Xi Shuang Ban Na

This past week, I made a trip down to the far SW part of my province, not too far from the borders of Myanmar and Laos to an area called Xi Shuang Ban Na. Although on a map, the distance looks like you should be able to cover it in just a couple hours, there aren't direct highways and some stretches of the road aren't much more than bumpy dirt paths (very bumpy!!). Combined that with curvy mountain roads and stops for food and bathrooms, the trip actually took 10 - 12 hours. Mary Beth and Jennifer (friends from Yichang) took a flight to get down to XSBN. Katie, Dave, and I along with our Chinese friends Jason (who's from that area) and Karry hired a Chinese mini van--complete with a driver and his wife--to make the trip to XSBN.


On the way there we crossed what was labeled as the "highest bridge in the world." I took that to mean they were measuring the distance from the bridge to the ground, not the altitude of the bridge. I am always slightly dubious when it comes to Chinese claims on world superlatives, so I'll have to do some research into world-wide bridge heights .


We visited a beautiful tropical botanical garden area.
Although rationally I know this is completely fallacious, I always pictured rubber trees as being made out of rubber--so that the trees were flexible and "boingy." But in reality, rubber trees are hard like all other trees and it's the sap that rubber is made from. This was my first time to see rubber tapping.Elephant show in the Nature Preserve.

We got to stay in Tree Houses in the Nature Preserve--Swiss Family Robinson style (hmmmm, should I say Chinese Family Wang style? Ha, doesn't quite have the same ring). It was primitive and basic but fun for one night. One problem, when you laid down at night in the bed, you could feel the whole tree house swaying back and forth . . . rather disconcerting. Felt like I was reliving last year's earthquake for a whole night.
There are lots of wild elephants in the Nature Preserve, so much so that you're not allowed off the walkway bridges in the tree houses between dusk and dawn. Sadly, we didn't see any elephants roaming around but we did see footprints.
And we saw monkeys!
These are leaf butterflies! How cool are they?! You really can't tell the difference between them and a brown dried leaf unless you get close enough to see it's body and legs.
Morning after staying in the tree houses, looking a bit groggy and disheveled.
I have more photos to post of the trip which I'll do over the next couple days. If you want to see an web album of all of my XSBN photos go to this link.

Xi Shuang Ban Na Web Album