Mengla
Trip Start
Oct 30, 2005
1
68
122
Trip End
Ongoing
Mengla, China
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The bus arrived at Jinghong at about 4am. Most people stayed on the bus, so we thought it would continue on to Mengla and went back to sleep. At about 6am we were woken by the bus driver telling us to get off the bus, in Jinghong! The bus hadn't gone anywhere.
We told him that we had paid to go to Mengla and we didn't really want to be stuck here in Jinghong. So he took us over to the bus station and told us to wait. Five minutes later one of the bus drivers mates comes out with bus tickets for us and tells us to wait for the next bus to Mengla. Well at least we weren't stranded! Lets just hope this bus shows up!
After waiting about an hour or so, we were on a mini-bus to Mengla. The drive took about 4-5 hours and we arrived at the bus terminal in Mengla around lunch time (about 6 hours late). There were touts galore waiting for us at the bus station, so we decided to find a place to get some lunch first so we could lose them. We found a place pretty easily and had fun trying to translate the menu. The Chinese menu we had picked up earlier in our trip came in handy and between us and the three waitresses we managed to order - much to the amusement of the locals.
During lunch we spotted a hotel across the road and after checking it out we decided that we would stay the night - we had run out of time to cross the border and make our destination in Laos today :(
