Ouput escaping in my PHP (html tags render as it is)

[sleeperman]

so I have text that is initially encoded as (an instance)\[code\]&lt;b&gt;Location.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt; &lt;UL&gt;&lt;LI&gt;Park Central New York Hotel is located in New York, N.Y.\[/code\]This data is from an xml file. So before I process it , I convert it to a simplexmlelement object, json_encode it (with parameter 1) and then json_decode it. Ultimately what I have in my hand for the above is text rendered as which is what I am trying to render anyways.\[code\]<b>Location.</b><br /> <UL><LI>Park Central Ne\[/code\]But the HTML tags do not render themselves, and simply output themselves as they are seen above. I am a little confused what function I need to apply here to get the desired output. Thanks!