Escaping China: Jinghong to the Laotian Border

The main streets in Jinghong were lined with palms and garish fluorescent lights at night

The Lucky Air tickets we bought in the travel agency proved valid and we had an uneventful trip to Jinghong, arriving in the night but managing to get a good hotel room with air con and private bathroom for around $12 NZ.

Jinghong is lush with tropical moisture, fog in the morning, palm trees in the streets and Thai as well as Chinese characters on all the billboards. There is a big Thai presence in this part of Yunnan because it was previously part of Thailand and many of the villages have Thai style housing and Thai cultural identification. The Mekong is flowing by, so in a day we have moved from the Yangtze at Tiger Leaping Gorge to another great Asian river.

We lost our cooking meths in Dali but managed to pick some up right away here for 60c from a chemist using a photo of a web page in Chinese characters.

We are waiting now on news as to whether we can get into Laos with a visa on arrival from the cafe proprietress, although one traveler thinks it is possible.

The Mekong at Jinghong. We will follow it through Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia

Looking back at Jinghong from the river

Adverts in both Chinese and Thai script

We are finally into Laos. I checked a couple of people in Jinghong who should know (a trekking operator and the proprietress of the Mei Mei Cafe) and both said go ahead. Then we suddenly realized about 1 in the afternoon that we had to literally leave town immediately to get to Mengla or we wouldn't make the border the next day, so we hurriedly packed and dragged our bags to the No 2 bus station and got a 2.20 bus (mini that is) for Mengla.

Scenes on the road to Mengla

The Mekong and Thai style village housing

There are many hill tribes in this part of Yunnan and we would have liked to have had time to do a trek here, but we will have to wait to Laos because of being unceremoniously flushed out of China.

Motorway style highway construction for a commerce route to Laos
cutting through the National park

The road was tortuous and either rutted or disrupted severely by a new Chinese arterial freeway being blasted through the jungle hills on fly overs and tunnels down to the Laos border. The countryside was lush with a huge biosphere reserve and lots of Dai villages with jumbles of thatched houses. Huge banana plantations, rubber and other tropical crops. After four and a half hours of bone shaking traveling we made it to Mengla at dusk, just in time to change $20 US and have just enough Chinese cash to pay for a hotel and the bus to the border.

Garish neons in Mengla and the restaurant where we ate food cooked to our selection

Traditional Thai village girl, a women's performing group and the notorious tractors

One huge tobacco bhong

Luckily the Mei Mei proprietress had told me there was a through bus to Luang Nam Tha in Laos which made it a lot easier the a string of buses and tuk tuks across the kilometres of no man's land. The road to the border was even worse with major ruts and huge road works and a blockage because a logging truck had capsized on the road.

They filled the bus with huge consignments of freight

The road blocked by a stranded logging truck

We made it to the border at Mohan round lunch time and got out of China without trouble and to our delight were given a 30 day visa on arrival in Laos - for $30 twice what we expected from the Lonely Planet - and at a discount for NZers because they couldn't find the country on their list! However there was a tense few moments when they refused to recognize our Tibet group visa and nearly wouldn't let us in.

A Desperate Day in Dali

Scenes on the 5 hour bus journey from Lijiang to Dali

We got up in Lijiang first thing, having finally got some money of out of a Bank of China ATM and caught the 8am bus to Dali. Unfortunately Christine caught diarrhea again (Probably at the Friendly Naxi Guest House in Tiger Leaping Gorge) so she was feeling pretty weak and nauseous. The bus trip was a little slow but we arrived at around noon to be greeted by a minibus which proceeded to take us to their hotel where we managed to arrange to leave our luggage and walk the old town, with a pick up at 5 pm to the airport for our flight to Jinghong.

The little hotel where we left our baggage for the day

A park opposite

Getting into the main streets

Women in Bai and other forms of traditional dress

Hiding their faces

Dali in contrrast to the old stone houses of Lijiang was a town of blue and white ceramic houses, inlaid pagodas and mossy roofs. We had a big lunch of vegetable omelette and wandered through the streets to the south gate of the old city wall. There I found a flowering cannabis plant right in the main street and took a couple of buds for good measure.

One of the city gates along the old city wall

A cannabis plant flowering beside the city wall

Gardens right on top of the city wall

We spent most of the day on the city wall with sweeping views over the town and of the lake and distant pagodas famous from the 9th century, so Christine could rest.

Twin interlocking panoramas of Lake Erhai from Dali city wall

Above where we were sitting I found a traditional Chinese classical music group giving an impromptu concert. Later we managed to bargain some Yuan and some US$ for a Bai embroidered panel and took a hot chocolate to try to steady Christine`s stomach and raced back to get our taxi for the airport.

Chinese classical music group in one of the towers on the wall

Video of the classical musicians and percussion band (below)

A crazy Bai band of gongs and trumpets walking the streets

We would have liked to have had time to go down to the shores of Lake Erhai and visit some of the smaller rustic villages and maybe cross the lake to towns on the other side, but could not because of having to leave China immediately, so here were two montages of one of the villages, which bear a comparison to Baisha and Lijiang as rustic village and town in the same style.

Two internet montages of a village on the shores of Lake Erhai

80 Y proved good value as the airport to catch our Lucky Air flight was a full hour out of town.