Misty Mengla

Our last stop before crossing into Laos was the small border town of Mengla. The main attraction was a place called Wang Tian Shu meaning 'trees touching the sky', about 45mins outside of town. Here there was a beautiful patch of rainforest through which they constructed a path..

Along the way there were many very entertaining signs with terribly translated English. The first one informed us how healthy it was for us to be breathing in all the anions that are found in nature...

Something here must have been lost in translation...

The seed from a rainforest tree.

We watched the leaves, but we didn't see any brains!

Mosses and liverworts.

We didn't really see anything dangerous around here...?

Make sure you fall in carefully!

It's very hard to see in this photo, but there was a man on a platform way up in one of these trees dressed completely in blue and yelling incomprehensibly every once in a while....China is a very strange place.

There was also a canopy walkway high up in the trees, which was a little too pricey for us.

After refusing most requests for a 'token foreigner' photo, I agreed to one.

On the way back we were lucky enough to catch a ride on a tour bus that had been hired by a very large Chinese family, for their vacation. Again we stayed in the bus station hotel except this one was a little cleaner with no cracked walls!

Meandering in Menglun

We left Dali and 2 buses and 18 hours later we arrived in Jinghong, the major city in the Southern district of Xishuangbanna. We spent a very rainy day there recovering from our journey. The next morning we took a bus in the direction of the Laos border, to a small town called Menglun. We decided to go there in order to check out their famous botanical gardens. (Apologies for the vast number of plant photos)

Some amazing tropical plants from the gardens...

A weird spider.

An interesting glass walkway through the ponds.

A funny sign

Tiny purple mushrooms!

A good use for old cars.

What appeared to be a giant flower pot, but for trees.

Cycad trees.

A plant's reproductive structure.

Thick jungle

Giant lily pads!

Banana tree!

A pomelo tree.

A passion flower.

A caterpillar.

A crazy-looking spider!

Some shots from the large area of jungle at the edge of the gardens, the "Dreamlike Rainforest"

Cycads.

A fluffy caterpillar...that you really wouldn't want to pat.

After a long day exploring the Gardens, we ate some questionable street barbecue and then returned to our dingy room at the bus station hotel (our wall had a crack in it that was half-heartedly covered with a few pieces of tape).