Minging Mengla's Bus Blues

We arrived at the bus station with an hour to spare before our bus was due to depart, after half an hour the bus driver came over and told us to go to the bus. So after dumping our bags we went on and were surprised to see that instead of seats there were actually beds on the bus (we were later told that many people call these coffin buses). About 2 seconds onto the bus we were hit by the smell of disgustingly sweaty feet we’re not sure if it was due to cheap plastic shoes or the fact that the guy hadn’t washed his socks in weeks but odour eaters were definitely required.

We were then confused when the ticket inspector took us to the back and told us to go on the top where there were beds for 5 people as we had booked lower beds. We went up anyway and thought that he might be being nice to us “westerners” and that we might be the only ones there. Then another western couple came on and he told them to get up beside us, they refused and went and sat down on their allocated seat numbers. So we decided to do the same but unfortunately someone was on one of our beds so Chris waited until he left the bus and moved his things off. Then the ticket inspector came back on and after much gesticulating he realised that he had been found out and just shrugged his shoulders in amusement at us.


Well 4 o’clock came and went and we were told that the bus wouldn’t be leaving until 5pm (two buses were being put into one). So a little after 5 we left the bus station and headed into the Kunming’s rush hour with the traffic clearing a little as we headed onto the motorway. For about 45 minutes we seemed to be moving along nicely and then we pulled over at a service station for petrol. Well bearing in mind the bureaucracy to get a sachet of coffee it took us over an hour to get petrol and this was after skipping the queue of over 30 articulated lorry’s in front of us. Then we were on our way again only to stop 15 minutes later for 30 minutes for a food break and this was just the start of our journey. The new Star Wars DVD came on and at first we could hear it in English then came the Chinese dubbing over the English speaking so you couldn't really hear either. So on and on it went with the constant stop starting during the night (we reckon we must have stopped for over 6 hours!!) with us having very little sleep due to works being carried out on the road after the military checkpoint.

One of the amazing things about China is that they must currently be working on adding millions of miles of roads to their network. Everywhere we were driving through had huge parts of the landscape being worked upon with bridge supports being put and excavations of where the road should be. The only thing was that they didn’t start in one area and finish that first (that would make too much sense), every area was working on their bit and none of it appeared to be finished or much likely hood of it being done in the next year!!

We arrived at the bus station in Jinghong with all the Chinese people leaving the bus and were told by the bus driver we would leave “soon”. By this point we should have been at our final destination over 3 hours before and then the driver shouted at us to get off. He then pointed to a minibus which was full of the Chinese laughing at us with their bags on their seats and not enough space for all of us. They took over half an hour to reorganise the baggage and then magically produced half seats for us to sit on - surprise, surprise Chris and I were the only two westerners who had to sit on these and with Chris’s seat being broken my knees were being battered at every bump in the road (of which there were plenty).

We were told that the trip would take 2 hours but 4 hours later we arrived in Mengla, tired and dusty from our trip. We had two options either to try and make it to the border (which would have been extremely tight) or stay a night in Mengla. We decided to stay the night and went with the Czech couple (Michael & Camilla) we met on the bus to a guesthouse just down the road and had our bags carried for 2 minutes by a tuk-tuk driver. This was our cheapest accommodation yet at under 3 quid for an en-suite room with TV (although we didn’t manage to get a western toilet!). We hadn’t bought that much food for the journey and were both starving as we expected to arrive in Mengla at 5.30am so we had a quick meal in a little place next door to the hotel.

9am the following morning we decided to get a minibus to Mohan (the Chinese border) and gave our bags to the same tuk-tuk driver to take to the bus station. At every opportunity over the last 24 hours this guy asked us whether or not we wanted to change money which we politely declined. So onto a minibus we went and we were feeling ok as we left the bus station since the bus wasn’t as full as yesterday until we pulled outside of the station the bus stopped and 6 people got in (backhanders to the driver!). There was still plenty of room and we went on our merry way stopping to let people on and off during the hour and a half journey.

The bus juddered to a halt at a road block by one military guy as road works were being carried out just ahead of us. So we waited and waited and after about half an hour the driver told us to get off this bus and go onto another slightly larger bus (better than the one we were on) and we waited again. A couple from London came on Pete and Penny and started to chat with us which whiled away some time and then all of a sudden we were off and back on our way.

We arrived at the Chinese border control filled out our exit form, waited to be stamped out and were told several times by the guard to line up (I actually think he wanted us to stop talking!). So we eventually got our passports stamped and decided to walk towards what we thought was the Laos border control just across the road.