trekking xishuangbanna

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after waking up to the farm living beneath us, we had a noodle breakfast and were off on our day-long trek. beautiful scenery along the dirt road, we left the tiny village behind us and walked through a bit more jungle which gave way to dry desert-like landscape. We were now confident with our picking-the-right-path-without-a-map navigation skills until a few hours later we found oursleves in the middle of a field of tall dry wild grass following the tiniest foot path.

On our way back down the trail we hear children's laughter somewhat eerily coming from a hidden place amongst the tall grass. We were both concentrating so intently on the laughter to the right of us, that the big wild boar that came trampling though the grass on our left definitely caught us off guard and left us a little shaken.

We found a couple boys cutting wood a few feet down the trail. They led us back through the tall grass up the tallest peak of the hill which met up with the main dirt road. After a couple hours of uphill walking we found an old watchtower, camouflaged in army green, that looked over the hills and jungle we had just walked. We were only a few miles from the Burmese border to the south of us. We trekked on to the north and after 8 hours of hiking came to Bulangshan, another tiny town (but the convenience stores and motorcylce shops made it seem like an urban metropolis). We were greeted by a beautifully nice old woman who invited us to her house for a rest, food, and a plce to stay the night. We opted for the local guesthouse instead where we could wash the dirt off that had been stuck to us for the last two days.

back at the convenience store it tuned out that this town really small, and we were the latest gossip. a goup of men drinking and having dinner together already knew who we were, where we were from, etc because one man had been on the same bus as us to Mong Song a couple days ago.

after dinner we found our way to the only karaoke/ night entertainment on the town strip and sang a few songs with some local boys before we passed out from the day of trekking.

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