right between two mountains.
Part of our hike included tromping through pineapple fields, which turned out to be... exciting, to say the least. We abandoned the wide road in favor of tiny paths through the fields, and because we were heading down the mountain, it was very steep. Without both my eyes, I had virtually no depth perception and it made this leg of the journey very difficult. I had to be careful when judging how far down a dip in the trail was, and even so, I slipped a lot. It wouldn't have been worth mentioning except that we were literally walking on the side of a mountain.
Sara and Eve picked fresh pineapples for each of us. They were so cute and little! Delish. I'd been craving pineapple ever since I got here; I still have yet to find one in a grocery store in my area.
Just before I took this picture, our group stopped for a short breather after coming down off the side of the mountain. I was cleaning off the mud from my shoes when I looked down at my feet and saw something tiny, black, and wiggling stuck to my sock. Huh. Closer inspection revealed that wiggling something was a leech. I had no less than four leeches stuck to my feet. EWWWW!! I would like to say that I maintained my composure admirably and calmly pulled them off myself, but that would be lying. At least they were small.
This is the end of our trek. I had a fabulous time, so it was a bittersweet moment. Brighton's camera has a picture of the three of us at the end, but I don't have it yet, so I'll have to add it later.
On the bus back to Jinghong we saw this man herding ducks. He would say something in Chinese to them and they would obey his commands. Crazy, huh? I didn't know ducks could be trained to follow voice commands. It was hilarious.
Amazingly enough, the guys from Chongqing wanted to hang out with us some more, so that night we met for dinner and goofed around until late. Here Antoine and Brighton pose for a photo at our favorite hangout, Mei Mei Café. If you ever find yourself in Jinghong, I definitely recommend it.
The following day we got together for breakfast and rented some mountain bikes to explore the city.
On the way to the bike rental place...
I absolutely loved riding bikes. We went around the city a bit, and then decided to see if there was anything interesting outside of it. We rode outside of the city for a while, then took a break to look at the scenery. Pictured below: Hans, me, Brighton, Torsten, and Antoine. Hannah and Lou didn't seem to interested in bikes, so just the boys and us went.
We biked along the road until we found a gondola ride across the river to an island that houses a kind of cultural park. Brighton and Antoine took rode in one gondola...
Nikelle and Torsten in another...
and Hans and I complete the group.
The park was a bit of a let-down. There wasn't much to do/see there, so there aren't many pictures. We still had fun talking and walking around, regardless of the lameness of the park.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. I dunno, we're just chilling. I like how we are all in a different position and looking different directions. Not posed, though!
The next day the guys and the two girls went to a waterfall near the city. The boys invited us to come along, but the bus didn't have enough seats for us, so we decided to do our own thing. We had a low-key day exploring Jinghong and the nearby town of Menghai. When we were in Menghai, I went to a fruit stand to buy a banana. The proprietor of the stand started saying stuff in Chinese to me which I couldn't understand and wouldn't take my money. At first I thought he wasn't going to sell it to me, but then got his meaning. He was giving it to me. Woo hoo! Free banana!
This is a sign in Jinghong. I took this picture because the sign has the standard Chinese characters on it as well as the local Dai dialect written above.
