A guest house car park and a friendly Chinese family.
I think that no matter how many times I do it successfully there is always a bit of nervousness about crossing borders. So easy to have a stamp in the wrong place or something that catches official attention.
The hand held tractor trailers have begun to morph into the much more up market tractor truck.
Presumably much better in the rain.
We'd had a slight mixup at Boten with the Lao customs. They have a customs post about 5km before the border. We mistakenly had the Carnet stamped there. At the real border there was a bit of toing and froing until another stamp was added to the Carnet. I hope it works ok.
Inside the Chinese side was a new experience in border crossing. Feed passport into terminal, type the visa number in, an arrival and departure card is printed ready for signing.
Our guide Susanna was waiting on the other side of the barrier with the broadest, friendliest, relievedest smile we have seen in a journey punctuated with people who smile at the first opportunity.
Such a smile as to fill us with confidence about the next couple of months.
A few questions about why I had a UK passport when all the descriptions were of Australia and we were in China. Took a while to convey dual citizenship.
Culture shock!
Susanna's real name is Guo Hong. From Chengdu. Studied English at University. We couldn't have wished for better.
It needed two traffic police.
Vehicle inspection was to check the chassis number and that the lights work.
We now have provisional Chinese driving licences and registration for the vehicle.
Happiness.
A large botanical garden we tackled on a warm day.
The young lady saw it move, and pointed to it, but we weren't quick enough with the camera.
This is a branch of a sensitive tree.
Not really "same same". More like "same but bigger".
Almost like plastic.
Haven't a clue what it is.
Their names escaped us.
The mother of the one on the left works in the park.
What a magic place to explore.
We stopped for our first night in China in the car park of the park.
This is part of one of the hospitals in town. There is both Mandarin and Dai (Thai) script to identify it.
We'd previously read that Thailand was repopulated with Thais after the fall of the Khmer Empire by Thais moving from Yunnan. The Dai remaining in Yunnan are a minority group in China but heavily represented here.
These shops are such a change to what we have been used to in the last 2 months they needed a couple of photos.
"Over The Bridge Noodles". A chain of restaurants.
Someone once discovered that carrying soup plus all the ingredients separately meant the meal carried to working husband stayed hotter longer.
The ingredients of choice are tossed into the soup to be cooked.
The eggs are those of a quail.
Eating in China is obviously an experience we will enjoy. Helped by Susanna explaining it all to us.
A park within walking distance of the center of town.
A bit of toing and froing and we purchased a few nuts and bolts to replace a couple that had fallen off.
This little adventure was quite an achievement. First had to explain to Susanna what a nut and bolt is. Then translate for the shop keeper. It helped having a sample!
We really haven't met heavy traffic yet (that's to come).
One of the first things we did at Mohan was put our iGO8 gps in a locker as it didn't have China maps and attach Susanna's Garmin gps to the windscreen.
How to google ......?
Edit:- apparently a red whiskered bulbul. Thanks Alan (see comment at bottom of page).
Modern representation of minority group dances.
This was just the warm up outside in the car park.
Explained why we couldn't park there overnight.
After this we discovered the sub-titles in English to the left of the stage.
What to say about a concert that was simply professional with a very large cast and lots of variety.
I hope that saying it kept us occupied from go to whoa for 90 minutes sums up our enjoyment.
We'd missed any local dancing in the four previous countries.