Yunnan Exploration Project - Tengchong, Ruili, Wanding, and Mangshi

I started off the trip in not exactly the best state of mind and body–throwing my guts up on a ten-hour sleeper bus–but after a day of recovery in Tengchong, I was ready to explore and, of course, find some nice hot springs. Tengchong was relatively easy to get around and I did not find much difficultly in getting a feel for the town. Aili and I walked for hours all around the town, took one of the buses from one end to another, and hiked up one of the surrounding mountains to the pagoda that was visible from nearly all parts of town. Outside of Tengchong, we went to one of Tengchong’s Volcano Parks and the Rehai Hot Springs. Although the language barrier sometimes resulted in much confusion for all three of us, more so for Kalyn and I, we somehow managed to always get to where we wanted and enjoy ourselves despite difficulties (like finding the cheaper hot spring swimming hole, which we did find eventually). The hot spring was worth the wait and the trouble. Floating on my back in the warm water, all I could see was the blue sky and huge, green mountains rising up on the peripheries of my vision.

Ruili was very different from Tengchong and much more of a challenge for me partially because of the town’s large sprawling streets and lack of public buses (or so it appeared to me; I never saw a single public bus). Still, despite a lack of a strong tourist base, Ruili was interesting in its own way and I enjoyed being able to go to the Burmese border, where we briefly stuck our hands and feet over the border (“my hand is in Burma!”), and going out the one night we spent there (chewing on sugar cane and playing pool at an outdoor deck area). Ruili was definitely very different from other Chinese cities I’ve been to. I felt Burmese influence all around town, with writing in both Chinese characters and Burmese script, foods that I have not generally seen that much or any of in Tengchong and Kunming (like sugar cane and avocados!), and the many people I could easily see were not Han Chinese. I bought some avocados, actually, and made guacamole when I got back to Kunming, which disappeared fairly fast at the hands of myself and a few of the other SIT students.

After Ruilli, we went to Wanding, a small border town close to Ruili. We only stayed a few hours, looking at the shops full of jade, coffee, and baskets and doing a brief expedition to a nearby village, where the driver we hired kept warning us to stay away from the village dogs. As it worked out, Kalyn and I ended up leaving Wanding for Mangshi on an earlier bus than Aili. We both agreed that this was a good opportunity to handle things on our own, as Aili, being the more proficient speaker, was frequently the one handling hotel bookings and bus tickets. We both bought our bus tickets on our own, mine for that same day and Kalyn for the next day. I was pleased to be able to do this on my own, as even with Aili trying to give me the opportunity to handle things, I would invariable turn to her if there was a word I did not understand or a phrase I could not quite remember how to say.

Although throughout this trip there is much that I did not understand and was unable to get others to understand, I found myself able to communicate sufficiently to be able to efficiently (and relatively cheaply) do what I wanted to do and go where I wanted to go. For instance, in Mangshi, I took a taxi by myself to a nearby Bhuddist temple, as Kalyn booked a hotel room for herself and Aili. Upon arrival to the temple, which was a little ways out of town, the driver told me there would be no taxis or buses to take me back and he offered me his number so I could have a ride back. I had never talked over the phone in Chinese before, and I’ll certainly remember this first experience: I understood very little of what he said, and could only repeat over and over in Chinese that I was the foreigner from before who was at the temple and needed a ride back into Mangshi. When he did pick me up, he laughingly told me that my Chinese was very bad over the phone. Still, I had managed to make myself understood.