While it’s virtually impossible to cycle highway 214 between Shihuiyao and Menghai, except maybe for very motivated mountainbikers, the road is perfect from Manhai and further east. It’s 56 kms to Jinghong. Jinghong is a pleasant tropical city, with lots of good accommodation and some nice bars and restaurants where you can meet other trtavellers. Jinghong lies on the Mekong, still called Lancang here, so this was our third meeting with the river that is the inspiration of our journey. From Jinghong our route went south along the river to a place called Galanba or/and Menghan, only 30kms. Shixyuanbanna, as the southern part of Yunnan is called, is bi-langual, Chinese an the Dai-language. There we spent the afternoon in a big minority park. This means that a small region has been denominated as a park, dedicated to the minority people that inhabit this small plain. There are sevral villages, a large tourist market and a open air theatre, whete they perform traditional dances and give cultural presentations. Very nice and the best way to roam through the park is by bicycle. Too large too walk and no need to hire a tuk tuk. Mind that they charge 120 yuan pp at the entrance, a real shake out price.
After Galanba we left the riverside again to head eastward towards Menglun. We spent the whole next day in the Tropical Botanical garden, situated on a peninsula in a tributary of the mekong. To be reached via a small suspension bridge, also on bicycle.
The next stage went south to Mengyuan, through a national nature reserve, consisting of tropical rainforest. Cycling through the jungle, rather hilly by the way. Mengyuan is not worth mentioning and the local guesthouse was not much more than a dustbin with some beds inside. You can’t understand why so many Chinese people prefer to live in such a mess. Playing cards or wajong, sleeping or watching silly soap series on the telly all day long and too lazy to tidy just the minimum.
During the next stage to Mengla we met a large group of mountainbikers. It was a group doing a tour organised by the Thai Tourist Authority in Bangkok. We were very much surprised, the first bikers for weeks. We stopped at the followers’ caravan, where we met Karuna, the organiser from the tourist organisation. We had a nice conversation and she was so kind as to invite us to join the group in the lunch, that was being served on the spot along the road. Once again a very agreeable encounter. That’s what makes travelling by bike so nice: you meet all kinds of people, most of them very nice ones too, and you never know what surprise will come next.
Mengla is a big town, where we already changed som yuan into Lao kip. The procedure was as follows: we wnet into a bank and made it clear that we wnated to change money. We were sent to another bank. In this bank an emplyee escorted us to a third bank. There we were sent to the VIP-section, where still no-one could speak English. In the end the employee calls someone on her cellphone and then slides the device under the window to me. I pick it up and after some time I understand from an English speaking voice that we should go to the busstation. ???? Done that, and already in the street there was a man on a bike-cart who directed us to the busstation. There, hidden between the parked busses, it appeared that he was a money changer, not very legal we suppose, and he had been called by the bank. So we had our kip in the end and the conclusion must be that, one way or the other, they do their best to be of service.
The next stage was to Mo Han. This appeared to be a very new and clean border town, with many hotels and some beautiful streets. The end of the little town was the border.