I saw hill upon hill of lush green forest

Every time I had heard things like: the rainforest is being cut down to plant cash crops, rainforest area has been reduced by 30% in ten years, in just 40 years a forest area the size of Europe has been cut down, every time I heard these things, they were only just numbers. They were only black letters on a white page, yet this trip has shown me much more.

That day it was raining.

The moisture evaporated to form mist that cloaked certain parts of the panorama below. It was beautiful.

Xishuangbanna’s forest was actually less than 20% original rainforest, as most had already been converted into rubber plantations, rubber trees. The number in itself may not hold any meaning to you, but I hope that by the end of this story, you may understand why it distresses me so.

On our very first day, in our very first lesson, I was greeted by one of the most common critters of the area. Of course, I had never seen anything like it in my life. With long hairs sprouting from its body to enlarge its size at least threefold, a gait like a rippling wave, and an appearance both hellish and sort of cute, it looked like some alien invader from space.

We strode through the only cave known to be in tropical rainforest area, BaoJiaoNiu Cave. Even in the cave, life was thriving. Blind fish dwelled in any shallow pond, cave shrimp in the rivers, colourless somethings lurking between the stalagmites, long-lifed white worms looking like a frilly toilet cleaner, and of course, the fruit bats with their fanged mouths in an almost perfect ‘o’. On the walls where light shines (lamps put to light the way for tourists), ferns and moss cling to a desperate hold on life.

The next morning, we were scheduled to a rock-climbing adventure, in the time I was waiting, I made to explore the platform on which we were waiting. I first spotted those things that were easiest to spot: a banded black and white centipede crawling on the rock face, some white half-moon shaped mushrooms growing on a twig, and a neon spider with streaks of green, red, and yellow on different parts of its body. and a butterfly, perfectly camouflaged with its wings closed, but with shining napoleon blue spots when it spread its wings apart, so that when it flew, it looked like a piece of sky had fallen to the earth.

we would trek trough the rainforest, crossing rivers and toppled trees to explore the ancient forest.

By then you would think I’d have a little immunity against the crazy biodiversity, but it was not so, and the rainforest kept coming with surprises. Not even in the rainforest proper, only the man-made path that led to the start of the trail, I was welcomed by at least five different types of spiders. A transparent one, with tints of green; a hairy black one, with legs like twigs; and a smallish yellow one, with two long, smooth black horns (like those of an ox) protruding from its back, these extensions 8 times larger than the actual spider. Other bugs, like caterpillars and shield bugs, where also present. The extent of flowers and bugs and wonders I saw in the rainforest would take more than a book to record.