The Long and Winding Road

Welcome to Yunnan! And a bumpy ride it is too! From the border to Yuanyang is a bladder shaking five hours along one of the worst roads I have ever had the priviledge to ride a bus on (close contestants are the ride to Kalaw in Myanmar and a bus ride through the island of Flores in Indonesia). Due to unpractically long legs, the only place in Asian buses that has enough leg-room tends to be the middle seat in the back row with the feet resting on the piles of luggage in the central isle. However the suspension on the local busses is usually missing (or maybe too efficient?) creating a distinct bucking effect when the bus hits a hole. The bucking increases the further back you sit, a fact the locals are wise to, so the back seat is generally the last to fill. The road we took was riddled with pot holes and rocks the size of footballs, which had fallen from the slopes. Several times the friction between me and the seat was severely decreased when we hit a suitable puddle or hole in the road, but on at least ten memorable occasions it was totally lost - and I truly was momentarily in a state of free fall, to end up somewhere around the general region of my seat with a kidney-jarring bump.

The bus was, of course, full of passengers and their stuff, though my bus was luckily not loaded with ten crates of raw fish, as had been the bus of fellow travellers, who came the day before along the same route. My fellow passengers were a colourful bunch, being dressed in the various native costumes of the many tribes of Yunnan. This is the first place I have been in South East Asia apart from Myanmar, where the women still wear the decorative costumes of their particular tribe at all times. Elaborately embroydered blouses are used for field work, digging trenches or walking back the water buffalo.

One thing that I immediately remembered from previous visits to China, and was not glad to meet again, is the local habit of spitting everywhere. Admittedly spitting is widely spread throughout South East Asia (not in Vietnam or Cambodia though), but no other nation has such a deep, succulent, rattling clearing of the throat to proceed it. The native woman next to me in a stunningly decorated outfit didn't have access to a window, so she had to resort to spitting on the floor between her own legs. At times it seemed she estimated the trajectory incorrectly and I think her flared trousers got a fair load of spittle by the time we reached our destination. I like to think mine didn't.