On the Friday morning we made a slap dash decision to head to China that morning. We had 10 minutes to get packed in time to catch the 8 o’clock bus, we made it with seconds to go and again had to settle for a plastic aisle seat.

Our journey out of Nam Tha was soon to take a U-Turn as there was a road block on the main road. The mini-bus rerouted back through the town and squeezed down a few country roads in order to get to our destination. After about 3 hours we reached Boten, the Laos immigration border check-point. It took us about an hour as we queued to get stamped out then it was back on the bus, back down the road and round the corner to China.

Suddenly we had left behind all the dusty roads and bamboo huts, we were greeted with shiny colourful buildings, tarmaced roads and street lights! It again took us another hour to pass through the China side. Firstly filling in a medical declaration where we were laser scanned for a temperature check, we then had to battle off all the locals as they tried to squeeze ahead of us in the immigration queue. Thankfully our visas were official enough, Jo was questioned about the colour of her eyes, but apart from that we were cleared into China.

It was only about 10 minutes before our shiny new road turned back into dirt track, zipping in and out of the mountainside. It would be another 2 hours before we reached Mengla. On the way we passed another mini-bus which had misjudged a corner and crashed into the ditch. There was a nice new toll road that ran straight through the valley, although some vehicles seemed to be using it, we would be taking the longer option.

China is an hour ahead of Laos, we reached Mengla bus station at 2pm and followed a few other Dutch tourists to the ticket office to purchase a ticket to Jinghong. Unfortunately there were no ATM’s to be found so we had to exchange our Kip with a dodgy Chinese guy for which we’re sure we were ripped off. Back on the bus we endured another 5 hour journey passing banana fields and small Chinese villages before we reached Jinghong.

As soon as we left the bus we were greeted by a Chinese lady indicating that she had somewhere for us to stay the night. Despite our best efforts we couldn’t shake her off and Steve went with her to check out the room. We decided that we needed a TV for the Chelsea game on Saturday and tried to make a quick escape to the hotel next door which appeared much flasher, unfortunately we were quickly followed.

At the Traffic Hotel we were shown an extremely large suite for less than ten pounds a night. It had a separate lounge, cable TV and was definitely what we needed after the last two days travelling. We attempted to pay on the card, but they didn’t accept western banks, our dollars were no good and we only had about 40 yuan left from our exchange earlier on. Jo waited in the hotel foyer as Steve left to look for an ATM with the Chinese lady. About an hour passed as they tried several ATM’s none of which accepted our cards! Steve returned to the hotel, it was now getting very late and we needed some rest. The Chinese lady put Steve in a taxi, asking the driver to take him to an visa friendly ATM, eventually we were lucky to make a withdrawal and retire to our room. The annoying Chinese lady was actually quite helpful and to our astonishment did not hang around for a tip.

Jinghong is definitely NOT a major tourist destination. We needed a guidebook and fast, nothing is written in English whatsoever. We found a supermarket from where we would buy our dinners from for the next two days, boiling Chicken hotdogs in our travel kettle and eating more pot noodles. On the positive side we now had the option of Budweiser.

We spent the majority of the time trawling through bookshops and cafes in search of the lonely planet guide that every other traveller seemed to have. Our TV did not show the Chelsea game, nor could we find any bars in the city. So on Sunday morning we booked a sleeper bus to Dali.