Another day of driving through the glorious countryside of Yunnan Province with steep hillsides covered in impenetrable jungle with a wide variety of trees and shrubs. Plenty of bamboo trees but no pandas in Yunnan because it is too hot for them. The roads were lined with the most beautiful deep-purple bourgainvillea trees and trees with huge clumps of orange flowers which we thought might be hibiscus, and other trees had identical flowers in purple. Roadside stalls were selling pineapples (we bought three for £1), papayas and a type of green orange.
The small town of Jinghong is the capital of the Xishuangbanna Region of Yunnan Province and lies adjacent to Myanmar (Burma). The southern entrance is guarded by four enormous stone elephants and the streets are lined by smaller elephants with the street lights made in the form of peacocks. The buildings are more representative of Thai culture than Chinese and the Buddhist temples are magnificent.
The road to Lancang runs through intensively cultivated land with fields of sugar cane, tea plantations and paddy fields with people busy planting the third crop of rice. The sugar cane is processed in the huge Jingsheng sugar refinery. We arrived in Lancang just after dark and camped in a car park for a tea factory. Two owners of the factory came and knocked on our door about midnight and told Green that they were concerned whether we had a problem, but were assured that we were OK and they wished us a good night.
