xishuangbanna

I previous wrote about how my trip to XiShuangBanna 西双版纳  , xsb,  was postponed because of helping out the boss.  Turned out the people I was going to go with tried to go but the bus was all booked up and they didn’t even get to go.

Not to mention the bus ride would have been double the cost that week.  This time around Feb 27-March 2 the hospital was getting some kind of certification and it was quite the ideal time for me to take a vacation.  I went ahead and took Ling with me.

Obviously for translating purposes, but also the boss likes her to accompany me to “keep me safe.”  She is a nice and fun person so I actually wanted her to accompany me as well.  Since this trip would be slightly over 1/3rd of her salary for a month, I paid. (She is hoping to get her half reimbursed since they wanted her to come but it is expensive for her to come…good luck with that.)

We took a taxi to the city gate.  (When traveling on the interstates and you need gas/food/bathroom there are official stations on the side of the road, much like a toll road in America.  If you want to enter an actual town, then you have to go through their toll gate.  It is this toll/city gate that we took a taxi too.)  Then we walked a bit to the interstate and sat near the overpass and waited about 30 minutes for the bus to pick us up at 11pm.

It was actually not as dangerous as it sounds.  We were smart about it, we sat a good distance from the road.  The reason we got picked up here, was that the bus came from 3 hours north of us.  No point driving ourselves 3 hours north just to drive 3 hours right back south, I’m glad the bus driver thought so too.

The road we are taking to XiShuangBanna 西双版纳 actually is the same way to get to Thailand and Vietnam.  XSB is very close to these countries.  So much so that a lot of business signs have the thai language on them as a second language.

Also, a lot of the shows we went to used the fact the XiShuangBanna 西双版纳 itself has like 19 ethnic minority groups plus people from other countries to create shows.  The performers would dress up like one of the minorities (Dai is a big one there), Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Burma and then do a traditional song and dance.  #feelingcultured

First night we staid in Pu’er then got up early to make the final 1.5 hour  push to the Elephant Vale.  Pu’er is the home of pu’er tea.  If you were like me, I had never heard of this tea.

Honestly, I had only heard of it within the month I was leaving. In Breaux Bridge a local guy lived in China and brought back a traditional chinese medicine doctor women.  She has shop in town and serves the tea with dried gogi berries.  My mom bought some, I brewed it and drank some…opps I forgot to clean it out so a few days later she found the tea in the kettle…luv ya mom, sorry ’bout that.

Anyway, this tea has a lot of imitators throughout China and tea sold as pu’er but either straight up isn’t or it’s like the worst part of it all.  Some of the trees are over 300 years old.  The finest leaves can sell for 100000 RMB per kilo, roughly 16666 US.

Pu’er is expensive and most locals never drink it, and if they do it’s of semi-ok quality.  The color of tea can be almost a reddish brown once brewed.

Also, back before I went to the states for a few weeks, the boss gave me some and another government official that I treated.  Both like there tea and the official is like a wine connoisseur of tea.

The tea I got has already been aged close to 7 years and costs well over 1000 ($166) for a small disc and maybe even 3000 ($500).

Point is, the tea only gets better with age..10-30 years and the value grows with age too…much like wine.  I’ll mention it here.  On the trip home we stopped in a town that has an area showcasing that it is on the Tropic Of Cancer

and it has a jade (this is where the peanut jade necklace was bought from) and pu’er tea shop.

The pu’er that we were drinking was pretty good.  Ling discussed with me that this tea is by far of lesser quality than what I was given as a gift and what we drink with the big boss on a regular basis (not as old, color not as rich etc).  So I started joking with her, {chin up in the air, as well as my pinky} I can’t drink this so called pu’er tea. I only drink the finest of leaves, on the regular. Spew this out my mouth..lol

Each day we did like 4-5 different attractions.  Only like 3 of which were straight up high impulse touristy buy my stuff places.  One of which was a coconut factory.  The coconut milk was so delicious and they make these really thin crispy pancakes with it mixed in.  Ling bought a six pack variety to give to her aunt who we visited one evening.

My favorite was when we turned the corner to make our way through the maze of repetitive product displays and exit.  UH OH they gave me a cup of instant coffee with coconut in it.  Then I tried another.  Yup, I totally walked out with a bag of the first taste.  Normally instant coffee is um tolerable if necessary to drink, but mostly when I put a flavored creamer and stevia in it. However, this brand has done it right and I may regret not buying 2-3 bags of it.  Justin likes some coconut flavor in his coffee apparently.

We sat on the very last row of the bus.  That kind of sucked because the seats don’t go back at all.  That turned into a crappy situation when we had a 2+ hour drive to Pu’er city and then the interstate is shut down because a car wreck had a causality.

At one point the bus driver said we would stay at this one station with a dozen or more other buses until 5 am (it was nearly 2am at the time).   After sitting on the bus for a while though, he started driving again…ok sounds good to me.  Three hours of sleep in a hotel is better than nearly 0 in a bus.

Poor Ling did get car sick that night (only happened twice for her this trip, good job) and the saving grace the entire trip (because it is hot here) was that we have the only window that can be slid open.  Yes indeed the breeze helped us both feel more shu-fu [comfortable].

One last random paragraph. I did get multiple requests throughout the trip for pictures.  That was kind of fun.  We were waiting “in line” for an evening dinner and show (only 4 of us went, the rest were to tired) and I saw a random girl wearing a black Louisiana State University shirt.

I had Ling ask her have you been before and of course she hadn’t, it was just a random shirt she bought.  I was all, I went to school there…let’s take a picture.  I wouldn’t have expected to see that on a shirt, normally it’s big name colleges that they use.