Back in Laos

Market gardens and tunnel houses outside Kunming- population 4 million, like NZ!


We are pleased to be able to read our blog now we have left China!
Tea growing Puer area

We spent one night in Kunming, China and then caught a bus to Mengla and onto the border town of Mohan. We passed through Simao/Puer (it has two names), where there was a 6.4 earthquake and 10 people died and 300,000+ were evacuated. There are still some blue Civil Defence tents in the city and we saw many houses with their roofing tiles missing.





We caught a pick up from the border back to Luang Nam Tha where I have written the last 3 postings. We will stay here and rest after the last 3 days travel and then head onto Udomxai (pronounced oo dom si).


We would recommend anyone travel to Yunnan Province, China. The transport systems work really well and things run on time and you get what you pay for!


Hostels tend to be more expensive than Chinese hotels but hostels are good places to get up to date information on places you want to go to next. Hostels also offer book trades (2 books for 1 of theirs!), internet, travel ticket services, tours and maps.


We are back at hot summer temperatures and it is taking some getting used to after the cool mountain areas!


As some of you may know, Lil had planned to teach in China. Before we left she contacted the EF organisation and they had changed their registration service to an online one. My previous registration with them was not continued. Each time they were contacted we were given a computer response and were unable to correspond with a person so gave up! Lil has been offered a job teaching banking in English in Kunming and private students in Jinghong! After meeting other teachers here and the large class sizes that they have we will continue travelling!