Bulangshan to Songeer

29th July 2004.

The Bulangshan to Damenglong trek promised to cut through some of the most interesting and remote area of Xishuangbanna in SW China.

The bus was hilarious. A 4-5 hour trip became 7 hours due to the number of passengers and their ability to (very slowly) wedge themselves and their chickens, rice, potatoes, 6 foot woks, air compressors, and beer into every nook and cranny.

Bulangshan itself was a little characterless, and our guesthouse madam had obviously lost her washing machine and her manners a long time ago.

Tank girl power treks through the first few hours.

.... and we receive our wake-up call that maybe the walking track has become something of a road.

About 2 hours in we found these kids loading bamboo onto another Chinese tractor. They were petrified when they saw us and ran and hid. We managed to coax their mum out to try and ask where we were and she also looked none to pleased at the gweilo's in her village.

Weidong was cool with lots of people drinking tea and corn in the sun. They got power in 2004 judging from the power pole markings and since then they have cable TV and a Public Address system to blast the worst music all over the village.

The houses were cool.

4 hours into the trek we arrived at the village of Bannankan to this sign that we recognised form our Laos trekking. In Laos it meant it marked something taboo and should therefore not be touched or entered... the problem we had was our trail was going right through the middle of the village so we were going to enter anyway.

An hour or so from where we would spend the night we found this two log bridge across the river. Jason wobbled across and Claire... crawled

... it was ugly... but she made it... and we made it to Songeer for the night.
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