Bicycle Ride through the Dai villages - Pictures
I am going to leave around 4 pm (which is about 3:30 pm in "sun" time, I believe - the Chinese use one time zone for the whole of the country so the sun rises here later, 7:25 and sets at 7:26 - the 12 hours compare with: 6:04 am and 6:02 pm respectively for Shanghai; and 7:06 / 7:03 in New York! So Shanghai is probably an hour TOO early (no wonder I get up earlier with the sun in Shanghai!)).
The point here is that I wanted to wait until the hottest part of the day (or a little later, hopefully), so that people would be up and moving about! In Xishuang Banna,people usually rest through the heat of the day and work early and late (whew, they sure do work hard here too - especially the women, in the hardest brick and mortar toting jobs!).
A picture of the beginning of the bicycle ride, to show you the not so crowded (here) streets (REALLY). The fellow to the right is showing me to the China Mobile store so that I can put more money on my cell phone. In Shanghai, I can buy more minutes on the street (like in the U.S. at Wally World, Walgreen's, etc.) but since I am in Jinghong, I must go to the China Mobile store itself. More on China Mobile and spam advertising in a future post!
OK - I WILL RESTRICT this post to Dai Villages pictures as there were too many from the whole trip.
The roads are all dirt through and around the villages. NOTE however the hot water tanks above these two houses! Solar hot water!! Which of course means that if the sun doesn't shine ... but in Xishuang Banna, the sun shines quite often, I believe. We saw these same units all over Tibet during the summer too!
Notice how the family(ies) live: in the second and above floors. I am wondering if that is because during the summer (a long summer it is too), the rain comes in torrents (the Lonely Planet warned us last year when we thought of going on the OP trip). Therefore, no matter how much rain falls, the family can be up and dry!!
I took a ride further south to a very new and modern village before mountain biking along to this village. (I was very happy to have the mountain bike or I would have been down in the mud and water - in an interesting situation through a major construction zone!!) There was some delineation between villages which was obvious like here, however the number of villages on my hand drawn map did not seem to correlate with the villages that I rode through. No worries, I was out to tour so I just enjoyed the ride and took pictures. The bee keepers will also have to await another post too! The corn in the distance is tasseling, by the way!!
Shown above is the village (further above) that as I was bicycling through. I really did NOT want to be intrusive and take pictures of those who I encountered or looked at me, however a few times I could not help but take a picture (always hard not to take pictures of the children, they are so cute and shy but friendly often):
The woman above was heading to a "party" or so it sounded. You can see the joy on her face as she is meeting friends around the corner. Again, I wished to be an observer only and not the center of attention (as usually happens when a "wai guo ren" - foreigner - "appears in the village).
There were many more pictures and yet I believe you can really get a feeling for the communities from these pictures. An interesting side note is that there is a huge amount of building all around these villages. How long the villages will continue to exist, in my opinion, is not certain. Furthermore, the new building is very modern (western) oriented and not in the Dai style (see future post). More culture shift?? hmmm ....
The point here is that I wanted to wait until the hottest part of the day (or a little later, hopefully), so that people would be up and moving about! In Xishuang Banna,people usually rest through the heat of the day and work early and late (whew, they sure do work hard here too - especially the women, in the hardest brick and mortar toting jobs!).
A picture of the beginning of the bicycle ride, to show you the not so crowded (here) streets (REALLY). The fellow to the right is showing me to the China Mobile store so that I can put more money on my cell phone. In Shanghai, I can buy more minutes on the street (like in the U.S. at Wally World, Walgreen's, etc.) but since I am in Jinghong, I must go to the China Mobile store itself. More on China Mobile and spam advertising in a future post!
OK - I WILL RESTRICT this post to Dai Villages pictures as there were too many from the whole trip.
The roads are all dirt through and around the villages. NOTE however the hot water tanks above these two houses! Solar hot water!! Which of course means that if the sun doesn't shine ... but in Xishuang Banna, the sun shines quite often, I believe. We saw these same units all over Tibet during the summer too!
Notice how the family(ies) live: in the second and above floors. I am wondering if that is because during the summer (a long summer it is too), the rain comes in torrents (the Lonely Planet warned us last year when we thought of going on the OP trip). Therefore, no matter how much rain falls, the family can be up and dry!!
I took a ride further south to a very new and modern village before mountain biking along to this village. (I was very happy to have the mountain bike or I would have been down in the mud and water - in an interesting situation through a major construction zone!!) There was some delineation between villages which was obvious like here, however the number of villages on my hand drawn map did not seem to correlate with the villages that I rode through. No worries, I was out to tour so I just enjoyed the ride and took pictures. The bee keepers will also have to await another post too! The corn in the distance is tasseling, by the way!!
Shown above is the village (further above) that as I was bicycling through. I really did NOT want to be intrusive and take pictures of those who I encountered or looked at me, however a few times I could not help but take a picture (always hard not to take pictures of the children, they are so cute and shy but friendly often):
The woman above was heading to a "party" or so it sounded. You can see the joy on her face as she is meeting friends around the corner. Again, I wished to be an observer only and not the center of attention (as usually happens when a "wai guo ren" - foreigner - "appears in the village).
There were many more pictures and yet I believe you can really get a feeling for the communities from these pictures. An interesting side note is that there is a huge amount of building all around these villages. How long the villages will continue to exist, in my opinion, is not certain. Furthermore, the new building is very modern (western) oriented and not in the Dai style (see future post). More culture shift?? hmmm ....
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