Tuesday's homeschool swimming lesson took place in Jinghong, a 2-hour bus ride south of Simao! First off was a visit to the Meimei Cafe for an early lunch - burger and chips (each) - then the swimming pool at the Crown Hotel. We were last here (at this particular pool) with Alex, Elspeth and Katie in the summer of 2006 (seems a long time ago now!) so it was good to be back. Since then a new water slide has appeared and the girls had great fun, along with their Barbies. We also slipped in some diving lessons for Freda. By 4pm we'd had enough, staggered out for an icecream, then ended up at a local market where we picked up some interesting snackfood for the journey home (see below). Edie fell asleep almost instantly on the bus, but the journey was made more exciting by a police search of our vehicle (a semi-regular occurrence at the Simao tollgate). We're very close to the Golden Triangle here, and Simao is the first main city on the drug-running route between Burma (via Menglian) or Laos (via Mengma/Jinghong) and China. The police hauled off one poor guy (admittedly he looked a bit dodgy and drugged up) who we never saw again, and proceeded to empty the bus and inspect all the bags in the boot. Luckily we didn't have any luggage so simply melted away into the night and picked up a no.1 bus into town. A late night...
Jinghong's street food is a little more exotic than Simao's thanks to the presence of the Dai ethnic nationality in the area. Dai food is based on sour and chilli flavours, with plenty of fish (usually bbq), dried beef, bamboo, lemongrass and more exotic dishes such as fried river moss and yellow ants eggs. Pictured above is the classic south Yunnan snack "suan manguo" - sour green mango with chilli and salt. Jinghong folk seem to like their mango shredded; in Simao we tend to see it cut into bitesize chunks.
Another popular streetfood setup is the sticky rice mini-meal (see picture below). You buy a bag of delicious "nuomi" (sticky rice) and choose from a selection of accompaniments: thick bacon slices; pickled vegetables ("yancai"); shredded wind dried beef ("niuganba"); salted chillied fermented soyabeans; reed packets of meat and tofu; and (a new one for me, after years of searching...!) the elusive and iconic fried river moss. It didn't disappoint - green and salty, a well worth the wait!
Another popular streetfood setup is the sticky rice mini-meal (see picture below). You buy a bag of delicious "nuomi" (sticky rice) and choose from a selection of accompaniments: thick bacon slices; pickled vegetables ("yancai"); shredded wind dried beef ("niuganba"); salted chillied fermented soyabeans; reed packets of meat and tofu; and (a new one for me, after years of searching...!) the elusive and iconic fried river moss. It didn't disappoint - green and salty, a well worth the wait!
Dai snacks - moss is front left
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