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!
