Word: xishuangbanna
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...culmination of an emotion-charged journey for my wife, Sawitree. She is the first of her large northern Thai family to travel back to the land of her ancestors, the Dai people, who inhabit the southern tip of China's Yunnan province. The region is now known as Xishuangbanna, a Sinicization of the Dai name, which means "12,000 fields...
...When the Red Guards ran riot in 1966, Chai's parents, like thousands of Xishuangbanna's Dai tribespeople, packed up what they could carry, along with their five children, and set off on foot. They made it past the border, trudged bandit-infested goat tracks through Burma, and didn't stop until they reached the Thai border town of Mae Sai. "Growing up in Thailand, I was fascinated by my parents' stories of home," says Chai, 37. "So when I was 17, I came back." He found work as a goldsmith, obtained a Chinese ID card, and last March opened...
...Xishuangbanna is seen as a kind of backyard Thailand by the Chinese, with 2.5 million mainlanders visiting last year to marvel at its tropical lushness and vibrant minorities. "A lot of Thais are coming now too, many to revisit their Dai roots," says Chai...
...HARD There's a murmur, then a babble and then suddenly a roar, and I'm sitting soggy-shoed in a wicker chair, clutching a pink parasol, almost a foot under water. This is white-water rafting, Xishuangbanna-style. Granted, the rapids on this particular stretch of the Nam Baan river, a chocolatey tributary of the Mekong, don't quite deliver Grand Canyonesque white-knuckle thrills. But when you're sitting in a wobbly chair, sliding around atop 20-odd lengths of bamboo lashed together with twine, any white water is, frankly, too much...
...Such are the attractions drawing 12 full flights a day from nearby Kunming to Xishuangbanna ("Banna") in the tropical southern Chinese province of Yunnan. The trees are some of the can't-miss sights that have made the area around Banna's main town, Jinghong, explode as a center for domestic tourism. The other big draw is the group of lawless towns just over the Burmese border. Judging by the crush of the crowds, this is Chinese holiday heaven: an open orgy of casinos, transvestite dance revues and brothels. Although Rangoon's military junta doesn't officially admit non-Chinese...