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Published: February 28th 2008
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After 5 hours delay in Berlin and a connection in Doha missed by 10 minutes (grr) A friendly french couple is welcoming Loc and I for two days in the booming Shanghai.
The friendly people we then met in the Yunnan province (south west China) will actually be planning our "not planned" plan. :D
First, in Kunming: Was it a tourist information woman or an airport cop? No idea, but she booked a flight to Lijiang and to Xishuangbana for us, so that our way to Lao got a little clearer to us.
Then, at our arrival in Lijiang, the expected old city looked like a depressing communist street... but a friendly couple from Beijing invited us to go to a charming old village of Lijiang. We lived in a very nice guest house for 3euro/night/person
Last but not least, we met an old woman who took us on a minibus trip across extremely poor places and farms. At the end of this trip, we enjoyed a poney trip in the beautiful Yunnan mountains...(check the hightech equipment on the "poney" picture, Loc is the guy on the left), we were eventually offered a tea to recover our poor legs.
Lijiang
LijiangDid you know that if you knock three times on the door of a Naxi woman and she does the same on her door, you can bring her a hat, a knife, a fruit and have a baby with her, who will call you "uncle"?
Bicycle across poor villages... again... and it's time to fly to the south.
Xishuangbana, it's another wold: warm and humid, very poor, often miserable and more relax and lazy than what I saw in China so far. A kind of "South" on chinese mode. Many young people, many motorbikes, few helmets.
In a bar we asked a guy for a place to organize trecking and we found a chinese guide who braught us to the tropical mountains, where we crossed some villages lost in the mountains. They live like many centuries ago, in the sand, with animals but also with mobile phones and solar energy to warm the few liters of water they get. We had a good night on the floor of a wood "house" of a Dai village.
Let's go to Lao, two days trip, terrible roads, minibus, ghost boarder town, hours and hours in minibuses... and arrival in Louangprabang with
its temples and... hundreds of white tourists!!! It was a choc to see them again after 10 days without. Anyway, we did not spend time drinking beer and eating european food in the main street with them, and we had a friendly quiet evening... some Lao people invited us at their to drink "Spirite"...strong... and play songs with the guitar. They were talented.
The next two days, nature, elephants, waterfalls... let's see!!
Take care, A+, Tschuess!
Benjamin
28 Feb. 2008
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Susanne
non-member comment
nice impressions
Hi Ben, went through your blog and i am really impressed by your pics. comming back you should think about a professional photograph carrier :-) Best regards and enjoy your time susanne