Friday, January 06, 2006

Day 126. Not cycling in Menghan/Ganlanba, Yunnan, China

Leave my bags in the stilt house and take the bike on the ferry across the Mekong (you can sing it to the same tune as Ferry on the Mersey) to see what there is to see over there.

Usual stuff - villages, fields, peasants and temples.

Took the ferry back again and wandered accidentally into the official Dai song and dance theatre, where a bunch of people are obliged to wear silly costumes while somebody plays a CD of local songs at a volume that the loudspeakers are not quite able to cope with. These are supposed to be Dai folk songs, I suppose, but they all seem to be in Mandarin and are generally, so far as I can make out, hymns of praise to Xishuangbanna's tourist attractions.

I am pretty sure the chorus of one of them went "Xishuangbanna Hallelujia", but I could be wrong.

Then everyone went and splashed water at one another. This is known as the Water Splashing Festival and is good business for Water Splashing Costume hire shops (50 yuan a go), Buckets for Scooping Up Water With hire shops, and Dry Area For People Not Wanting To Get Splashed ticket offices (10 yuan entry).

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