Xishuangbanna: Winter Break Begins

On the 16th of January a Chinese friend and I left for Xishuangbanna where we would spend two days before heading to his house for the upcoming Spring Festival. Above on the left is a street sign in "Jinghong" the Capital of Xishuangbanna. The sign has the traditional Dai minority writing as well as Chinese Characters and Pinyin or "phonetisized" Chinese. In Xishuangbanna the population is made up of 1/3 Dai minority 1/3 Han or Chinese and 1/3 of various other minorities. However, not too many people can still read the Dai minority script so even though its everywhere in Xishuangbanna its mostly for tourism. Back in the 90s Xishuangbanna was a famous tourist stop but much has been lost recently in its competition with Dali and Li jiang.
On the Top right is sign near the hotel which we stayed at. We used this picture to be able to find our way back when we got lost...



Here is the famous Mekong river which we crossed on our way to the Mengle Culture Garden in Jinghong. Xishuangbanna is famous for its exotic animals and rich minorities. However, much has been lost to economic development and now Xishuangbanna struggles to preserve its exotic animal population in parks and reserves. What once was a land flowing with wild elephants and Tigers now has no tigers and a few elephants kept behind gates. Though in our short time in Jinghong we did not go to the more famous elephant reserves we managed to see the next best thing the closest park recommended to us by a Taxi Driver.








Heres me and my friend that I spent the Winter break with! He's the man! He is an English major in Yuxi and we plan to one day start an English School in China...But you will certainly learn more about him in the upcoming posts!








Heres our ride over the Mekong river to the Mengle Garden. It wasn't the best of days... somewhat foggy and somewhat eerie since if you look closely you will notice there is no one in any of the other cars. We were literally the only ones riding to the park that day which caused me to question the Taxi drivers recommendations.






























Here is the one and only elephant in the park! Probably one of the most exciting sites since you were able to play with the baby elephant and for a small fee could even get some food to feed him with.














































Here are the stars from "Ken and the monkey." If you are on Facebook you can check the video up on my profile to see more!














The Monkeys much reminded me of a book I once read titled "The Hot Zone" where a bunch of monkeys kept in dirty cages become a source of a wide spread out break of the bola bola virus. So Though I was tempted to touch the monkeys hands when he poked his hand out on the side I refrained...




























This was and actual bridge from Indiana Jones! Some how we managed to make it across without plummeting to our death in the deep valley below with the jagged rocks...


































































Shortly after we got into the park my friend had noticed he left his cell phone in the Taxi Cab. Though I'm not sure how or why but the Taxi Driver had given his phone number to my friend and he was able to call him from my cell phone when we had finished up at the park and he brought the phone back and gave us a ride back to our Hotel free of charge!








This picture was taken around the time we had gotten lost and had to to use that picture that you saw before to find out way back to the hotel...

















































This is the 5 Star Hotel that we had to walk through to get to the place where we were staying right behind...










Here is me pretending like I know how to read the Menu at a Dai restaurant... We had met up with a three friends of a friend at Jinghong two were classmates of my friend in college and one in high school. The two from college were both Dai minorities who had studied English and now taught at the primary school in JingHong One of which paid for our hotel behind our backs...










The pressure to both Drink and Smoke are tremendous right now in China for Men. Many times you are looked down upon as not being a real man if you can't hold your liquor or especially if you refuse to partake. Usually everywhere we went we spent the first 20 minutes of dinner denying shots of liquor and hits from a tobacco water bong.










The friend that paid for our Hotel also owns a tea shop in addition to teaching English at the Primary school. So we were happy to buy some famous Pu Er tea from him before heading to Pu Er!

Back in Vietnam...

I was in Vietnam! You don't know what I have seen!

However here are some pictures to help...


We set out from Yuxi to He Kou at 0600 hours planning to get there sometime that night. All together it was about a eight hour bus ride through the mountains.










With the tropical climate of Southern China we saw a lot of Bannana trees on the way as well as Tangerines and Sugar Cane. the pictures here are actually of Banana trees. In He Kou we had some Bao zi for dinner then headed to the bridge to cross over into Vietnam.










On the left is the entrance to the bridge that leads to Vietnam











and on the right is the view of Vietnam from the China border.








It wasn't too bad crossing over from the China side but once we reached Vietnam we immediately ran across people seemingly still bitter over the war. At the border cross in Vietnam we had to fill out some forms before we could go through. However, the forms required information that was on our passports meanwhile the officers had our passports. For about ten minutes we stood there waiting for our passports unable to communicate with them for we didn't know Vietnamese nor did the officers know Chinese or English. Eventually they gave us our passports back and we didn't think much of it. However, once we gave them the forms with our passports again they hesitated in giving our passports back again. Then finally the officer held up our passports on his side expecting us to reach under the glass window and reach out to get them. Not exactly sure if he was giving them back to us or not we hesitantly reached under the glass to receive our passports. As our hands slowly grabbed our passports he immediately gripped them tightly not willing to let go. After we tugged back and forth for few seconds and he looked up at us without smiling and finally let go. Some what taken back we proceeded out into the land hoping this was not a foreshadowing of what was to come.
















Once we stepped outside the door into the city of Lao Cai we were swarmed by nationals one offering us a ride to some Hotel on his Moto, another to a near by city in his van and another wanted to help us exchange money. Trying to avoid being ripped off as lonely planet had warned us we walked about 5 km to the train station with about thirty different people trying to sell us something. On the way we stopped off at the bank to take out money. I took out 1,000,000 Dong which is about 63 USD. Latter at the train station after bargaining for several hours we eventually got a car ride from Lao Cai city to Sapa for 20,000 dong down from 200,000.

By the time we reached Sapa it was 2200 and we found a nice little hotel to make up camp in prepare to set out the next day.



Here is my friend hooking up to some free Wifi at the hotel. That mourning we looked a few things up online to have a better idea where to head out. My friend studies minority music and thus we were looking where to find particular minority groups.






Heres the guy who works at the Hotel...










On the left is a yao minority
(sometimes nicknamed the santa
clause hippy pants people because
of their hat and colorful pants)











and on the right is a Mheng minority
carrying her baby on her back.









Besides a lot of minority groups Sapa hosts some really cheap dinning...












Here is my friend "Zo" and you can't see but she is carrying her baby "Go" on her back. "Zo" is a Mheng minority who sells stuff to foreigners for a living. Since she didn't know Chinese I told her my name was just "Big Mudd" instead of Da Ni Ba. So she followed us around Sapa saying, "Big Mudd you buy from me."












On the right is a public park with a Catholic Church at the other end.














At Sapa we checked out the Market where we bought some fried rice cake for breakfast before we got some maps and headed out to the mountains.





































I tried to capture some of the local people but every picture I got was of them attempting to sell things to foreigners.















Much of Vietnamese economy now runs off of tourism today and attracts many people from around the world.












They sell everything from these little native instruments, there traditional clothing and jewelry to even, unfortunately, marijuana. We had a few people say, "You buy Marijuana from me."













We eventually made it out of Sapa
and after we paid a little toll we went
out of the city and into the
mountains.








It was about a 30Km
walk to our desired destination.
We marched for half the time
and jogged the other half to
try to make up for time.
















































































Even outside of the city we did not escape the native salespeople... Nor was age an obstacle.















We had to run to get away from them and even then they chased after us for a while before giving up.

























































































It was a 16 Kilometer walk to Ban Den where we had some fried rice for dinner.


























By the time we had finished it had began to get dark and we still had a good ways to go to reach the village we hoped to visit. After we walked about another 5 Km from Dan Den we finally gave in and took a moto to the next village where we would spend the night.












When we arrived to the next village
we found a decently priced place
to stay. The room was on a second floor and the floor was made of loose bamboo.












The only electricity was a light that hung from the ceiling and even that was ran to a power source outside. We had to ask the owner to turn the lights off for us when we went to sleep.













The next mourning we left at 0600. On the left is a river that passes through the village we stayed in that night


















and on the right is the village that we set out to see. It was about another hour from the village we were at to the next by moto and thus after we had bargained with some drivers at the village for about an hour we got there by around 0800. Once there my friend practiced some of the language that he had been studying back in China and seeing there similarities and differences. Strangely most of the minority groups out in mountains had resorted to western clothing. In addition though some of the language my friend had been studying had changed taking on traits of the Vietnamese much was still in tact. We spent a few hours in the village and then made the journey back to Sapa by Moto.

















It was a short trip but it was well worth it. In total we were only in Vietnam for two days and spent a total of two days traveling.