Jinghong Food

It looks like a plum, but tastes like heaven. Peel away the thick skin to get to the soft sweet white stuff inside.

Felicity and I share a bag of everybody's favorite, fried dough, at a street market. The Marlboro cowboy hat makes the man.

All-you-can-eat hotpot, but watch out for anything from the spicy side

Baby monkey likes baby bananas.

After this green pepper soup scene, things got ugly.

Felicity and I sample local dai cuisine. The "French fry salad" in front of Felicity is actually grilled bamboo.

Where else but a Burmese restaurant run by a Thai woman would you expect to find stereotypical Chinese fare like fried rice and lo mein. The pineapple-banana smoothies make it all go down easy.

Clare and I after laying waste to the hot pot. Several hours passed before we realized we'd inadvertently eaten Felicity.

Yes, young Jedi, I can pick up a peanut with a chopstick.

Jinghong is the sleepiest town on earth, with a good seventy percent of the population asleep on the job, as at this street market. If only I'd had the guts to snap the butcher snoring between his beef and his chopping knife a few feet down.

Usually, the Chinese don't eat rice until the end of the meal, since it's seen as an empty way to fill up when you can't afford real food. The eats in front of us are scrambled eggs and tomatoes and sauteed potatoes. On a TV over my head, an uber-violent kung fu flick plays.

This family-style restaurant featured spinning tables. Who will be the first to finish the cucumber soup? The race is on.

Pineapple pairs

Jinghong Fun

Clare and Felicity bike by the outside Ganlanba, a small town on the Mekong south-east of Jinghong.

One of the Ganlanba countryside's many scenic sacred sutpas.

In the heat of high noon, a monk rakes sand outside a country monastery. Everyone else in the order sleeps inside between the cool walls.

Huck Finn mans his skiff in a massive lily pond while the tropical vegetation grows and grows.

Monks' robes on the laundry line

May Day parade on Jinghong's otherwise sleepy streets

A simple wood and straw hut a few miles from Damenglong, where very-small small town life is meeting the construction of a very-super superhighway.

After eating lunch and sweeping the floor, monks gather to exchange cartoons with me. Note that mother of a drum above our head.

Jinghong's tropical plant research institute boasts over 1000 types of plants, about two of which are tall enough to block the ferocious mid-day sun.

Sitting on a stoop by a sutpa.

Bowing before Buddha

The Mekong defeats Felicity in a staring contest.

No May Day celebration is complete without an elephant.

View from the back of a pickup truck, heading out of town.

The hat may well be mightier than the sword.

In the country, they're farmers. Seventy percent of the population lives in the country. A lot of China looks like this.

Taking in the fields from the back of the truck, while a farmer takes in me.