My blogging is a bit out of order, but I thought I should write about Xishuangbanna before I forget. Banna is in the very south of Yunnan, bordering Laos and Burma, and the first thing we noticed was how South East Asian it felt (lots of Burmese in town selling jade too), and a lot warmer than where we'd come from (Dali), I was in sandals and T shirt a few days, which was lovely. Back in the cold now, but was good to thaw out a few days!
We spent a lot of time looking at tropical plants! Two botanical gardens, one several hundred hectares big, and one huge rainforest reserve (Wild Elephant Valley).
One day we went to the Blind massage clinic. Massaging is the traditional occupation for blind people in China. We had 1 hour full body massages, but only my masseur was blind, Mum's could see, and kept complaining about how tight Mum's neck and shoulders were. She spent so long on the neck and shoulders that she had to add an extra 1/2 hour of time! My masseur could somehow think I was 'piaoliang' (pretty, but...blind, what?), and when he took my arm, he said 'zheme duo mao (hair), hen ke-ai' (so much hair, very cute). Never been flattered about my hairy arms before, not quite sure what to think! ;)
The wild elephant valley was a bit dissapointing- didn't see any elephants- only elephant dung and footprints...We also booked a van to take us there through CITS, the Chinese travel agency, and ended up with a guide to take us along the very clearly marked concrete paths through the jungle. Thus there was no time for exploring. The chair lift was great though- it went for 1/2 hour over the tops of the trees and was so peaceful and relaxing- made up in part for the annoyance of having to follow a guide (who spoke no english and wasn't particularly informative- she kept on pointing out the elephant prints and dung, which we could also see!) along a concrete path. The reserve is huge, but you can only go in a part of it, and the elephants probably avoid that part during the day when heaps of tourgroups go there.
Jinghong BBQ was another highlight of Banna- for the first few nights we were kept awake until 3 or so in the morning with noise coming from BBQ's set up behind our hotel. Man Chinese can be loud! We pondered whether the sound of a crowd (sort of a background noise of laughing and talking/ shouting) sounds different in different languages, I still don't really know, I just think that Chinese are in general noisier people! We had to find out what all the fuss was about- and went for BBq on both our last two nights- it was delicious! We had lemon grass wrapped fish, eggplant, sweet potato (cut and roasted into chips and served with condensed milk!), a whole, smallish chicken which had been brushed in spices, mmm, all washed down with Lancang valley beer. We still went to bed to the sounds of BBQ though!
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