At the end of October, I went to Xishuangbanna.
Before going there, my colleagues asked me, what is there to do there? It is better to go to Thailand than to go to Xishuangbanna.
I asked them, can you go to Thailand? They then thought about it, yes, they couldn't leave the country, and finally realized that I was smarter.
A sense of déjà vu in Thailand
Winter is the peak season for travel in Southeast Asia. The further south you go, the higher the temperature becomes. Regardless of the ice and snow in the north and the cold wind in the south, in Thailand, summer begins in a flash.
The feeling of Xishuangbanna is actually somewhat similar to Chiang Mai. This is because historically they all belonged to the same country, the Lanna Dynasty.
Most of them believe in Theravada Buddhism, and Buddhism has had a strong impact on their daily lives. In Chiang Mai, we can see pagodas everywhere, while in Xishuangbanna, there are also Buddhist temples and pagodas. Spread across every village.
Therefore, when many people come to Xishuangbanna, they have the illusion that they have entered Thailand by mistake.
But similarity does not mean the same. To regard Xishuangbanna as a substitute for Thailand is to underestimate this city.
In the future, with the passage of the Pan-Asia High-speed Railway (expected to be launched in 2021), Xishuangbanna will take advantage of Southeast Asia's resources and become the forefront of the international channel for Chinese people to travel to Southeast Asia, and it will be at the center of the Pan-Asia High-speed Railway Economic Circle.
This may become one of the most potential resorts in Southeast Asia. Not long before I went there, Jack Ma also came to Xishuangbanna for inspection.
After November every year, the rainy season ends, which is the most suitable time to go to Xishuangbanna. Even in the coldest winter, the average temperature in Xishuangbanna is 16°C, and the temperature at noon often exceeds 25°C.
Just by imagining it, I feel very comfortable and comfortable.
If you want to have a great travel experience in Xishuangbanna in the short term, I think there are two most important points. One is to choose the right hotel, and the other is to match it with good attractions.
Choosing the right hotel is actually more than half of the success. Today, I will focus on Xishuangbanna’s hotel strategy, lightning protection methods for scenic spots and food recommendations. I will save them for the next issue.
Like hotels in Sanya, hotels in Xishuangbanna can also be divided according to price and features.
First Tier: Sunac Mandarin, Bodu, Anantara Resort Hotel (near Banna Tropical Botanical Garden)
Second Tier: InterContinental, Yuejingzhuang Huajiantang , Crowne Plaza Resort Hotel, Pullman Resort Hotel, Sheraton Hotel, Xishuangbanna Wanglian Hotel (near Banna Tropical Botanical Garden), Angsana Resort Hotel (near Golden Chain Hot Spring Resort)
The third level: Excellent Special themed B&Bs such as Wumeisu, Gaozhuang Secret Shushali Villa, Kezezeqi Hotel (near Jinlian Hot Spring Resort)
In fact, it is very clear after dividing the stalls. If you don’t like running If you want to stay in a hotel and enjoy the vacation, you can choose the first-class hotel.
If you are traveling with your children and want better value for money, you can choose a second-tier hotel.
In the most popular Gaozhuang scenic spot in Xishuangbanna, there are third-tier themed B&Bs everywhere. It is easy to encounter "photo scams" in B&Bs, but there are also very cost-effective ones. This one is the best. It’s up to you to tell the difference.
What needs to be added is that in addition to paying attention to the price of the hotel, everyone should also carefully look at the location of the hotel. This is so important.
When choosing a hotel in Xishuangbanna, you must first know that there are "one city and two counties" here, Jinghong City, Mengla County, and Menghai County.
There are nearly 3,000 hotels (B&Bs) in these three areas, most of which are mainly in Jinghong City.
The commercial districts with the highest popularity in Jinghong are: Gaozhuang Xishuang Scenic Area, Splashing Square, and Sunac International Resort.
The urban area of ??Jinghong is actually not very big. Which area to choose, the taxi fare is basically about 10-25 yuan, so there is no need to worry.
What needs attention is Menghai County or Mengla County.
Hotels such as Wanglian Hotel or Anantara are located in the Tropical Botanical Garden area of ??the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Mengla County. If you go there, it will be very troublesome to go to the city unless you have a chartered car or a rental car.
Anantara Resort Hotel in Mengla County
Visible Zeqi Snail-shaped Tent Hotel in Menghai County
But that doesn’t mean you can’t choose the surrounding areas Hotels in county towns, because there are still many people who don’t like to visit scenic spots and check out various restaurants.
Every hotel has its own way of opening Xishuangbanna. Living in the botanical garden, you can view plants at night and interact with fireflies, and living in a wild and luxurious tent is also a wonderful experience.
This still depends on personal needs.
Living in the Botanical Garden, you will have the experience of going on a night tour to watch fireflies at night
I stayed in Xishuangbanna Yi*** for four nights, and most people stayed there for almost as long. It's four or five days. I prefer to use the 2+2 hotel matching method.
For example: Two nights at Intercontinental + two nights at Sunac Mandarin. This should be regarded as a general hotel combination, especially suitable for people who come to Xishuangbanna for vacation for the first time. This is the one I chose.
For example: two nights at the Sunac Mandarin + two nights at the Crown Hotel. Because the three hotels, Mandarin, Crown and Pullman, are all attached to the Wanda Sunac Resort, their locations are connected. This combination is very cost-effective, and it is very convenient to change hotels.
For example: two-night intercontinental + two-night berth, these two hotels are relatively close to each other.
There are many ways to match it, but it still depends on personal needs.
It should be noted that when making a 2+2 match, you must choose the second gear for the first two days and the first gear for the next two days, because it is difficult to go from luxury to frugality. From relatively ordinary rooms to luxurious villas, there is a sense of happiness.
In addition, try not to change hotels in one day. This will delay your trip too much and make you tired.
Now that the hotel framework has been decided, it will be more convenient for us to match the attractions and make some itinerary arrangements.
For example, I will arrange a full-day trip to the Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the first two days. Because it would be too uneconomical to live in a Wenhua villa and run out all day.
I stayed at the hotel for the next two days, went to see the Dai show in the evening, and participated in some hotel experience projects.
By adjusting the rhythm in this way, you won’t be so tired and can really take a vacation.
As for the hotel experience, I will focus on the two hotels I stayed at this time: InterContinental and Sunac Mandarin.
InterContinental
In my opinion, the greatest advantage of InterContinental lies in the integration of hotel architecture and regional environment and humanity. In the past, this was the Dai Palace in Xishuangbanna. Today, the hotel building retains this luxurious palace style.
The towering golden pagoda, the exquisite cornices, the main color of gold, and the root of Dai culture - water, these characteristic elements are fully displayed here.
Designed by the award-winning international architecture firm Peridian, the hotel cleverly utilizes the local natural landscape and arranges the gardens in an orderly manner.
Entering the hotel, you will be in a tropical rainforest, and you will sigh from time to time: This environment is so good.
Whether you walk from the door to the lobby or from the guest room to the restaurant, the path environment is cleverly designed.
During the day, light will pass through the hollow wooden building. The space is transparent all around, and the seats in the dining bar can get sunlight.
Living in InterContinental feels like living in the back garden of a palace. You can see without leaving the hotel: dense tropical rainforest, luxurious palace buildings like the Dai Palace, Southeast Asian-style landscape gardens, terraced fields, and the peacocks, goats, geese, chickens, ducks raised in the hotel...
After staying at the Intercontinental, I feel that this hotel is suitable for families with children, because only parents know how tiring it is to take children to visit attractions.
In Intercontinental, a lot of natural fun can be done in the hotel. After all, this is a hotel with terraces. Children who usually live in the city rarely get close to nature.
Here, you can also experience rice transplanting as a family.
From 8:30 to 10 o'clock every day, the peacock will come out for a walk. Children can get close to small animals on the grass.
The hotel's facilities are also very complete, with abundant outdoor play areas and a curved and irregular outdoor swimming pool, which is really enough for children to play. Lying in a hotel with a baby like this is not a happy thing.
Speaking of room types, the most common superior room in the hotel has an area of ??50 square meters and above, and all rooms have independent viewing balconies. When you open the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can see the towering woods in front of you.
For a hotel with this price, you may only be able to see the sky when you open the door in the city.
Some details of the hotel are also well done, such as the drum stick design at the door and the integration of some Dai element decorations in the room.
Moreover, the waiters will greet you warmly every day, and there will be welcome fruits in the room every day.
However, there are also some small problems. For example, because we are in a jungle, there must be bugs. Therefore, the balcony door must be closed and mosquito repellent liquid must be prepared.
In addition, the walls around the balcony will be somewhat mottled, and the hotel's facilities will feel a bit old, which still need to be improved.
Finally, let’s talk about the hotel’s restaurants. There are six restaurants and bars of different styles in the Intercontinental that you can check out in sequence, including Chinese food, Thai food, Dai food, Yunnan food, and the special Peacock Feast for two people. .
We didn’t try them all because they were all outside and mainly ate the hotel’s breakfast buffet. The variety of breakfast is quite rich, and the most popular one is the freshly cooked rice noodles.
We used the IHG membership card, which provided exclusive seats for members and specially provided Cantonese-style steamed chicken feet. It unlocked the hidden menu and it felt very good.
Sunac Mandarin
Xishuangbanna Sunac Wanda Vista Hotel is located in Sunac Xishuangbanna Tourism Resort. This is another large-scale international resort for Wanda after Sanya and Changbai Mountain. The investment alone cost 40 billion.
Compared with Intercontinental, the advantage here is first of all in terms of supporting facilities. After all, Wanda has spent so much money on it.
Here is the largest commercial city in Xishuangbanna: Wanda Plaza; there are hotel groups scattered in the rainforest with the pagoda as the center: Mandarin, Pullman, Crowne Plaza; there are outdoor playgrounds; there are Dai shows Theater...
It feels like a one-stop service. Living in this area, the surrounding projects are enough to play, and it is close enough to the airport.
At this point, I actually have the urge to buy a house.
Back to the topic, in addition to enjoying the facilities of Sunac Resort, Mandarin Hotel also has the best (JIA) experience (GE) among the three hotels (GUI).
The hotel’s main focus is holiday villas. All room types are townhouse rooms with an area of ??more than 137 square meters. You can take a small golf sightseeing car from the hotel to the room.
Living in a villa really feels different from staying in a guest room. The privacy here is better because the area is larger and more open, and the rooms have their own infinity pools.
So the vacation experience is very good.
When you stay inside, you feel like you don’t want to go anywhere. Many guests here like to order meals to eat in the guest rooms.
There is a courtyard in front of the room, equipped with leisure chairs and sun umbrellas. The garden is full of green tropical vegetation, where you can sit and drink tea.
In addition to the infinity pool outside, the guest room actually has a large bathtub with a view and a built-in LCD TV.
When I saw it, I really wanted to lie down comfortably in it.
What also impressed me deeply was the nightly room service.
After tidying up the room, they will place the water you want to drink on the bedside, along with cups and paper lids.
New slippers will be put in the room because some guests will get their slippers wet after swimming.
When we returned to the hotel, the weather forecast for the next day was thoughtfully placed on the bed, along with small gifts with regional characteristics (some rooms had folded animal towels), although it was only a small detail. , but super bonus points.
As a villa resort, the public area of ??the hotel is equally beautiful. It has won the World Tourism Award WTA Asia's top resort villa hotel.
The resort takes "Buddhist Meditation" as its theme, and uses the traditional architectural structure and distinctive ethnic patterns of the Dai people as its design ideas. The atmosphere feels very much like a resort in Bali.
When you walk into the hotel lobby, the first thing you see is an endless lotus pond. When there are activities here, water lanterns will be placed at night.
In the evening, there will be a coffee cart offering some desserts.
What is special about the hotel is that there is a pagoda with a theme of Theravada Buddhism inside. This pagoda predates the hotel and is currently managed by monks from the main Buddhist temple.
Every important festival in Xishuangbanna, there will also be corresponding Buddhist-themed activities here.
Under the pagoda is a two-story base, decorated with extremely ethnic characteristics. On the base is a meditation hall for worshiping Buddha and meditating. The doors, windows, walls and columns are all designed with Dai characteristics.
There are five golden pagodas on the upper floor, with a small pagoda at each corner, and the main pagoda in the middle, where relics are enshrined. The pagoda body has a unique shape of the Dai people.
One of the hotel guest experiences is that you can follow Master in chanting sutras at the pagoda in the early morning.
Finally, let’s talk about the hotel’s food.
During the two days we stayed at the hotel, we mainly tried the hotel’s floating afternoon tea, buffet breakfast and dinner, and Thai restaurant.
The floating afternoon tea is really the same style as Xiaohongshu. It is suitable for girls who like to take pictures. The meals are driven by two hotel guys. Because the afternoon tea is heavier, they will help Place it in the swimming pool.
In order to meet the needs of the guests, the guy also has a dry ice machine and can help take pictures, which is really considerate (but having afternoon tea at the swimming pool is really not as pleasant as imagined, and the drinks are easy to spill out) .
The desserts are well matched and very tropical.
In the buffet restaurant, there are singers singing in the evening, and the overall atmosphere is pretty good. The main dish is seafood sashimi.
The buffet restaurant also provides many limited dishes, such as small green dragon sashimi for one table, Wellington steak and liquid nitrogen ice cream for one person.
The breakfast items are not particularly rich. But there are also freshly squeezed juices and freshly made wontons, noodles, and egg rolls.
But we can actually eat buffets anywhere. I think the hotel’s Thai restaurant is more worth checking out. The chef of the restaurant is from Chiang Mai and has been working as a chef in Xishuangbanna for more than ten years.
The Thai food here is very authentic and authentic.
Many of the raw materials and seasonings are brought by the chef from Thailand.
Tom Yum Soup is one portion per person. It tastes sour and spicy in the mouth. There are onions, mushrooms, and shrimps in it, which is very appetizing.
The breaded curry shrimp is also highly recommended. The shrimp meat is very firm, the curry is thick and mellow, the bread sticks dipped in curry sauce are very appetizing, and the curry sauce is also delicious when paired with pineapple fried rice.
The sour soup of fish in sour soup is very fresh and the fish meat is very tender. It is also very suitable for eating with rice. The creamy stewed vegetables have a light texture that combines with the greasiness of the curry.
The overall color and taste are all very good. After eating, I really felt like I was in Thailand.
The accompanying appetizers and pineapple rice taste very good and there is no minefield at all. The restaurant also has more than 300 Dai-style hand-picked rice set meals, but I recommend ordering your own, as you can taste a lot of surprises.
In addition to meals, many hotel accommodation packages include two tickets for the Dai Show. This show is super worth it and I highly recommend everyone to go see it. The Dai Show theater is a joint investment between Wanda Cultural Industry Group and the American Frank Company.
When checking into the hotel, there is always a shuttle bus that picks up and drops you off on time. It only takes a few minutes to drive from the hotel to the theater.
The Dai show performance is based on the Dai folklore "The Peacock Princess".
What the theater presents to the audience is an immersive experience with a strong sense of interaction. At the scene, you can experience high-tech lighting, the integration of vision and art, and the water stage is also very beautiful.
This is very similar to the "House of Dancing Water" show I saw in Macau.
The only thing I want to complain about in Mandarin is the welcome fruit that does not have a room. I can only go to Mangge Market to buy it and put it in the refrigerator to eat.
The last thing I want to say is that there are many ways to vacation in Xishuangbanna. Every hotel has its own characteristics. I will stop talking about it today. If you have been to Xishuangbanna, please leave a message to share with us the hotel you have stayed in.
In the next issue, we will talk about how to avoid pitfalls in Xishuangbanna