We are back from "Shangrila" Ba Mei village

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We are back in GuangNan, Yunnan, at 7:30 pm on Nov 17.

GuangNan is about 500 km east of Kunming, Yunnan.

After this morning's journal entry, we boarded a mini-bus for Ba Mei, another Shangrila in Yunnan. This is the lesser known village, unlike the Shangrila in Zhongdian, Yunnan.

The bus ride took about an hour, instead of two hours. One minority woman threw up all the way, and yet she has further to go, what a pity ! A lot of villagers in China are not used to automobile rides and therefore many buses offer plastic shoppers for those who get sick.

We got off at Fa Li village and walked two kilometers of nicely stone paved road to the Ba Mei village.

We paid admission of RMB$40. This admission fee included three bamboo raft rides (the raftmen used a big bamboo stick to push the raft) and one pony cart ride. The entire village spans about 7 km, we started at the north end and exited at the south end.

The first bamboo raft ride took us through a dark cave for approximately .6 km.
The feeling is really eerie, but the anticipation is exciting. The cave is approximately 100 feet high.

At the other end of the cave, we landed and saw that the village is actually in the valley. The entire valley is surrounded by mountains. The entire valley is farm land, some land is terraced. It is very peaceful, especially we are the only two tourists.

One thing which is peculiar to us is that many grandpas take care of the children. Many of them have their grandkids strapped on their backs.

All the children look so healthy and happy, although they are not perfectly clean.

We walked for about 2 km, and saw that the villagers are busy with their farm work.

Then we boarded a second raft and went through another cave, this time it is not as exciting as the first, as it is shorter and not as dark.

After a short walk, we took a donkey ride. The scenery is not great, and the little donkey had to work so hard and got beaten often by his owner.

Then we took the last raft ride, which took us through another cave for .85km. The cave is mildly decorated with lights, but it is a wonderful looking cave.

Without the caves, the village would resemble any other village in Yunnan (still beautiful). The caves, which hid the village from the outside world, made this place special.

This concludes our visit to Ba Mei village.

We walked to the road and waited for the last bus of the day. A young man with a motorcycle offered us a ride to the next bigger village for RMB$10. So the two of us hopped on and the three of us on the motorcycle drove for about 8 KM. At the next village called "AKE" (Ah Ker), we boarded a very mini 7-passenger van (commonly called bread car, because of the shape) and came back to GuangNan.

We went back to our guesthouse, which we paid for a half day for the morning. We will pay the balance to make up the full day and stay till tomorrow.

We went to have a hot pot dinner, with chicken, and vegetables for RMB$10 each.

Tomorrow, we will travel further into Yunnan and hopefully closer to Laos.

The weather here is a bit cool, about 10 degrees celcius. So we want to travel to a warmer area.

P.S. To reach Ba Mei, we took almost all kind of transportation -- train, sleeper bus, mini-bus, bread bus, raft, donkey cart, and a small motorcycle that carried three adults and two small backpacks.

Until next time......

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