Huo Fa Hotel Jinghong

... and then spend a bit longer exploring the southern province of Yunnan before taking a boat over the border. Unfortunately my timing was bad, coinciding with the Republic of China's 60th anniversary and subsequent national holiday, where all one billion people went sightseeing – or at least that's how it felt. Every landmark was suddenly awash with flag-waving Chinese tourists, wearing identical tour group caps, following a motormouth guide on a megaphone. It was ...

... 1513; מסורת 97; מקשטי 01; את העיר. המראה עשה לי חשק לחקור טיפה יותר את איזור ש'ישונ
490;באנה, ולכן ...

... never get to see, with the Mayor in one car, the Magistrate of the Country in another car, the Governor of the Prefecture in the next car and us in the last car. It was unbelievable.
We arrived to witness 800 year old to 1200 year old Pu er tea trees in a mountain forest. Even more unbelievable was that these trees were planted in a plantation and are still producing tea. There is no polution in these mountains, not sprays or ...

... Chen booked us into a lovely Hotel and gave us instructions about how to get around or call Mr Lee to help. We decided to go it alone. Got in a taxi with instruction from the counter staff of and off we went. SHOPPING!!!!

We had a lovely afternoon walking the streets. The shop staff are lovely, even though they couldn't speak English, it didn't matter they were so helpful. A big difference to Kunming who would either not get up to help or would just "no, don't ...

... age until the end.

The guide continued his practice of walking off and leaving us to walk alone, so from the outset we got the impression he was not interested in talking to us or keeping to our pace. I do feel that if you are paying for a guide they should be walking with you, regardless of whether you are naturally faster or slower than them, but as usual, in China, everything is backwards.

After walking about 1.5 hours we arrived in a little village called Si Tu ...

You can see tigers in zoos in China - not many though. But now scientists reckon that the rare Indo-Chinese tiger has been sighted in Yunnan province. This is rather good news - not just for those hoping to eat the beast, but also for conservation. The tiger is the most critically endangered species. This from China Daily: The picture was taken in May 2007 by a researcher with an infrared camera in Xishuangbanna ...

... Walker that I had found the day before. Once in Jinghong, we hired a guide who took us on an overnight trek into a Dai (minority group) village. It was a beautiful hike through banana, pineapple, rubber and tea plantations. We walked through a couple of villages, each full of dogs, cats, chickens, pigs running around with their babies. We stayed with a family in their wooden house on stilts and ate dinner with them: rice, pumpkin, fried peanuts, fish, vegetables ...

According to my useless guidebook Jinghong is a nightmarish 27 hours by bus from Dali. It's actually a more reasonable 14 hours which by the time you've slept for 8 hours isn't so bad. The countryside really changes as you go south, and when i woke up the bus was going through tropical looking rain forests, and had to stop at one point to let some elephants cross the road. Jinghong close to the border with laos and burma and is like a chinese ...

... ecotourism resorts which have been developed are far from rural idylls, Trehoux said. "It's more like Disneyland," he added. "You don't go there to be quiet and to relax or to trek. They are more like theme parks. Some have small zoos, and lots of restaurants. This is ecotourism today in China." Tourism is already big business in China, generating more than 1 trillion yuan ($146.4 billion) in revenues last year, according to the official ...

... Fun. It was a bigger city than I expected but there wasn't much to see there. Supposedly there is good trekking nearby but since I had just trekked in Laos I wasn't looking for another trek right away. Instead after less than 24 hours in Jinghong I boarded a night bus around 4pm to head to Dali, my next destination. Right away China felt very ...