Day 17: Xishuangbanna (Galanba -- Dai minority village/park)
First I need to explain something. Originally we were planning on doing this trek here through these minority villages and jungle etc., which I thought would be totally awesome (albeit expensive) and was looking forward to. Well, once we got here and started looking at our options we started thinking about doing other stuff. I was a little put off at first, because I had been expecting to do that. But everything has worked out. I think we were all too tired to go trekking for 20 km each day. So even though I was a little disappointed at first, I think this plan has been better. Today we went to a small town hoping to hike around to some minority villages anyway. We went instead to this "park" -- basically a bunch of minority villages clumped together with a ticket booth stuck at the entrance. You have to pay to get in, but it was worth it. We (Connie, Mei, and I -- both Connie & Mei speak Chinese) walked around for a while. This minority group is called the Dai minority. Does it sound like "Thai" maybe? Yep, they're closely related. They have these neat looking houses. It looks like it's on stilts with the whole bottom just open, stairs going up to the second floor, and the living area on the second floor with a triangle roof. So we walked around for a while, saw some temples, tried some good food (my favorite was this barbecued tofu with onions and some pork in it). We got this gigantic pineapple to split between the three of us. I usually don't eat lots of pineapple, but this one was pretty good! at first.... by the time I got to the end of it, though, it had turned from really sweet to sour and highly acidic. It was so acidic, in fact, that my tongue and mouth were tingling for several hours afterward. We made our way down to a beach on the Mekong River. That was awesome! We stuck our feet in the water and pretended we were on a beach in Thailand. We saw this little dance show that they put on -- not very authentic, but entertaining. After that they have this daily "water-splashing festival" at this big fountain in the middle of the park. It was fun! (I didn't really participate because I was wearing a white shirt) ;) I really wanted to get in on the action, but mostly we just watched. After that we went back to our base of operations (Jinghong) and had a great Dai-style massage before heading to bed.
Interesting sight today: in one of the temples there were these bright flashing Las Vegas-style lights behind one of the Buddha statues. Maybe it's just me, but it seemed kinda out of place.
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