On April 18, the instant we all stepped out of the plane and felt the heat and moisture in the air, it was obvious that the next few days would be spent in a much different climate from the region we had just left. Xishuangbanna is one of the sixteen prefecture-level divisions of Yunnan and home to many minorities, such as Dai, Hani, and Wa. We met up with three people who would be with us during our time spent in Yunnan: a driver, who would drive us everywhere we needed to go; a man who was in the tea business; and a woman who owned a farm where she grew many different crops, including tea. Tao told us that he could not understand our guides when they spoke in their native dialect (which sounded similar to vietnamese to my ear). We all enjoyed the sights of urban Xishuangbanna during the drive to a small tea plantation in a rural area of the city.
