Off Into Laos

Having gained a minimal possession of the Chinese language, but a lot of good friends, we say our lasts goodbyes and set our feet back on the road. With a 9 hour bus ride down to Jinghong in the South of Yunnan, we stretch out on the sleeper bus and watch through the body-length windows as we leave Kunming behind.

We are welcomed to Jinghong by hundreds of elephant statues, along the roads, on roofs, everywhere, from pint-size to life-size. These probably far outnumber the amount of actual elephants to be found in the nearby national park, but as always, the tourist industry capitalises in whatever ways it can, even if it involves the tasteful 'wild elephant shows'. In this town Andi finally makes the most of his last chance to experience Chinese massage. After an hour of pure torture, focused on pressure points all over the body, he declines the offer of free 10 more minutes by ensuring them that he is relaxed as humanly possible. After some uneventful days spent in recovery, we gladly head for the Lao border, carried by a small bus transporting people and just about everything else. Despite failing a small interrogation about Lei-chester football club, the immaculately uniformed guard lets us out of China, and as the squeaky clean Chinese post disappears behind us, the small cluster of huts ahead tells us we are about to enter a very different country. As we all bustle around trying to fill in forms with a clear lack of pens, the border guard takes it easy slouched back in his chair. Luckily he lets it slide that I forgot to bring a passport photo, and give us change for our 37$ in a mixture of currencies that are lying around. We hop back on the bus and head off into Laos towards our next destination, Luang Nam Tha.

We soon realise that we are in a new world. Instead of concrete blocks and quarried landscapes, we drive through forest covered hills, passing the occasional bamboo hut along the way. Eventually arriving, we expect to land in a nice Lao town, but instead, despite not yet being on the main tourist route, we find a village of foreigners dominated by guest houses, restaurants and tour companies offering so-called "Eco-Tourism": taking you to new and unexploited hill-tribe villages, pushing the frontiers of the industry to the last remaining pockets of the country. Coming from China, where people want to have their photo taken with the peculiarity that is the westerner and even a menu in English is rare, South East Asia appears on face to be one big holiday resort. Having said that, walking away from the centre of banana pancakes, it doesn’t take long before normal life takes over. People appear to take great pride in themselves and what they have. We pass a man sweeping the leaves off the dirt road outside his house. Things are kept clean and tidy, even with chickens, pigs and naked children let loose. Most appealing is the difference in the state of the toilets, a sentiment shared by a Lao friend of ours: they may be basic, but they are always clean, and you get to have one for yourself.

With smaller chances than of winning the lottery, we coincidently bump into our Lao classmates from back in Kunming. After sharing a breakfast together, they invite us to a village festival – the celebration of the return of students from abroad – to which we gladly accept. Being welcomed as family and included into the ceremony we humbly experience this heart-full event for this generation of youngsters. With thoughtful words, the parents and elders bind their blessing to our wrists with the tying of white strings. Afterwards we sit together on long benches along the hall and eat with our individual packages of rice roast pork and tofu soup from communal bowls, along with the taste of a delicacy best described as solidified spicy blood. After manditory downing of unknown quantities of Beer Lao from a single cup,which was constantily passed, filled and passed again, the event cumulates in a big karaoke, with Andi's entertaining (and partially made-up) rendition of Reinhard Mey's 'Uber den Wolken'.

To Cut a Long Story Short

Having travelled for months and with the temptation of a city promising eternal spring, we decide to rest. Yet as our hopes for a temporary working visa fail, we head for a student life and put ourselves into the arms of a university for a semester of Chinese. Many stories of an exciting and funny life with our strange but beloved flatmates as well as our friends and classmates from around the world could be told. But if I would do so 'I will still sit here tomorrow'. So instead for our home for 4 month a few more pictures.. about being 'actor', days in slightly overpopulated city parks or more generally the joys of living in a random Chinese metropolis that is strangely reminiscent of a small countryside town. 

We soon settle into a routine, classes in the morning until 10, visits to local restaurants where we can fulfil our various Chinese food addictions, getting £2 roast ducks from the local market, walks to near-by parks and lakes to feed the vicious sea-gulls and so on. We quickly realise the character of society here, both good and bad. The level of government control is clear, not only by the blocking of facebook, youtube and even our blog but by the reluctance of people, even good friends, to talk about controversies such as Taiwan or Tibet. Despite being one of the safest countries we have visited, it is clear that if you step out of line here, you are in the no-mans-land that is the dark underbelly of China.

  

 

Intermittently we have our little excursions away from the city. As an actor for a 1930s' TV series (earning 10 times as much as our Chinese counterparts) I got tricked into a journey into the distant Dali. A little wonderland gem in noisy grubby China which preserved (or reconstructed) its beautiful antique style. In between hundreds of tourists beats a lively rhythm of hippies living from selling their self-made hacky sacks in this lake and mountain surrounded scenery.

 

Our steady reliable horse Jinlun also takes us on another trip, to the famous rice terraces of Yuanyang and the tea growing region of Pu'er. Perfect examples of how even the steepest hills may be used. Left with miraculous reflections the landscape is brought alive by its diverse minorities (which account for a mere 110 million of China's population).

  

After four months in the city, and the promise of rainforests and beaches to the south, we are finally ready to move on. Literally swapping our electric heater for a mosquito net, we pack our bags and move out of the city of Spring and into the world of never ending Summer.

Shangrila - a novel place...

Claiming to be the mysterious haven described in James Hilton's 'Lost Horizon,' Zhongdian, at the foot of the Himalayas, was renamed after the famous Shangrila and so destined to become a Mecca for paradise seeking tourists worldwide.

After searching through the brand new bitumen town, we in fact enter the sphere of fabulously maintained Shangrila. Fantastic Tibetan-style architecture awaits us together with elaborately dressed women. Men as always are nothing like their better halves yet give a smart appearance in their cowboy hat and high boots. At nights we stroll past stupas and through old alleys filled with locals having adapted their lives towards handicrafts and bars. Everything from hamburgers, to typical Chinese is on the menu, but we decide to treat ourselves to a nice 'Yak-hotpot,' a big bubbling cauldron of deliciousness. Approaching one of the central places, we encounter an example of China's all present group dances. Enthusiastically swinging their legs in a 50 link human circle we follow random Chinese tourists' ability to almost instantly pick up the local dance.

With the start of a sunny day (the burningly-close-to-the-sun kind of sunny), we head for the famous monastery of Shangrila. Frightened by a 20 Euro toll gate we decide our motorbike deserves the title of "cross" and work our way through muddy but springlike blooming fields. An hour later and past the gate we are awaited by the golden shiny temple complex. Green and yellow protectors, with teeth longer than healthy for themselves, stand guard to the enlightened man. Buddha, worshipped even secretly during times of strongest prohibition, and hundreds of other mysterious fellows try their best to enlighten the room in colour. He himself proudly presents in more than 15m tallness.

After picturesque days a race against time begins. Trying to get to the capital of the province before our visa expires, we watch as Dali, the famous hippy town, passes by and keep heading south for Kunming. As always things take longer than expected, and with a worse than usual road, it takes us three days to get there (as opposed to 3 hours, with a car on the express way to which motorbikes are forbidden). As we approach the mini metropolis - a modest 7 million people - the countryside becomes somewhat more butchered and industrialised. Cruising the endless roads we fight our way deeper into the heart of the town and drop happily into the arms of another Chinese hotel.