Getting from Xishuangbanna Gasa International Airport to the city

Five kilometres, and a decision

• Xishuangbanna Gasa International Airport is 5 km from Jinghong, the prefecture capital. That is close - most Chinese airports of this size are 30 km out.
• The airport's own advice is a taxi, and it states plainly that the fare into town will not exceed 20 yuan. That is a useful thing to know before a driver quotes you something else.

The bus, and its catch

• Bus route 1 costs 2 yuan a person, which is a tenth of the taxi.
• But it does not stop at the terminal. You leave the airport, turn right, and walk about 500 metres to the stop at the gate of Jinghong Vocational Middle School.
• Route 1 runs from 06:00 to 22:00, every 15 minutes.
• Five hundred metres on a Yunnan afternoon with two suitcases is the reason most people take the taxi. With a rucksack it is nothing.

Where you are

• Xishuangbanna is the tropical southern tip of Yunnan, on the Mekong, bordering Laos and Myanmar. It is Dai country, and it does not look or feel like the rest of China.
• Jinghong is the town everyone stays in, on the river, and the night market is the reason.
• The Laos border at Mohan is 200 km south, and the China-Laos railway now runs from Kunming through Xishuangbanna to Vientiane - so the train is a real alternative to the flight.
• This is a domestic and regional airport, with flights to the Chinese cities and a handful of Southeast Asian ones.