Flight to Jinghong - May 7, 2005 - Jinghong, Yunnan, China

Anna reporting:

Writing this entry it seems much longer than 12 hours ago that we were traipsing the blissfully empty sleeps of Lijiang headed for the 8am express bus to New Dali. I slept for most of the journey and awoke to find us stuck in a traffic jam. In our experience jams do not really happen in China - at the moment the roads are mainly used by big trucks and buses and the flow of traffic is light.

Thankfully the accident was cleared to the side of the road and we were moving again within the hour. I am surprised there wasn't another accident caused by the vehicles darting in every direction trying to get away first. People just don't queue even on windy roads curling around high mountains in wet weather. Barmy.

Got to Dali in plenty of time despite the holdup and declined an offer of a minibus to the airport in favour of getting some food for Danny and trying to find the cheaper airport bus. The airport shuttle doesn't seem to exist any more and so having wandered around the city for what seemed like an age we ended up in a taxi that cost more than the minibus would have.

The airport was tiny, quite possibly ours was the only flight of the day and the plane was not even half full. Take off was a little hairy as our small craft immediately hit turbulence and we then remembered reading somewhere that afternoon flights were not recommended because lightning is common at that time.

Fortunately we encountered nothing worse than turbulence and as I was feeling much better than yesterday I even ate the in-flight snack - roasted peas. Surprisingly tasty. Or perhaps I was just really hungry.

We arrived in Jinghong ahead of schedule and jumped on a bus to the town centre. Had we made the journey overland it would have taken at least 24 hours. Once we got into town the heavens opened and we realised that the maps in BOTH our guidebooks were totally wrong. Soaked to the skin we nearly gave in and got a taxi when we stumbled accross the right part of town and found ourselves a decent GH with a cracking attached restaurant.

Day 69 complete