Goodbye China.... Hello Laos!

Saturday, August 07, 2010 Katie and Taylor


At the moment we’re sitting in Luang Namtha in Laos sipping cocktails, yes that means we’re out of China! Thanks to Pete and Kirsten we actually made it out on time without any more hiccups and even managed to see a few great cities on our way out.. bonus!

From Lhasa we flew to Chengdu, home of 90% of the worlds pandas and well worth a visit. It was the first Chinese city we have visited which felt like China, lots of lights, busy streets, skyscrapers and smog, but it was great. The first day we headed to the panda sanctuary where we saw baby pandas, not so giant Giant pandas, young ones, old ones and even red ones. We could’ve spent the whole day watching them watch us whilst stuffing their faces with bamboo leaves but we headed off for a wander around the city in search of Starbucks (it’s been a long time and Kylie was having withdrawal symptoms).
 




Chengdu is a pretty big city and we wandered through the peoples park, an extremely laid back part of the busy city where we watched locals playing Mahjong, sipping tea, and got a little snap happy with the photos of pagodas, they are all so pretty.  Our search for Starbucks was still underway and although there were over 10 in the city we hadn’t passed one. So we headed for a renovated old part of town where there were plenty of tea rooms and souvenir stalls and tucked away in the middle was a Starbucks and a frappucinno of some sort was had by all.  Our day of wandering didn’t stop there, we continued to the riverside where we found a great restaurant and enjoyed pizza and a few drinks by the lamp lit riverside.

The next day we were booked on an 18 hour train to Kunming, our second last stop in China. The Odyssey group had the top bunks of one and a half carriages, which required a few members to have a bit of a night cap to get through the night. The majority of us however settled in and had a great night people watching.

Our visit to Kunming was very brief, one night in the hotel and we were off the next day. The tour guide instructed us that the things to see and do in Kunming was to visit the Green Lake which we did and go shopping in Wall Mart which we also did, Kunming.. done! From there we caught a direct bus to Jinghong where we checked in, had a swim, had pot macaroni (just add water) finished the last of our Chinese money on 40p beer and left the next morning for Laos! yey!

The bus to Luang Nam Tha was £7 (bargain) and 5 hours later we arrived at the Laos border. We sailed through the border and managed to get a few refugee Canadians across too.. go Odyssey! So that brings us up to date.. did I mention we’re currently sipping cocktails in the sun??


Big thanks to Douglas for keeping everyone up to date with the blog!
China photos are on the signpost!

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