Had difficulty confirming if we could pick up a visa for China at the Boten, Laos-Mohan, China border but decided to give it a go. Got a "special visa" according to the policewoman at the visa office. It took a long time to process and the bus we were travelling on had to continue without us. Being a weekend day the bank was not open to change money so the policewoman referred us to the street moneychangers. That was not something we were expecting to happen in China.
Found a bus to Mengla about 70 kms from the border and spent a few days there getting the feel of the place. The guide book referred to only one hotel in the city and said it was uphill from the bus terminal but the bus station we arrived at was no where near a hill so we walked towards the busiest part of town looking for a hotel. We finally found a place that had only Chinese characters on it but we spotted a photoboard of beds and saw 3 wall clocks set at different times.Mengla is not a tourist city so they do not cater for westerners. The staff got good at reading the phrases from my phrasebook and translating the Chinese characters I had copied to make sentences about what we wanted.
We were next to a big square where the local retired folk did Tai Chi to a crackly loud speaker. As we sat and watched some of the locals would come and speak to us. A few knew some words of English but many just yabbered to us in Mandarin and we didn't understand a thing! They were very friendly and it was such fun!
The road from Laos to Yunnan is very rough because the Chinese are building a huge highway to take goods through Laos and Thailand to Singapore. There are millions of rubber trees being grown where opium used to be and the road is to get the latex and other goods to all points on the highway - an incredible project!
Found a bus to Mengla about 70 kms from the border and spent a few days there getting the feel of the place. The guide book referred to only one hotel in the city and said it was uphill from the bus terminal but the bus station we arrived at was no where near a hill so we walked towards the busiest part of town looking for a hotel. We finally found a place that had only Chinese characters on it but we spotted a photoboard of beds and saw 3 wall clocks set at different times.Mengla is not a tourist city so they do not cater for westerners. The staff got good at reading the phrases from my phrasebook and translating the Chinese characters I had copied to make sentences about what we wanted.
We were next to a big square where the local retired folk did Tai Chi to a crackly loud speaker. As we sat and watched some of the locals would come and speak to us. A few knew some words of English but many just yabbered to us in Mandarin and we didn't understand a thing! They were very friendly and it was such fun!
The road from Laos to Yunnan is very rough because the Chinese are building a huge highway to take goods through Laos and Thailand to Singapore. There are millions of rubber trees being grown where opium used to be and the road is to get the latex and other goods to all points on the highway - an incredible project!
