Our trek started relatively early (or, at least, we were at our start point at 0830 but for a variety of logistical and breakfast reasons we were only on the road at 0930). We then got further delayed when our public bus ran into more Chinese roadwork tomfoolery. Really! Highways Agency of China - sort your act out! When you have a set of traffic which is stopped, spraying wet tar onto the gap in the road between the stationary traffic does not seem destined to help things (in our opinions).

Our guide picked up some tasty stuff at the local market (the not so tasty stuff - eg, dead dog, pig snouts, etc) we passed on. a tuk tuk ride later and soon we were on a dusty trail next to the Mekong and pounding away from civilisation... or... we woudl have been had the locals not all been zooming past on motorbikes every 2 minutes. Cars are not so useful when you are effectively trying to get around the jungle, so bikes seem to be the mode of choice. A bit distracting too.

Also of a slight distraction (and we will try to cover this topic as delicately as possible) was the chronic flatulence of our guide. Every few minutes a tremendous trouser trumpet was to be heard. How we all kept straight faces remains a mystery.

After an hour or so, we chanced on some locals who were having a kind of celebratory party in some woods next to a buddhist temple. They beckoned us to join us and soon we were engaged in a merry go-round of back slapping, hand shaking, food eating (see later), home-brew-rice-wine-drinking, tattoo admiring and cigarette refusing. They had been there for some time it seemed, and as far as we could tell were very, very drunk. One even fell of his chair at one point (though Chinese chairs are so low - about 3 inches off the ground - that we had some sympathy for his plight, even if his mates did not).

Onwards we pounded after lunch, as the rice wine took its toll on Dave (who had felt it rude to refuse too much), and the sun beat down mercilessly. The cool of the Mekong was tantalisingly out of reach as our guide tried to get us to make up some of the lost time of the day. We ascended away from the river as the sun fell a little to offer some respite, and eventually we reached our Dai tribe village for the night. Our guide was good mates with the family and they seemed very pleased to see her and to catch up. A little dissappointly, they did not seem that interested in their alien visitors at all (certainly compared to the merits of the wildlife documentary which their TV was showing) so we felt we had not learnt quite as much as we might have hoped.

However, by the next morning A-M had learnt that eating food prepared and eaten in the forest can be a recipe for sickness. [A few days on and after a self administered course of antibiotics things are much better than they were for the following couple of days]. We headed on to a Bai village where we got a slightly more cordial reception. It seemed a bit off overall that the 'pre-arranged' elements of meeting the hill-tribers were less convivial than the ad-hoc ones (eg forest the previous day). We also found this at the next village, where we stopped for an impromptu lunch, and a local woman was happy for us to use her wood fire and to have us in her house.

Again we headed on, again the sun beat down. We walked through a pineapple platatoin which was cool, and saw rubber trees being tapped for... rubber. This is collected into large discs which are then transported to factories for refining. Raw rubber has an awful, awful smell in this form. Even the locals admitted this. Quite minging.

By about 3pm we were popped onto motorbikes to finish the last stretch of the 'walk', which by that point we were not too unhappy about given the sun and A-Ms fatigue. A minivan took us back to Menghun bus station from where we picked up a bus to Menglan. [We have sent our guidebook home now, but trust us that there is a Menglan, Menglun, Menghan, Mengla, etc etc. Thankfully we managed to negotiate this potentially tricky linguistic / bus destination minefield].

Our ultimate destination for the night was the National Botanical Gardens where we had planned to stay the night in the hotel on their gardens. Our bus was uneventful bar the p*ss-poor quality 'variety' show VCD which the driver had on. This consisted of a front man who would jest /cavort with his leading lady, and every once in a while they would sing some terrible song. They had 4 muppets stood behind them on drums, lead & bass guitar and keyboards. The drummer even went 'ba-doom tish' every time the front man told a gag. Compelling in its awfulness. We checked into the botanic gardens and with A-M firmly under the weather it was a simply instant noodle / beer double header before our last day in China the follwoing morning...