To Menglun Then Puer From The Laos Border

To Menglun Then Puer from the border

Arriving at Menglun priotiry No1 was to wash Xiao Lyu, the radiator fan was coming on a lot so we figured the radiator was full of shit from the last few days in Laos.

I was right, I removed the mesh screen which stopped the big lumps and did a thorough clean, it was blocked buy a lot of fine mud that had set hard.

Botanical Gardens Ellen wanted to se as they had been recommended.

For me that wasn’t priority No1 which is unusual given a love gardening, I had some work to do so took the day out to do it while fresh in my head, Ellen went for a 22km long wet walk…with veges.

Our departure was partly dry then we got a bit of rain, our destination was Puer, the route took us along the G213 road which was cool, we came across quite a few fresh slips and small landslides covering half the road which made in interesting then the show stopper, a landslide that had bought down a tree, it was too big to Armstrong out of the way.

Ellen talked with some guys and a call had been made, we had past a small town about 5km back so decided to have some lunch rather than look at the leaves and trees.

Getting back to the town we talked with some locals and he gave us a sneaky little back road which was stunning but all that did was take us down the Expressway which we are not allowed on, we proceeded to the station as we were right there anyway and thought we would ask given the G213 was closed.

Stopping at the booth Ellen just said we want to get to Puer, the girl said no problem, give me your registration etc, we didn’t even have to plead that G 213 was blocked and closed so we wrote it down on their official sheet and off went where we weren’t allowed to go…or something like that.

It was about 70km long that we got to go on and it pissed down so to be honest it was quite nice for a change to smash some miles quickly.

Arriving at Puer which has an old town we got to our accommodation and we were wet having had heavy rain pumped in for over 5 hours, AC on and Chinese Laudramat in full form we hung everything out to dry.

That afternoone it slightly cleared so we headed to old town, the reason we went to puer, it was nice but very terrorouisty, funny enough the food was not badly priced I think because there was a lot of other venders, mid evening concluded the old town with bellies fulla fud.

Yuanjbiang our mid stop on the way to Kunming and east, the road was awesome and even dry, a few mudslides from yesterdays rains, no point in mentioning we nearly got taken out when a car cut clean across us at an intersection, the girl in the Passenger seat SHAT herself as we nearly intruded through her window, I could see right through the whites of her eyes to the braindead driver, I love Chinese drivers.

Yuanjiang, we got to our accommodation, a little bit out of town, we were upgraded from the std room we had booked to an apartment bigger than our place at home, see Ellens vid for that,

Our mission took us on a slight detour to Kunming, we still had a front brake shudder that needs sorting so we took her in to the dealership for a gork.

Now, an hour before getting in to Kunming it pissed down again...I know, never heard of that before, numbnuts sitting in the riders seat forgot to zip us his rear leg vents, such was the spray rolling around and the puddles/ponds quietly filled up my riding pants .....wet gruds and nuts for my act of unprofessionalism.

Ever cloud has a silver lining at the moto club hotel was outstanding to say the least, I am the only and first foreigner to have stay so the owner said lets have a party....hell yeah.     

The guys were excellent and a local restaurant cooked up a feast which we all chowed down, it was cool meeting the traveller guys, one dude on a BMW1200GS did 1700km in one day to get there....that normally take us 2 weeks!!

Some pics, young fella offer me a smoke, I said no thanks ...and jokingly if it was a gin I would be in, he came back witha  Bombay and said here you go...priceless. 

The Hotel front

The lads and ladessses

I was fleunt in chinglish after a coupla grogs  

The owner and us, very nice guy

Leaving Kunming we stabbed the map to a town that was about as far as we could make ground, Ellen found a hotel and we got to it only to find it was another moto hotel and the owner knows the dude in Kunming, unreal, good day to buy a lotto ticket.