Here Be Elephants

There are an estimated 1,600 Asian elephants currently living in Laos. Up to 600 of these are employed in the legal and illegal logging industry. Perhaps another 600 live in the wild while the remainder are employed in the tourism industry. Obviously, elephants require a ridiculous amount of food to survive (300+ kilograms a day of plants and fruit). A domesticated elephant is only viable if it can work to earn it’s keep. Wild elephants are quickly losing their habitat to human expansion, becoming trapped in pockets of wilderness that cannot support their needs. It’s estimated that they will be extinct in the whole of Southeast Asia within the next 50 years.

Life as a logging elephant sounds tough. They are often forced with abusive methods to pull loads beyond their natural ability, which is sometimes enhanced by drugs such as MDMA (ecstasy). They work long hours with inadequate food and medical attention. The working environment is dangerous, often resulting in blindness and other crippling disabilities.

In the last 20 years, a new type of project has developed to attempt to save elephants in the logging industry. As with the eco-tourism discussed in previous posts, they are creating methods where it’s economically viable for locals not to exploit elephants and the natural environment so unsustainably. “Elephant villages” have become homes to many ex-logging elephants and their mahouts (elephant keepers) where they do the relatively easy job of providing rides to tourists a few hours a day in exchange for plenty of food (including delicious bananas), decent medical attention, and a wage for the mahout. Many of the elephants still suffer from their previous abuses, many displaying scars and abscesses from old wounds, and partial and even complete blindness is common.

Of course, even this kind of project is open to greed and exploitation. Some of the villages force the elephants to work longer hours and carry too many tourists at one time. And few earn enough money to provide proper medical attention. There are a lot of choices in Luang Prabang, we attempted to choose the most ethical. The Elephant Village XL was (supposedly) the first of its kind, one of the very few with a full-time vet, and has gained worldwide recognition in reputable publications (Newsweek, the Guardian). The tour operator that arranged our trip (Tiger Trails) also promises to put 10% of its own profits back into the local communities.

The working day of an elephant in the village we visited begins around 7:30 am when they are led down from the jungle to the river to be bathed by tourists (one per elephant). Throughout the day, they are either carrying one or two tourists, plus their mahout, on 40-60 minute rides or standing at their stalls being treated to a constant stream of bananas from delighted tourists. The camp also feeds them fresh sugarcane and bamboo, and they forage in the jungle themselves evenings and mornings. Around 3 pm, they are brought back into the jungle to spend the night. Unfortunately, they cannot roam freely and are kept on a 20 foot chain overnight, apparently because of the dangers of elephant poaching. Their previous training and experience still makes them potentially valuable in the logging industry.

AW + MD

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Guide books often wax lyrical about the grimmest and most uninteresting of places, so we took descriptions of the town as a ‘jewel of Southeast Asia’, ‘ that would ‘linger in the imagination long after you visit’ with a pinch of salt. In fact, as you can see from the pictures, it is indeed a very beautiful and captivating town. The contrasts feel like they should be bizarre – orange clad monks mingling with foreign tourists, renovated French style villas next to crumbling gold-plated wat (temples), but in fact it all fits together perfectly in this sleepy town.

The town is Unesco-protected; the old quarter alone contains more than a dozen temples. In the last ten years, several tall, boxy new buildings had been erected to house more visiting tourists and generally to help develop the tourism industry. After a visit by Unesco in 2007, these new buildings were torn down, and the town is now investing in restoring its old buildings and developing its tourism in this way. Most of the old French villas now house small guesthouses, boutiques, spas, and fancy restaurants, and the whole town feels considerably more up-scale than any place we have yet visited, aiming at attracting a few wealthy tourists rather than hordes of tight-fisted backpackers or tour groups.

Our main excitement about this town before arrival was its proximity to several ‘Elephant villages’ offering sanctuary for retired logging elephants and an opportunity for tourists to interact with them. We had hoped to do this over Matthew’s birthday, and were initially disappointed to discover that we would have to wait for several days. However, Luang Prabang provides many distractions, and in the end we passed a very enjoyable few days here visiting temples, strolling the streets and markets, and reading and relaxing in some of the town’s many cafes and restaurants. The cuisines on offer here are almost as varied as in Shanghai: Laos, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Italian, French and just general ‘western’. Matt even found himself some tacos. The proliferation of bakeries, carts selling crepes or baguette sandwiches and places offering homemade ice-cream is also wonderful.

I particularly enjoyed sindad, which is described as Laos barbecue, and seems to me like a combination of Korean barbecue and Chinese hotpot, but not spicy. A very unique pot with a high raised curved centre and a reservoir for liquid around the edge is placed over hot coals. Meats are placed over the curved centre of the pot and barbecued, as vegetables, eggs, tofu and noodles are cooked in a broth around the edge. Juices and fat from the meat run down to give the broth extra flavor, and minced garlic and chilies can also be added. It was delicious.
We walked home along dark quiet streets, down an alley lined with crumbling, unrestored villas and half-timbered traditional Laos houses to our cosy guesthouse by the banks of the Nam Khan river. Perhaps the Lonely Planet was right to describe it as ‘the most beguiling ancient city in Southeast Asia.’

AW

Photos can be found here

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Huay Xai has a river border with Thailand, and is also the starting point for boats heading south-east on the Mekong towards Luang Prabang, former capital of Laos. Slow boats take two days, motor boats only six hours – but with a high risk of death. Our hotel sold us tickets for the slow boat (bikes go on the roof and cost extra) and insisted that in order to get a good seat we should be waiting at reception by 8.30 am. Well, we were first at the docks, first on the boat, and did indeed get some of the best seats on the boat. But so did the people who showed up at ten. Even the people who showed up at eleven did alright. The people who rocked up at 12 were perhaps a little less comfortable…but they had certainly had a good nights sleep and an enjoyable breakfast first.

The two days on the boat were enjoyably uneventful. The boat chugs along for about 6 hours a day, and stops overnight at the small town of Pak Beng. The Mekong is a very pleasant river, with great (if a bit repetitive) views of villages and jungle hillsides. We were grateful not to be cycling over many of the impressive peaks we slowly floated past. Our fellow passengers were, in most cases, quiet and kind and even included a couple of bike tourists doing similar trips to our own. They were also mostly foreign tourists, with only a handful of locals mixed in. One Canadian couple had cycled all the way from Hong Kong, and said that their most enjoyable cycling was in China. We may be tired of China, but they had valid points in the quality of the roads and the ease of finding places to stay and eat. On a less high note, there was also a group of extremely loud and increasingly drunk tourists on the second day. The English girl in front of us declared them “an embarrassment” to her friends. Yes, the drunks were also Brits.

In contrast to the calm of the trip, both of the unloading experiences were hellish; passengers and crew yelling and tossing bags around while local business owners pester you with fliers and hotel room offers. Although our bags are great for the bikes, it isn’t very convenient to disembark loaded with eight separate bags, helmets and other extras. Pak Beng was especially terrible for this since it was a small town designed entirely for tourists, and the ‘docks’ were just a steep sandy bank. Competition for the guesthouses was fierce, and if you didn’t move quickly you end up over-paying for a terrible room. Though in hindsight, it looked like every guesthouse in that town was terrible and overpriced. The businesses know you have no other option, so they take the opportunity to gouge you and have no incentive to improve their services.

We were told that the boat left Pak Beng at 8.30 the next morning, and so in order to get our bikes safely on the roof and our bums on good seats, we arrived at the dock by 7am. Of course the boat didn’t leave until everyone was onboard, by which time it was closer to ten. Ah well. It’s not like our beds were comfortable anyway.

Although the only scheduled stop was in Pak Beng, our boat did stop briefly several times along the way. Many of the villages along the Mekong are only accessible on foot or by boat, and we were frequently flagged down by t-shirt waving locals.

We arrived safely in Luang Prabang and, without too much effort, were able to find a cozy room in a pleasant guesthouse far enough from the main roads and bars to be quiet. Luang Prabang seems like a wonderful place to spend a few days and a few dollars.

Pictures can be seen here

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Leaving Vieng Phoukay in the not too late morning, we espied something very exciting – another pair of bicycle tourers! These were the first we had met, two Thai men who were very friendly and gave us good information about a place to stay that night. If we hadn’t met them, we might have ended up camping by the road as the guesthouse was unmarked, hard to identify, and apparently the only one on the way to Huay Xai.

Our first packed lunch of samosas and mint sauce, eaten in the shade of a farmer’s bamboo hut had been a pleasant and delicious affair. The cold plain noodles and deep fried mystery fruit we had bought in the market at Vieng Phouka seemed a lot less palatable, and the steep mountain road afforded little in the way of shady picnic spots. We had been lugging around a stove and a fuel bottle filled at a Chinese petrol station for about a month, and decided it was time to bring them out and cook up some soup noodles (also from china) to supplement our market snacks. We hadn’t even tried out the stove before, so it took us a while to get it set up, with the aid of the instruction booklet. But sadly, nowhere in that booklet did it explain what to do if your fuel was not flammable. The stuff simply would not light, succeeding only in extinguishing flame. So after a frustrating half hour, we settled down to our original lunch. As expected, cold plain noodles and cold deep fried fruit (it might have been a sort of sweet potato) were not very good, and most of those were given to a very grateful passing stray dog, who thought they were in fact delicious.

It was a long, hard days cycle up and down a mountain, and we really struggled on some of the ascents. What should have been a glorious swooping descent in the afternoon was ruined by about 15 km of bad road. It was in the process of being resurfaced, and was mostly gravel, dust and rocks. No sooner had we pulled into our guesthouse, behind a grocery/fuel shop seemingly in the middle of nowhere, than two more bicycle tourers pulled up from the other direction. They were a Danish couple, who had been on the road since January, working their way slowly north from New Zealand.

Matthew only here for a second, it’s too confusing to write some things in the third person. The guesthouse was also the location of the only TV in the area, and easily fifteen children were crowded around enthralled in football (the Asian Games 2010 in Guangzhou just began), so Alison joined them. Having little interest in football, I brought out my PSP (a portable video game system) to pass the time waiting for dinner to be prepared. Many of the children quickly agreed that the PSP was indeed more interesting than football and so I became the center of a huddle as they crowded in to watch cartoon tanks and explosions on the tiny screen. I wanted to share, but was at a loss as to which game they could play (since it could very well be their first, and language would be a barrier to explanation). Alison reminded me that I recently purchased Burnout, a simple racing game that would be perfect. I expected them to grab excitedly at the controls as soon as they were offered, but all of them seemed too nervous to try. Eventually, after I demonstrated how easy it was, one brave boy decided to have go. The excitement they had in watching me blow up tanks tripled when they watched their friends haphazardly attempt to drive around a race track.. cheering when the car finally had enough and exploded magnificently.

The next day’s cycling was very tough, up two mountains in the baking sun, and even after our final descent into a gentle valley we still had 25 km to go. But we made it into Huay Xai before dark, and managed to get an ok room. It wasn’t as easy as we might have expected, as Huay Xai was stuffed full of foreigners. They were mostly Thai or European tourists who had recently crossed the border, and they came as a bit of a shock to us. However, Huay Xai was totally ready and set up for them, so for dinner we had delicious pizza and Beer Laos, in a cosy restaurant with checked table cloths and wall mounted antlers, and almost managed to watch the sunset over Thailand.

Pictures can be seen here

Other Pages Updated: Maps, Pictures, Statistics

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Our southerly direction repetitive and our uneven tans ridiculous, we decided to mix things up a bit and head west. Huay Xai is as far west as you can go without falling in the Mekong and trespassing into Thailand, and it was our next destination. Asking how to get there was easier once we figured out its surprising pronunciation (Way Sigh), but actually it seems anywhere in Laos is pretty easy to get to, as there are so few roads. No confusing unmarked crossroads here. As yet, no crossroads. If it’s paved, or mostly paved, or looks like maybe it was once paved, it’s probably the right road.

We wanted to get an early start in the cool of the morning, but an enjoyable breakfast and hopeless inefficiency meant that, as usual, we utterly failed to get on the road before the sun had broken through the mist and begun to scorch us. Which of course meant stopping to apply sun cream, find sunglasses and similar delays. After a month of doing this every day, you would expect us to be better at all this.

The 213 in China wound laboriously up mountains through cool, shady forests; most days we had at least some cover. In Laos, the road tackles mountains like a country with a tarmac shortage – mostly just going straight up and down. Trees on either side have been felled, and there is virtually no protection from the sun. These factors combine to make some pretty tough riding conditions, and make starting early and having long lunch break an absolute necessity.

Getting hold of food and water between towns has also become much more difficult. The poverty of the general population was not very visible in comfortable Luang Namtha, but in some of the villages at higher elevations along our route you can see that this really is one of the poorest countries in the world. Even the cows are skinny. As most of these people are subsistence farmers, and the traffic on the roads is virtually non-existent, there are very few places to buy snacks, bottled water and other (for us) essentials. Instead of stopping at roadside restaurants to eat lunch as we were able to do in China, we are now buying a picnic lunch in the morning. We already carry about 5 litres of water, but with the extended sun exposure and steep ascents, there are days when we are close to running dry.

Places to stay are also rarer, which forces us to stop when there is a place to stay rather than when we are tired (or, more frequently, forces us to continue on when we would rather stop). So, on first day or our three leg trip to Huay Xai, we made it about 60 km to Vieng Phoukay, a small place still definitely more town than village. The riding wasn’t particularly difficult, and the roads were good. Our guesthouse consisted of small wood and thatch ‘bungalows’, with en suite squat toilet and bucket of water for washing/flushing. This style of guesthouse seems to be very standard for Laos.

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Luang Namtha is full of “eco-tourism” offices selling treks into the jungle, village homestays, guided bike trips, and river excitement. “Eco-tourism” has become the major draw in Laos in an effort to protect the landscape and the local culture. Many of the tourist offices provide breakdowns of where the money for the tours go to benefit the local area. It’s all in the hope that protecting the natural beauty becomes more profitable than destroying it with logging, hunting and traditional ‘slash and burn’ farming techniques.

We decided to take a break from the bikes as a form of transport and give kayaking on the Namha river a go. It was a day long tour that followed the river about 20 km along the border of the protected zone. And included visits to three villages, all of different ethnic minorities. We set off just the two of us and our guide with high hopes.

The village visits were not the main attraction. All too often it ends up feeling a little too much like visiting a strange zoo that features people as the attraction and that makes watched and watcher uncomfortable. There is a feeling of intruding on their lives, especially as part of a formal guided tour which makes the whole thing unpleasant. We didn’t take any pictures for that reason. However, one of the main points of ‘eco-tourism’ is that these villages benefit financially from the visits, and the element of mutual gain, and mutual learning is much touted.

The first village belonged to the Lenten tribe, who have their own language and culture ties to China. We were mostly ignored , though some children seemed please to show off their talents at “French Skipping,” or “elastics” as Alison used to call it at school. The most interesting part of our visit was that it coincided with a visit from health officials. We spoke to one of them, who had better english than our guide, and he explained that they were testing for HIV as there has recently been an outbreak due to lack of education and drug use amongst villagers. This contrasted somewhat with the picture that our guide was trying to present.

And so to the river we went. It was a fairly calm river interrupted briefly by varying degrees of small rapids. We were in a double kayak with our guide on his own in front of us. Although the river is fairly calm, its bed is full of large submerged rocks which makes kayaking more challenging even outside of the rapids. To our right was the protected area, which at times was an impressively dense jungle and home to some beautiful birds and large insects.

The beginning went alright though it quickly seemed that our kayak was having troubles balancing, listing dangerously from side to side even in calm waters. On our third set of rapids, we got into difficulties and flipped. The water wasn’t that dangerous and we calmly floated to a point where we could right our boat and climb back aboard. No big deal. Or so we thought.

The reason for our upset rapidly became apparent: two large failed patch jobs in the hull were causing us to take in water constantly. The pleasant paddle along a river soon turned into a struggle of epic proportions. We would barely make it a kilometer without needing to pull off to a bank to drag the heavily waterlogged kayak out of the water, lean it against a tree, and drain our unwanted ballast. Needless to say, we didn’t always make it to a bank in time, and ended up being tossed into the water more times than necessary. The most frightening time, we were tipped out in between two sets of rapids and were forced to get back on the kayak going backwards. Unsurprisingly, going backwards failed and we found ourselves once again submerged and dragged along by the current over jagged rocks. But luckily our helmets and life jackets worked better than our kayak.

For obvious reasons, we would hesitate to recommend you use “Jungle-Eco Guide Services”. Although our guide, Air, did his best with poor materials and the fish he barbecued for us was delicious. All the excitement and constant water removal meant we were able to skip the other planned village visits. Despite it all, we had a great time and escaped with only a few bumps and bruises. Floating down the river in a life jacket was at times immensely enjoyable. The prospect of cycling through the Namha protected region tomorrow is an exciting one. Let’s hope we meet some gaur.

For those interested, Matthew’s last rapids experience in New Zealand went equally well: YouTube link… our rapids today were nothing like those.

First pictures in Laos can be found here

Other Pages Updated: Pictures, Maps, and Statistics

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(“Goodbye China, Hello Laos!”)

Only a week later than expected, we finally crossed the Laos border and left China behind. The Chinese border town, Mohan, has been under serious development for some time, presumably to appear as impressive as possible. But, typically for China, it comes off more tacky and rundown than they probably want. The development is very superficial, big new buildings are left empty and broad boulevards look silly lacking the traffic they’re clearly designed for.

Our cheap hotel was very typical, shabby whitewashed walls, hard beds, dirty bathroom…and a huge color TV. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable night, and in the morning we were happy to leave and head for the huge customs building that overshadows the town to the south. For an unknown reason, money could not be changed in the two banks located in a border town and instead we used the “change money!” ladies standing around the border pestering everyone. At least it was a breeze to get through Chinese customs. Most of our fellow border crossers were Laos citizens or Thai tourists.

On the other side, the Laos customs building (see: shack) stood in stark contrast to the Chinese behemoth. Getting our visas on arrival was easy, though pricier than expected at $45 each, and we were back on the road in no time.

We hadn’t really thought past the Laos customs as to where we would head next, other than a general desire to head west towards a city called Huay Xai on the banks of the Mekong on the Thai border. Almost immediately mile markers spoke of Luang Prabang, which we recognized from the guidebooks to be a backpacker haven so we decided to head there. We were pleasantly surprised it was only 32 miles away and the roads were in great shape. We had half expected our nice recently sealed highway to turn into a dirt track.

Map Above: The red dot was where we entered, we’re currently in Luang Namtha, and the green dot is approximately where Huay Xai is.. our ultimate destination in the next couple of days.

The contrast between the customs buildings was not the only one we noticed. Unlike China, where concrete is King, settlements along the road seemed to be much more varied in style. Buildings ranged from the very ramshackle and basic (plywood nailed to a bamboo frame), to almost European – brick and wood, tastefully designed, and finished with pretty details such as wooden shutters and flower gardens. However, the majority of the route passed through villages consisting of bamboo huts on stilts.

Laos is around 75% unmanaged vegetation, and this was noticeable even so close to the border, despite some areas that had been heavily logged and deforested. The Laos government is attempting to halt the spread of logging and preserve its natural forests, but in many areas logging represents the main livelihood of the locals, and as such is hard to effectively control. There are a number of “protected areas” that have become one of the major draws for tourists. One of which, the densely jungled Namha region, is the attraction for backpackers going to Luang Namtha. It is home to tigers, monkeys, gaurs (the worlds largest wild cow), and many more exciting things.

Everyone in the villages along the road seemed very happy to see us. Instead of the suspicious stares and screams of “Lao Wai!” (‘foreigner’ in Chinese), we got smiles, waves, and cries of “Sabaidee!” (‘hello’ in Lao). Contrary to expectation, everything seems more expensive here so perhaps that’s why they were pleased to see us. Laos is currently struggling to pull itself off the list of the 20 poorest nations in the world. It was one of the few countries not hit by the world economic crisis, and tourism is clearly booming, so perhaps it has a decent chance.

Luang Namtha turned out to be the haven it claimed to be, its main road lined with guesthouses, restaurants offering western food, and tourism offices. We found the guesthouse most recommended by Lonely Planet, the Zuela Guesthouse, and we too would recommend it. Set in a lovely courtyard off the road, it consists of three traditional brick and wood houses, one of which is the restaurant we’re writing this from. Perhaps due to the influence of western tourists (mostly Europeans) this guesthouse clearly has different priorities than the Chinese hotels. Cleanliness, nice lighting, effective mosquito netting and atmosphere take priority over garish marbled surfaces, free one-use toiletries and big TVs. Not having a TV and bringing our own soap is worth not battling cockroaches for the bathroom.

The contrast with China is as stark as the government officials in Mohan clearly want it to be, though not in the direction they hoped. Having travelled through small town China for 3 weeks, we excused a lot by saying that the region was poor. The dirtiness, the lack of character, the attitude of locals, and the fact that everywhere seemed basically the same. Comparing it to what we have seen of Laos so far, this excuse doesn’t seem to hold water. It seems that somewhere along the line China has lost some of its soul. Perhaps it was sold to the devil as the price for their rapid modernization.

Final few pictures in China can be found here

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Mengyang to Menglun 31.4 miles – 11.01.2010
Menglun to Mengyun 32.2 miles – 11.02.2010
Mengyun to Mengla 26.2 miles – 11.03.2010

Fairly uninspired place naming here. I haven’t figured out why everything is called Meng something. The chinese character means ‘brave’, though there are many ethnic minorities in these parts with their own dialects, and it is possible it is a transliteration into chinese characters of a sound in their language, and has nothing to do with ‘brave’. If we were fit, we might have been able to do this in a day, or maybe two. But we aren’t, and we had heard tell of three mountains on the road between Mengyang and Mengla, so we decided to turn it into three days. The three mountains part was true, although they did get progressively lower (or at least, the valleys between them got progressively higher).

It’s all more of the same really as far as scenery goes. The Chinese spoken by people we meet is getting harder to understand, and people are more likely to be wearing ‘ethnic’ clothing – brightly coloured sarongs and head scarves mostly. We found an interesting-looking restaurant on the road going into Menglun, and strolled back there in the evening to try it. It was by a small river, and specialised in barbecued fish. The building was mostly made of bamboo and dried plant matter tied together with string, which really made it stand apart from the flat-roofed concrete buildings, with white-washed interiors illuminated by a bare white lightbulb we’ve been eating in for the most part. The food was also tasty, though our enjoyment of it was marred by an extremely drunk man celebrating his birthday, who insisted on sitting with us all evening repeating himself loudly all night. He addressed himself solely to Matthew, who speaks little Chinese, and spoke to me only to reprimand me for trying to eat when I should have been translating his repetitious drunken rantings. It was slightly worrying that one of his themes was ‘I’m not going to hurt you, relax, I’m a nice guy. All Chinese people are basically nice. But if I wasn’t here, you’d have to be careful’. The most worrying part of the evening however, was when he rejoined his almost equally drunk friends and they all roared off into the night on their motorbikes, with their ladies perched on the back. We are now firmly resolved to avoid the roads at night at all costs.

Matthew is currently trying to fight off a cold and we’ve spent the day attempting to plan for Laos. We’re looking to add some more variety to the trip instead of steadily plodding south. We actually have a guidebook now that we’re leaving China (a Laos/Cambodia/Thailand book has been hiding in our bags this whole time) so it’s hard to resist all the fun stuff it discusses. The fact that we’re under budget about $400 at the moment is also inspiring some splurging. Currently on the potential list is staying in tree houses with zip lines in the jungle, elephant trekking and bathing, and taking a boat down the Mekong.
But for now, we have 30 miles to go to get to the Laos border. I don’t think either one of us will be sad to leave China temporarily and are both excited to be somewhere new.

The maps page (click here) also has a very low resolution version of our full China route in addition to the links for the more detailed sub-routes. It’s satisfying to see just how far we’ve come.

Pictures from this post can be found here

Pages updated: Pictures, Maps, Statistics, Food

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30 miles – 10.30.2010

We had a very short day planned today, and a long descent from Dadugang on a wonderful recently re-surfaced road knocked out almost half of the distance to Mengyang with no effort whatsoever. So when we started to see signs for ‘Wild Elephant Valley’ at lunch time we didn’t even need to discuss whether we should stop and take a look.

We first attempted to enter the park by the south gate, passing through a barrage of tour buses in the parking lot. We asked the lady at the ticket counter if there were really elephants and the best she could inform us was that after a 3 km hike we would get to see an elephant show. This sounded less appealing than a “wild elephant valley” so we decided to save the money and not go in.

While climbing the exceedingly steep exit driveway, a loud trumpeting noise stopped us in our tracks. Doubling back on ourselves, we took a smaller path that led in the opposite direction of the gate and discovered a number of solid-looking animal cages and one unhappy looking elephant. Despite the guard in the distance making a half-hearted attempt to tell us to go away, we went in further to have a look.

Our first elephant was still rather small (maybe 7 foot?) and in a cage maybe twice his size. He watched us longingly, reaching out with his trunk through his bars (there were two sets of bars so we were a good 6 feet away still). A pile of bamboo food nearby and some pity inspired Alison to choose a good size branch to offer the elephant. He deftly grasped the branch from Alison with his trunk and ate it with some relish. We left the park, feeling some disappointment in Chinese “wild elephants.”

Shortly down the road we came to another much larger entrance to the same park. Feeling more optimistic by this entrance (it looked to be a small zoo inside), we paid the fee and entered. After some initial small enclosures for monkeys and snakes, we found a large walkway over a huge section of forest apparently reserved for rescued wild elephants. The size of the area allowed the elephants to remain hidden, but we did see signs of their existence in footprints and lots of poo. We were disappointed not to have seen a happier elephant, but felt better that there was indeed a nice place for them. Perhaps the happiest elephants are the ones that don’t have to put up with humans. We again decided to give the elephant show a miss.

The countryside grows more tropical with every mile. Fields bounding the valley roads are planted densely with bananas, papayas and mangoes, while tea and now also coffee predominate in the hills. Alison was excited to see signs along the road advertising coffee for sale – but they are only selling the fresh beans so far, and drinking coffee does not yet seem to be part of the local culture. The prospect of going into one of these rundown roadside eateries and having the option of coffee instead of watery green tea is exciting.

Mengyang is not a very nice little town, but the hotel we found is pretty good. We found a gecko in our bathroom, which became alarmed and shed its tail when Matthew tried to catch it. Alison had never seen this before and found it rather traumatizing; the way the tail continues to twitch on its own is rather disturbing even if it is a natural defense mechanism and will grow back shortly. It was eventually gently caught and removed, tailless, to a local tree where we hope it is very happy.

Jinghong (by bus) – 10.31.2010

Instead of taking what appears on the map to be a detour to Jinghong, the capital of Xishuangbanna, we decided to stay another night in Mengyang and take a day trip to Jinghong on the bus. It was a good idea, and a nice change of pace. I visited Jinghong in 2001, but heavy development has rendered it virtually unrecognisable. It still has many nice parks, lots of greenery and a fairly relaxed feel, so it was a good place to spend a sunny day and an opportunity to stock up on spare bicycle parts.

My front wheel seems to really enjoy going flat, and we were actually worried about running out of patches, let alone spare inner tubes. Although China has a reputation for having a lot of bicycles, this region is mostly too hilly for them to be practical. Most of the locals have traded theirs in for motorbikes, and bicycle shops are very rare. Unlike almost all of the places we have visited so far, Jinghong is a fairly established base for foreign travellers, and caters to their needs pretty well. Drinking a gin and tonic and reading a book on the shady terrace of the Banna cafe was very pleasant. We didn’t see many other obviously foreign travelers though. Since leaving Kunming over 2 weeks ago we have seen five (four of which were spotted today in Jinghong). No wonder people stare.

Jinghong (and most of China usually) had no signs of the Halloween holiday. However, the cafe Banna owner asked us for advice on decorations for a party she’ll be having tomorrow night. We helped out as much as we could (google and hand drawn pictures).

Currently we’re having some technical difficulties with the internet here and are sadly unable to upload pictures from this leg of the trip. Hopefully we’ll find internet in the not too distant future and can remedy that. For now, just the Maps and Statistics pages have been updated.

Also, at this point we’re only 120 miles from Laos so we will be crossing the border fairly shortly. We hope to be in Laos by November 5th which would make it only 4 days later than expected.

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49 miles – 10.29.2010

Pu’er and Dadugang are at similar elevations, but feel very different, and the terrain between them is by no means flat. While Pu’er is a city on a large plateau, Dadugang is a small town on a ridge in the mountains. Today’s cycle was a good length for us, but cooler temperatures and gentler ascents made the riding much easier. The roads were also in excellent condition, and traffic was light. It seems that we have temporarily passed into a flatter area of large valleys separated by clumps of low hills.

Today we crossed a county line (each Chinese province is further subdivided into separate regions) and entered Xishuangbanna. This province is a popular tourist destination. It was incorporated into China in the last century, and is mostly made up of the Dai ethnic minority, whose culture is closely tied to that of Northern Thailand. We noticed the change almost immediately; many signs are now written in both Chinese and Thai. Road signs are positively clogged, with Chinese characters, pinyin (romanized chinese), and Thai. Many of the buildings have been heavily influenced by Thai architectural styles, though likely recently in an attempt to take advantage of tourism.

Dadugang was unexceptional, but had some very pleasant views over the surrounding countryside of densely forested hills.

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