We arrived at Mengla at 6am. V and I really can’t handle lack of sleep ! It was still pitch dark but we had no trouble finding a minibus that would take us to Mohan (the border town) for £2 each. It was a large minibus and the driver started the usual ritual of driving up and down the main street in search of more passengers. We figured it would take hours so we just accepted our fate. To our surprise and with only four passengers on board he headed out of town just as dawn was breaking.

We are really in the jungle here. The hills all around are packed with dense forest. Heat, humidity and a little light rain sprinkled us as we headed to the Loas border along excellent roads bypassing the toll gate by detouring through some small villages for more passengers. We transferred to normal taxi who drove us into the pretty little town of Mohan and dropped us 1km from the border. We tried in vane to change Yuan to Kip at the two local banks and started walking up to the border checkpoint. As we arrived we were approached by money changers. The rate was good and we decided to change 500 Yuan to 550 000 Kip. Being tired we carefully checked the 500 000 Kip in strange new 20 000 notes and confirmed the amount but when it came to the 50 000 we missed a 0 and only realized much later that we had been sucked to the tune of 45 000 Kip. Cow !! Not to worry. It’s only R40. We decided to call it our tip for China (in Kip).

The Chinese border post is an imposing office block and stainless steel structure that towers out of the jungle. Clearing the border on the Chinese side was painless and we hopped onto a golf cart for the short ride through no-mans-land to Laos !

So long China. What a great experience ! 87 days of adventure in one monster country !! We have definately had enough though 🙂 We’ll post a pile of notes about China at some point in the next week. Roll on Laos !

[Pictures: Mohan main street. Looked like a pretty little town (if only just a single street)]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi