Just a short one from Jingong as we were only there for about 28 hours, even that was too much in my opinion.

After our 'almost' bus catastrophe we caught a random motorised trycicle with a bench on the back into town and checked into a nice little hotel for £5. We had some food then armed with map, playing cards, lonely planet and money went on a wander in search of Botanical Gardens, Medicinal Herb Gardens, promenade overlooking the Mekong and Water Splashing Square....! It was all crap, the gardens were small and like all other Chinese natural beauties they charged you an arm and a leg to enter, so we didn't. The section of the Mekong was so littlered it looked like a landfill site at home and the Water Splashing Square was just an empty paved square....!

What else to do when there us nothing to do? Mekong Cafe, two beers please :) we sat all afternoon playing cards, drinking beer, come on....we've only had about 10 drinks in the last 2.5 weeks in China, we deserve it! The owner is French-Spanish and grew up in Africa and has lived in China for the last 23 years, interesting guy and a great chef. We had houmous, toasted pitta, French bread and the most amazing homemade pate ever for lunch. As we were there so long we also managed to fit in dinner, ready for this.....Donkey Stew with veg and garlic mash!!!!! An incredible western take on a local dish, the meat was sooooo tender and had clearly been cooked for weeks in red wine, garlic, mushrooms and corriander, we adored it, best meal in months.

We made it back to the hotel in time to squeeze in a nice 8 hours kip before our bus out of China. We are now sat on said bus making an attempt at learning some Lao..... It's not easy! We've got a few hours to the China/Laos border then another few hours to Luang Nam Tha where we are just staying one night. We are hoping to catch a bus first thing in the morning to Luang Prabang where we will settle for a few days.

That's all for now, 7 weeks left :( boooo

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