November 29th, 2007 
Sheila Simkin Xishuangbanna is extremely tropical and consists of rainforests, plantations and rice paddies. The 13 ethnic groups make up a sizable majority of the over 500,000 population in Banna. The Aini/Hani people are the most common minority group in Xishuangbanna after the Dai. The Bulang, Jinuo, Wa, Lahu and Aini were the main tribes in the townships of Jinghong, Mengla and Menghai and the focus of most travel around Xishuangbanna.
The Aini (Hani) people are related to the Yi, part of the Tibeto-Burman group and are famed for their river valley rice terraces. We stopped to visit two villages, one much more interesting than the other…View image…and spent some time with a husband and wife. FYI: You must have a guide because very few minority people speak English. She dressed up in a very intricate minority outfit to show me…and I promptly offered to buy the old minority hat laden with semi-silver decorations, coins and beads…no deal…boo-hoo. We’ve seen older hats like this for sale in Chiang Rai for hundreds of dollars. In the meantime, her husband sat around ignoring us and smoking his very large bamboo pipe.
By now it was time for lunch at another small but delicious little restaurant….with ducks happily swimming in the stream close by. Little did these duckies know that they were going to join…
…a display of ducks for sale in an outside case who had already gone to the happy duck-ground in the sky…eat there or take-away….we just had a vegetarian stir-fry. (If only they’d take the necks and heads off, I wouldn’t get so grossed out…)
More fun was a candy store in the nearest town. The family had never seen a Westerner before (hope we made a good impression) and were eager to urge free samples of their Chinese candy on us. We then presented them with some of our U.S. candy stash and a baseball hat. It’s hard to describe how excited they were and how much we enjoyed this little experience…
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