After visting Kunming and spending a little while longer than previously anticipated in the Provincial captial, due to certain people f***ing around at the bus station(long story, but ended up working in our favour.goes to show how far a little perserverence can go with good intentions)

After travelling the entirety of china we decided to visit the south which was excellent. this was a superb way to round up an eventuful jaunt in china. we caught a bus to the town of JingHong, the autonomous prefecture of the Xishuanbanna region, a region renowned for its consensus of hill tribe villages bearing in every direction. Some rimming the outskirts of the town and others high up on the encircling peaks. This was noticably not chinese. When we arrived it was bare humid, the most heat i've felt on my skin for well over a month. Pushed for time we didn't get the opportunity to hang around long, unfortunatley as this place really altered my outlook on this vast country.So we only stayed 3 nights, but gee wiskas what an impending 3nights they were. With more than 3 helping of the juiciest barbecued pork steaks i have tried.Ever. A trip to the Nature Reserve, DONT GO! and one time shay and i hired some pretty descent mountain bikes and set about exploring these numerous villages that peppered the jungle.

The nature reserve was ghastly, and entailed a black bear tied with a metal chain tight round the stomach, swaying side to side as if crazy and derranged. A large python dumped in a box with its mouth sellotaped shut. and so many chinese tourist shouting, im not surpised we didn't see more than 1 elephant. Im going to write into the Lonelyplanet and ask them to take that out. and maybe they can make it known to someone who has the power to forbid this s*** from going on. Typically chinese, they either dont care or maybe are uneducated to know. Unfortunatly like so many of these places iv visited access to education is not abundant and therefore you see things that are strange to you and would ofcourse be strange and even not wise to them. if only they knew. Still these chinese were loveing it, and as always patrolling in large tour groups which the head guide grasping a megaphone.Whilst walking through these paths round the jungle, not one or two but many signs at regular intervals exclaiming to keep the noise down as to not to disturb the 'heffalumps'. So if these patrols were lucky enough to pass me when blurting out of that bakedbean can i would hold them up and display this sign or atleast the chinese part of it.

The villages were not as 'Villagee' as we thought and one time found ourselves playing doubles at pool against some 5year old kids. still it was great fun to cycle through the jungle and adding another to the tally of us getting lost.

Well. on the last scotch egg of our travels through the southern end of china, we catch a sleeperbus to mengzhi, around 16hours east. prepared with out 25g of pork and a geneous guava this time our bags chained to the bus frame in the under storage, as to not have a repeat experience of kunming and the 'bus manager', off we went. our bed was right at the rear end of the bus and just like the seats at the back of a seated bus all the beds were attached making it one large conjoined bunk for 5persons. after a few hours of driving and stopping in various places, unfortunatley all the beds filled up. It was bloddy hot, and in order to get an influx of cool air the bus needed to keep moving, in which certain intervals it wasnt, at which point as many limbs as possible were required to be hurled out of the buses extremeties and idealy try to lie as motionless as posibble as to prevent energy exertion.i would not have fancied it having to sleep at the centre of the 5person bunk put it that way. With such little room, i slept reasonably well. Unlike shay, courtesy of the enormous one fanged bed bugs.

As far as my last travels in china go, i have decisively changed my perspective to a degree in its favour. As previously gathering china to be not what i imagined, if anything FAKE for want of a better word. Perhaps due to the high speculations or wether i visited the wrong places or most likely, due to its shattered history of conlficts, upriusings and occupation, detailing but a few china has lost its path somwhere. Hitting up the south however only boosted my confidence that the real china is in here somwhere. i have decided i would do china again ideally spanning the entirety of the south along with the oribitting cities of Shanghai.