Run To The Future

I stopped a night in Jinghong (after a 9 hour bus ride down from Kunming), intending to cross the border into Laos. First of all, there are NO more flights from Jinghong out of China - you have to fly from Kunming if you want to leave China. Ok, I found that out the hard way. Next, the thing they - being both guide books and the genuinely helpful dude (Alex) in Banna (not Banana unfortunately) cafe - say is, to cross to Laos, take a bus to Mengla (somehow pronounced mulla, weird), stay the night there, get up early and get a bus that goes through Mohan (the border) and onto Luang Namtha. But I decided that was a night I didn't want to waste in Mengla (according to the guide book, super boring, and it looked it), so I got a bus from Mengla straight to Mohan (about 1 hour, but lots of stopping), and then just jumped out of the bus, exited through Chinese customs, and got a tuktuk to Laos customs. You can buy a visa there (looks like it's a pretty permanent thing, but who knows with Laos). On the Laos side, things turned shit for me (see next post). Do NOT pay 200RMB to get a shit tuktuk to Luang Namtha - it's too much money. Oh, I had my first chicken on a bus experience. Surprisingly it was China and not Laos. It was on the quite nice bus from Jinghong to Mengla. We stopped in the middle of nowhere and these really brown Chinese people got on with bags of vegetables and a live chicken (soon to be eaten I suspect, after they got off...).