And they keep coming!
Continuing on from ep 14 of PPKP ep 15 takes the PPKP team to the mystical village of Zhongdian, a.k.a “Shangri La” high up in the mountains of Yunnan.
As always, make your way over to planetkapow.com for Lachlan’s much more interesting write up on what went down in Zhongdian town.
Ping Pong Kapow episode 15 from Adam Teale on Vimeo.
It’s been a long time coming, but here is the latest Ping Pong Kapow video from Erin, Lachlan & my journey through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos & China in late 2008.
Episode 14 takes us north of Lijang, Yunnan province, up above the Yangtze River to Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Check it out here, or be even cooler and check out our new site PlanetKapow.com and read in much more interesting detail about what we got up to. (Warning – contains graphic images of a pig being butchered, and the occasional/usual swearing.)
Ping Pong Kapow episode 14 from Adam Teale on Vimeo.
It’s really really cold, but it isn’t really that cold – it’s 2 dec C.
But coming from 18+ months living in Thailand this is very cold.
Yesterday morning we arrived in Dali, Yunnan, after a 17 hour or so bus trip from Jinghong. The bus was pretty good – it was a sleeper bus – something i hadn’t ever seen before. Bunk beds in 3 rows up the bus. Long enough for your average Chinese bloke to stretch out in. Despite all the piss stops, spitting, smoking and overall smell of death the bus was a good way to get around. Hopefully we haven’t contracted TB or something just as cool.
We are staying in the ‘old city’ Dali – it backs onto a massive mountain (i think it’s called Cangshan /Malong). Seemingly “authentic”. The 3 of us were a little knackered yesterday after the bus trip so we didn’t get up to very much. I think we are going to hire some bikes today.
It’s 8.40 am and I am awake to the sounds of techno and toilets being flushed.
Jingkong, Yunnan, China
Now we are real aliens.
Yesterday we crossed the border from Laos into China.
We bussed our way out of Luang Nam Tha pretty early (i think about 8am) and arrived in the Laos border town Boten about an hour or less later. Being the cheapskates we are we said no to the tuktuk guys who wanted to take us to the other side (Mohan) – instead ‘trekked’ the 1 km over.
Construction was going on as we got closer to Mohan and the smells from it reminded me of when I went to Beijing in 1999. Glue, welding, paint and probably more cool chemicals – The Smell of Progress. Quite a contrast to what we’d seen in Laos. Erin, Lachlan and I felt like we were in Disneyland but without all the shitty music. Lot’s of bright colours and new stuff.
Passport control was excellent and we through in less than a minute. The guys spoke English well and were curious about what the Australian emblem in our passport was all about – luckily Erin was up to speed with that and filled them in.
Yes we are real aliens. The language swapped over straight away from something i could slightly understand (very similar to Thai) to Putonghua. The little I had learnt back in Hong Kong 2 year ago had pretty much vanished to some remote place in my brain and was slowly trickling back out. And we seem to be getting a lot of attention on the street.
From Mohan we got a van to Mengla and then another van to Jinghong. It all went pretty easily – a lot to do with the amazing countryside, villages and the super kickass highway that tunnels it’s way through it all.
Jinghong was not what we expected. This city is massive and has a buzz to it. Lots of lights, shops and green trees. People so far don’t seem to be cracking the kind of smiles i was used to in Thailand but I am working on them. We scored 2 rooms for ¥40 – includes rooftop views of the buildings next to it. Tsingtao beer is ¥6. Lots of photo opportunities here for sure
Public toilets are just how i remembered them. Yikes!
