Routes from Jinghong meet at MENGLUN , a dusty couple of streets overlooking the broad flow of the Luosuo River . There's no bus station so vehicles pull up wherever convenient on the main road, usually among the restaurants and stores on the eastern side of town. Take the side street downhill through the all-day market, and within a couple of minutes you'll find yourself by a large pedestrian suspension bridge over the river. Here you pay ¥20 to cross into Menglun's superb Tropical Botanic Gardens , founded in 1959 by the botanist Cai Xi Tau , who, having carved the gardens out of the jungle, started investigating the lives and medicinal qualities of Xishuangbanna's many little-known plant species. One of his pet projects involved the effects of resin from the Dragon's Blood Tree , which looks like a thin-stemmed yucca with spiky leaves, used as a wound-healing agent in Chinese medicine. It was believed extinct in China since the Tang dynasty, but Cai Xi located a wild population in Xishuangbanna in 1972 and transplanted some to the gardens. You could spend a good half-day here, as there's masses to see, from Dragon's Blood trees and rainforest species to a thousand-year-old cycad and groves of palms, bamboos, vines and shrubs. You might also encounter Chinese visitors seranading the undistinguished-looking "Singing Plant", which is supposed to nod in time to music.

 

At the back of the gardens past the lily pond are two places to stay , one cheap (up to ¥30), one expensive (¥150-200), with several more unremarkable alternatives in town. You'll need to tramp back onto the main road to catch onward transport, though at the rear of the gardens, near the accommodation, is an exit on to the Mengla road, where you can flag down buses heading southeast.