Word: jinghong
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first glimpse of her roots had come two days earlier. Our passenger plane from Thailand dropped through a thick layer of cloud to reveal steep, wrinkled peaks flanking a jade patchwork of paddies. As we whizzed over the treetops to land outside the main town of Jinghong?or in Dai Lue, Chiang Rung, "the city of the dawn"?what looked like dozens of Pizza Huts peeped from the verdure. This was the unique architecture of the Dai?their signature, high-canted roofs perched atop thick teak pillars...
...With no clue other than the name of Bua's childhood village, Baan Yandee, we decide to start at the palace of the Dai King, Jau Phaendin. After hours of wandering Jinghong's wide, quiet streets, we spot two elderly Dai women in traditional dress?long, silk sheaths and blouses, cinched by wide, silver belts. "Jau Phaendin?" asks my wife. "Don't you know?" whispers one of the women. The last Dai King, she tells us, was exiled to Kunming during the tumultuous early years of the People's Republic of China, and his magnificent teak palace was torn down...
...wracking my brain for culinary superlatives as the moon-faced restaurateur eggs me on, plying me with cold beer. Mouthwatering? Lip-smacking? Succulent? Scrumptious? "Yes, yes," says Chai Uan-kum, proprietor of Chai Chuan Chin, scribbling furiously. "Very good." His is the newest establishment on Manting Lu Road, Jinghong's premier eat street, and I've been enlisted to help draft a sign in English that will lure peckish Westerners...
...Palm-lined Manting Lu Road, near the Mekong in the heart of Jinghong, is a magnet for the hungry. Other standouts among its dozens of eateries are the Mei Mei and Forest cafes, backpackers' havens both. But for authentic eats, head for Chai's place. He gets all the superlatives...
...Baan, as the Dai call it (Luosuo Jiang on Chinese maps) is about two hours' drive from Jinghong. The first part of the trip is scarier than the rafting: a twisting road dips and soars above the furious foamy rush of the Mekong's narrow gorges. Just when you're wishing you had found time to write your last will and testament, though, the road eases off into long, straight runs through rice paddies, and the previous hour's terror is left behind?much like the worst moments of river rafting, once the boat reaches calm waters. "We do fall...