a walk in the park

Run? Ha!There was no way span and i were going to go for a run considering the hangovers we were nursing the next morning. That night we played ping pong on the balcony and had a drink there before heading downstairs for ‘cross the bridge noodles’, a steamy concoction where you add the raw meat and veges to about 2 litres of soup and it cooks it – definitely would not comply with victorian health and safety but this is china! And as span and i have been saying – it is the chinese way – but more examples of this later.Anyway, i scored some across the bridge noodles and added my raw meat (minus intestines) while span scored us some 70c tsing taos (big beers). I ate my noodles and span drank the soup while we polished off half a dozen beers between us. Feeling like we should show the chinese our dancing style, we headed to ‘crystal disco’ where we joined the dancefloor. Hell we were the dancefloor.We showed off moves never to be seen again in china, and embarrassed ourselves in front of the pouting girls and the sleazy guys. And span became my wife. And then someone elses wife. Then another girls wife, and from there its a little hazy.Needless to say a run the next morning was out of the question, but food, of course, was not. We spent the next day not getting a visa extension (becase the psb takes 5 days, we will do it in dali) eating, walking, shopping, holding cute puppies probably destined for cross the bridge noodles and chilling... before we caught the sleeper bus to jinghong.Arriving in jinghong in the morning meant nothing was open in this sprawling wannabe tropical city near the laos border. So we huing for a while, ate (der) and got our bearings before choosing a 3 day hard trek from the limited options available. Again we would explore and eat, me finding muslim noodles (the best!), jiaozi, baozi and sticky rice. We took bikes out into the countryside and got safely lost before finding our intended desination of thermal pools.Apart from the stench of sulphur they were quite nice: a tiled pool with concrete border, concrete seats with tiled tops, fake concrete bamboo and real palm trees (at this point ben stops typing, gagging the close the window of the internet cafe to stem the stench of urine eminating from outside). We were also joined by two chinese (*dare i say*) dickheads, who wanted to play and splashed span with the filthy bacteria infested, sulphuric water. We did go in and it was hot and stinky. Quite strange actually. That night at peacock pack back in jinghong, we witnessed mass dances in the square of old chinese swaying, clapping, chanting and singing, alledgely an old minority tribe dance which the elders are trying to keep alive. Didnt make sense at the time. Span and i tried to get money out at an atm, in front of a huge queue at the Chinese Agricultural Bank, and subsequently froze all their atms. Oops.3 days ago in the morning we left jinghong on a 3 day walk (trek) through the bush (the jungle). We went with mark and johanna, a french couple, and our guide anipa. Its hard to describe each experience day by day, but i’ll give an account of the entire experience in general.We hiked quite hard, about 20 kms a day (which was half a day on day 1 and 3) up and down valleys, over rivers, down paddy fields, through tropical rainforest, maize, sugar cne, giant bamboo, old villages (wit satelite tv) and dusty one way roads. The terrain was quite varied and there were paths leading in every direction, thus had we not had anipa, we would have been sorely lost. Anipa was a lovely guy, friendly, a little quiet, but generally forthcoming with information and willing to answer any question. On the first night we stayed with his family in a small village where he grew up, visited the temple where he was a monk for a year when he ws 12, and then stayed with his 3rd cousins on the second night. It was fascinating to be welcomed into their culture so openly. Of course we couldnt communicate at all, let alone understand what was going on, but we could converse in our conversation while they did in theirs, as we all sat around the fire in the middle of the large room which is their house. The food was fantastic, tasty, if not a bit oily, but all fresh ingrediants from their garden or the market. Tea, rice and cornwine from their farmland. Lovely. I think staying with these generous and open people was one of the highlights of the walk, if not the trip so far. On the morning of the second day we survived a harrowing downhill slide/walk to a nearby waterfall where i washed my head! Was goig to go for a swim, but it ws definetly too cold.... was magic though!During the day we walked together, but span an i were a bit faster and fitter than the rest so tended to meet them at the top of the hill. On the last day we walked 12 kilometres downhill down a dirt track and it was quite hard. Then when we arrived in dalou last night i smashed 1 and a half bowls of tang mian (rice noodles with soup), and the french bought a metre of sugar cane for 2 yuan and 12 bananas for 1 yuan (16c) . we got a bus back for 3 hours.After washing off about a kilo of dirt we had a beer at Mekong cafe where we had met anipa, and then headed to the barbeque down the road. They had everything from frog to liver, to sparrows, fish, intestines, vegies, nuts, trotters, and beer on offer. We grabbed the safest stuff, and sat down with the frenchies to enjoy our feast, especially the sweet sticky rice in pinapple.Today we have been relaxing after our walk, intending to go to dali tonight (18 hour sleeper bus). From there i think we will walk and explore the countryside while we wait for extended visas and then we will be able to book our passage to kathmandu.