Jinghong to Luang Namtha - Sunday 4th December

Another grey day – getting a bit fed up with lack of sun. We said goodbye to the lovely town of Jinghong and set off for Laos, stopping on the way at the superb Xishuangbanna Botanical Gardens. It covers a huge area of hundreds of hectares so we could only see a small corner – along with hoards of other visitors, and a fine spectacle it is. You hop on and off passing buggies to help cover the distance.

My favourite was the palm area –did you know there are more than 2600 varieties of palm in the world? It is so hard to choose the best pix from the hundreds taken!

After a couple of hours we got back on the road – China is putting huge amounts into wonderful highways linking it to its Asian neighbours, and so far they are not overcrowded, however, a 20 minute break for repairs in a tunnel gave us an unscheduled pit-stop which proved highly entertaining as the local vendors used the queue to trade their wares and entertain us:

Yes, she was selling maggots tucked into a bamboo pipe and yes, that lady bought them!



Most of the tunnels have minimal lighting, but this one had none, apart from arc lights at the section being repaired.

The next excitement was laving China and entering Laos – the new border post at Mohan is very spiffy – getting 5 Avis jeeps through takes a fair bit of red-tape, but it was efficient enough and after about an hour of formalities we were waved on. The Laos entry point was a more casual affair – though a grand golden edifice is under construction -  and our Lao guide who met us there had us sorted and on our way.







The immediate difference in the two landscapes is that the China side is terraced and cultivated to within an inch whereas the Lao side is wild and untamed except for close to the infrequent villages – guess which we preferred. 


We finally arrived at our destination – a really lovely, laid-back rive-side lodging called The Boat Landing in Luang Namtha.  Despite the “do it yourself” toilet flush, we would happily have stayed there for more than just the one night, it has such character.