We woke up in the beautiful grounds of the National Botanic gardens, so it seemed appropriate to have our simple brekafast fare (juice, fruit, bread) outside under some palm trees and next to a small lake. We strolled around for the morning taking in the weird and the wonderful of the Chinese plant world. Our earlyish start was useful as the hordes of Chinese tourists were only starting to descend as we headed off in the early afternoon.

Some comedy logisitcs involving a whole suite of cabs (but no-one who claimed to be a cab driver to chauffeur said vehicle) was eventually resolved, and we were soon heading down towards Mengla (the closest place to the Laos border where you can stay the night). We would have tried to cross that day but according to our guidebooks, the Laos border people all gave up for the day at about 1400 - 1500 so morning was the best time to cross (given that Laos used to be under French control we were prepared to believe reports of such tardiness).

So it was the unspectacular Mengla where we spent our final night in China. A combination of fatigue of China, illnesss and low spirits meant that this evening will not live long in our memory. Somehow ordering a plate of black bean (when we were after vegetables in black bean sauce) did not help, nor did the black market money exchanger who the hotels obviously tip off to the presence of lawai (foreigners) - he was knocking on our hotel door 5 mins after we had checked in and was kind enough to wake us up at 0700 to ask again if we wanted dollars, kip, etc etc.

The definite highlight of the evening was back in our hotel room, where we discovered that Jeux Sans Frontieres (ie international It's A Knockout, for all you cult TV fans) appears to live on. We marvelled at the comedy capers as (we think) Russia beat off the challenge of China, France and Ukraine to be crowned 'world champions'...