Saturday, 28th January 2006 -
Hey Hey and a Big Farken CHINESE NEW YEARS EVE to ya

I rose with excitement this morning. It was New Years Eve and we were heading back to Jinghong for my second Spring Festival in Jinghong. How lucky I am! To have the chance to actually spend Spring Festival in China is more than enough, but to spend two of them in such a beautiful place is more than anyone can ask. We headed to the little cafe across the street for egg and tomato and taro pancakes. The taro pancakes ended up being 9 taro cakes, a little too much for two people let alone one person. They were rather nice though. As we left we could see the staff happily eyeing off the last 4 or so on the plate.

Ok, now it was time for the windy road home on the vomit bus with the bus driver from hell.

Well, we thought the first driver of the day was bad. He kept stopping buses going our way and we had no idea why and in fact, how he could see who was driving as the speed he was driving. Finally after two bags full of vomit contributed by the couple in the back he found a driver that nodded his head. Soon we were all moved onto his bus (bags full of vomit and all) and our first bus driver sped off into the distance. Whether he made it home in one piece we will never know. Now came the bus driver from the even deeper parts of hell. The drive from Jinghong to Mengla took us 4.5 hours. With the help of our bus drivers we accomplished the distance in 3.5 hours, or a tad more. How let down were we when there wasn't a crowd, reporters and medals awaiting our arrival in Jinghong!

After a huge burger at The Forest Cafe, not the best as Sarah's brother cooked it and as usual the bottom of the bun was like eating rocks. So in the end I ended up with half a burger! But the goat's cheese made up for the loss of half the bun. Both Judy's and my memory sticks were full so came the wonderful adventure of finding someone who would or could burn our memories onto cd. We found a Kodak place whose staff was more than happy watching their daily drama of Chinese Soap. With a scowl and a huff one of them got off their butt and inserted my memory stick into the reader. With eyes on the TV she clicked here and there and downloaded both sticks. I watched on in fear...oh please watch what you are doing...PLEASE! There was a tad of an argument over the price of the disks. In Guangxi its 5 Yuan, here in Jinghong they feel its right to charge 20 Yuan. Not happy! So 40 Yuan later we left with available space for more future memories.

The Chinese New Year was spent partly in Mei Mei's Cafe, out on the streets and at the Mekong Cafe. The funniest part of the evening was watching the young Monks running up and down the streets like children in orange throwing firecrackers at each other. Other parts of the evening I felt I guess what it would feel like one was in a war torn country. Looking outside of ones comfortable cafe the darkness and silence was continually interrupted by huge BANGS and BOOMS causing shadows to flicker here and there and everywhere. The crazy part of the night was watching children and their parent's string lines of crackers up the building walls on not plumbing but electrical cables, light them and run off.

It seems everyone becomes the same age here in China on New Years, that of 10 or so when all thought either hasn't really entered ones head or thinking for oneself doesn't really matter as someone else makes the decisions for you and keeps you safe. At the Mekong Cafe the staff was throwing crackers around the Cafe, even the spinney ones that shoot around the place. Argh, its all fun and games until someone gets hurt...luckily no one got hurt and we all left with both eyes to help us stumble home.