Posts Tagged ‘Cycling’

Day 255. 100km. Thabok – Pakkading

Posted: November 12, 2015 in Cycling, Laos
Tags: , , ,
2

The music on, the flat road continues. Music brings out the emotion, and today I felt joy as I saw the kilometres posts flying by, indicating Australia getting closer by the kilometre. I felt I really am going home, in the most awesome way – by bike. Happy, proud, laughing, I cycled along the Mekong River in Laos.

The boring road

The boring road

The late afternoon sun cast an orange light on the fields and villages. The kids were very excited, calling out Sabaidee, waving frantically and running to the bike from their bamboo huts. And I was waving frantically back. Music from my youth was blasting in my ears. Meeting with cool students in Vientiane a few days ago made me realise the world will be in their hands, and it gives me hope. The youth have impressed me on my whole trip. The politics in Australia and Canada is changing, and maybe even in the USA. Today I felt hope for this amazing planet of ours, and I smiled.

Dried fish sellers

Dried fish sellers

Today we met an English cyclist that told us of a beautiful side-road into the hills. We are considering taking it, meaning an end to these bellybutton contemplation days with the bike on automatic pilot. I’m ready for some less boring road and some beautiful mountain landscapes. Oh, with some dreadful roads – I kind of miss them..

Day 183. 135km. Gongliu – Areletuobie

Posted: November 11, 2015 in China, Cycling
Tags: , , ,
2

The people here are wonderful – I’ve been showered with happy faces and gifts. On the other hand, like Iran, this is a state ruled by the iron fist. Again my hotel looked a bit shaky after a police station visit. I am only passing through. The people that live here have to endure this indefinitely.

Unity of the people

Unity of the people

Every kilometre or so I pass by a bright red sign with yellow script. I had a bash at translating one – it was all about unity and solidarity of the people. The signs were about as frequent as the two heads in Iran, and the president in Tajikistan. They were everywhere.

Just in front of a red sign, I was stopped by a good-looking young man I had smiled at a kilometre back down the road. He had hopped on his motor scooter and gave me a bottle of water. I was handed another bottle of water out of the window of a passing car. I was given some watermelon by two kids who were at the same melon stall as me. I was given a new cap, towel and two cobs of cooked corn at my lunch stop. And I was given all sorts of different fruits when getting some fruit for dinner. Lovely lovely people.

Melon stall

Melon stall

Gift showerers

Gift showerers

Fruit gifts

Fruit gifts

I found a hotel, put my bike in the room, and went with the hotel manager to the police station. (He wanted to take my passport there himself. I said I would come with him.) I could sense it coming (I understood a lot of what they were saying at the police station.) I wasn’t allowed to stay in that hotel, or indeed any hotel in the village. I needed to go 25km to a different village where there was a foreigner hotel. Then the, now standard, phone call with the English speaker confirmed my suspicions. I played the same card as yesterday – ‘I’m tired, it’s late, and I can’t cycle further. I just want to sleep.’
Mm. Some police websites were opened, some protocol documents checked, and then, amazingly, I could go. I was allowed to sleep at my non-foreigner hotel. All this is getting tiring, though. I think tomorrow I’ll be sleeping hidden in my tent.

Day 254. 97km. Vientiane – Thabok

Posted: November 11, 2015 in Cycling, Laos
Tags: , , ,
10

Cycling along the flat, straight road in the heat, the mind wanders. In Vientiane I talked with world cyclists Martin and Susanne, and with Mark about the big question – ‘what will you do when you finish the trip?’ A boring cycling stretch can sometimes bring surprising mental clarity – and so it was today.

Boring road

Boring road

Key words float in and out of my mind as the cars and trucks roar past. Environment, helping disadvantaged people, Australian aboriginals, Australian healthcare policy (I have worked in healthcare research and healthcare communications), Aboriginal health (life expectancy 15 years less that non-Aboriginal Australians). Then the massive illegal destruction of the Indonesian rainforests. Issues in areas I will be cycling through. Issues that are important. What will I do when I get to Australia? I don’t know – yet.

A rest-day in Vientiane with interesting people can break the cycling mindset. I had a day of sightseeing, guided by a local, lots of smoothies, and bought some of the cool sticky rice and coconut tubes (sold in bamboo tubes).

Sticky rice in bamboo

Sticky rice in bamboo

Meeting with Twisting Spokes

Meeting with Twisting Spokes

Day 182. 105km. Yining – Gongliu

Posted: November 10, 2015 in China, Cycling
Tags: , , ,
2

‘You should change hotels.’
It was 20:30, and I was going up to my room for the night.
‘Why?’ I asked in Chinese. ‘Are foreigners not allowed to stay in this hotel?’ (also in Chinese).
No, that was not the problem. When the explanation came in Chinese, I stared blankly. ‘Wo ting bu dong.’ (I don’t understand.)
An English speaker was phoned to help me understand.
‘Maybe the hotel is too old, and I want a better one,’ she suggested.
‘I just want to sleep,’ I replied. ‘I’m tired.’
‘Ahhh,’ came the reply. ‘You want to sleep?? Hand the phone back to the woman at the front desk.’
I was allowed to stay.
Chinese logic at it’s most incomprehensible.

Free gift

Free gift

The hotel is an hour hotel (or o’clock hotel as they call it). The one last night was too. An hour in the hotel is only a few yuan less that the whole night. I must say, I am impressed with the Chinese approach to these hour hotels. In the one last night, they had lots of posters with doctors and nurses wearing the AIDS red ribbon, and posters promoting the use of condoms. They seemed to be part of a safe sex health campaign. In the hotel tonight, they had two free condoms in the bathroom.

Still, I wonder why I was asked to change hotels. Maybe the people at the reception thought that I might be woken by orgasmic cries in the night. Or maybe my conservative and puritan self might be shocked by my fellow hotel guests. I guess I will never know.

Cycling – oh, yes. This is a cycle blog. The road was straight with moderate traffic through farming country. I ate lots of grapes, and passed 15000km from Eindhoven.

Grapes

Grapes

15000km

15000km

Day 253. 72km. Phon Hong – Vientiane

Posted: November 10, 2015 in Cycling, Laos
Tags: , , ,
2

We slept like logs through the blaring wedding music before cycling along the flat, boring road into Vientiane. In Vientiane I finally caught up with Susanne and Martin from Twisting Spokes.

Meeting up again with Twisting Spokes

Meeting up again with Twisting Spokes

In February last year we met before all of us had started on our cycling adventure. A year and a half and half a world later we met again in Laos. There were lots of stories to share!

Day 181. 115km. Huocheng – Yining

Posted: November 9, 2015 in China, Cycling
Tags: , , ,
2

Surrounded by bright lights with neon signs and Chinese characters screaming from all directions, I walk down the main street in Yining. Many a man (both young and old) parade past me with their shirt rolled up to around their nipples. Guts can hang out, and underpants can be exposed. Everything goes here in China!

Letting the breeze in

Letting the breeze in

I am in the far flung backblocks of China, and it feels like I have almost not left a metropolis. The smallest dots on the map are cities bigger than anything I have seen in the last few months – huge boulevards with high-rise buildings and neon signs screaming out consumerism. When I’m not in a city, I’m on a massive freeway or the very large parallel ‘alternate’ road. With the honks of horns and the whizzing past of cars, peace can only be reached when you stop. Talking to the owner of shops, and playing with the kids. All a lot of fun. It’s not worth trying to leave the main road to take a road through the villages. I did that, and the road fizzled out, as did all the side roads. Twenty kilometres later, I returned to where I started.

Lunch stop

Lunch stop

Day 252. 89km. Vang Vieng – Phon Hong

Posted: November 9, 2015 in Cycling, Laos
Tags: , , ,
2

‘We’re all booked!’
What?
‘They might have a room in the other hotel – but they are having a party.’
They’re having a wedding reception, and the only available room is 10 metres from the wall of loudspeakers. The walls shuddered all night.

Ready for the wedding reception

Ready for the wedding reception

We made our way along the non-flat road with several stops in fruit-seller’s shelters waiting for the torrential downpours to pass. Our goal was actually a bit past the wedding reception town, but the darkness caught up with us, and so – wedding reception it is..

Rain

Rain

Drying fish

Drying fish

Keeping the fish fly free

Keeping the fish fly free

View from a small pass

View from a small pass

Day 180. Zharkent – Huocheng

Posted: November 8, 2015 in Cycling, Kazakhstan
Tags: , , , ,
5

The transition could not be more abrupt. In Kazakhstan small farming villages dotted with small ‘magazins’ – what I have been used to in the ‘stans’. Over the border, a little city has grown out of the desert like a mushroom. Big shopping complexes in the making, wide streets, and a buzz of things happening that wasn’t over the border in Kazakhstan. This is the new China that is being built as we speak.

Shopping street

Shopping street

I waited in the ‘queue’ (mass of people) behind the green line to leave Kazakhstan. I had my cumbersome, fully loaded bike, and people were squeezing past me, ignoring my protests. A clash of cultures perhaps. I jammed my bike perpendicular to the queue and actively blocked any more queue-jumpers. Still, a woman breathed in and slipped past my bike, wedged against the wall. Probably with a low sugar level after cycling there without eating lunch, I was determined to remove her. I stared at her. And stared. And stared. She nervously looked away and I continued staring. For minutes. She glanced back at me and then away – looking anywhere but at me. I continued staring, not moving my gaze for a second. She talked to her neighbour, glancing briefly at my piercing stare from time to time. After 10 minutes she looked at me, and asked if she could return to behind my bike. I let her through to her rightful place in the queue.

After a 7km ride around a big loop road to return to 100m from where I started, I easily passed through Chinese customs, and am proudly now in the Middle Kingdom. I laughed with joy. A rush of pride washed over me. I have cycled here from Holland! There were Chinese characters everywhere, I heard Chinese spoken, and it all looked so different. Wide streets, lots of bustling stalls, high-rise buildings, many new ones still being built, and what looked like a massive shopping complex. How different to a kilometre the other side of the border river.

Time to use my Chinese language skills learned in my 6 weeks in Taiwan in January and February. I ordered lunch and chatted for about an hour with the kids at the restaurant. After fighting through with my inadequate Russian for several months, it feels good to be able to speak the language again.

Talking with the kids

Talking with the kids

And then, leaving the city, I ran into a German cyclist cycling the other way into Kazakhstan. After another meal with him (I just ate ice-cream), I decided to call it a day, and stop in the border town. Tomorrow I’ll cycling into China proper.

Day 251. 61km. Kasi – Vang Vieng

Posted: November 8, 2015 in Cycling, Laos
Tags: , , ,
2

And the road went down – gently down into the valley. Karst rock chunks adorning the side, and the brown river slipping slowly towards the distant ocean. The sun was out, and it was hot. Perfect for a slow, smoothie stop-filled ride to the ex-party town of Vang Vieng.

Sunset at Vang Vieng

Sunset at Vang Vieng

Mark cycling down the valley

Mark cycling down the valley

Karst landscape

Karst landscape

Kids on the way to school

Kids on the way to school

Day 179. 115km. Sharyn River – Zharkent

Posted: November 7, 2015 in Cycling, Kazakhstan
Tags: , , ,
0

Back on the road with cycling companions – David from Germany and Isabella from Poland. And it was a straight road – a hot straight road. Lying on my bed in the border town – I think of my next country – China. It’s size is daunting, and the first part is hot, flat and endless. I shudder.

David and Isabella on the endless straight road

David and Isabella on the endless straight road

‘Eta adin?’ people ask – ‘Are you alone?’
Yes. How do I feel about that? My hand pauses over the keyboard. For quite some time. I don’t know. I like cycling with people, sharing the experiences, and planning the route ahead. The challenges ahead seem surmountable with others. Night falling and a campsite still not being found is less of a problem with others. A companion means conversation that is more than where are you from, where are you going – and are you alone? This conversation is often followed by a shake of the head – an expression of either admiration – or of pity.

I have heard so much about China – so many differing views. It is a country that is intricate and complex, and standing on it’s edge as a foreigner, approaching people not knowing how things work, the gulf of understanding can result in a ‘mai you’ (no). I have been in Iran where people live under the shadow of the state. How will China be, I ask myself. I hope the understanding gulf will be reduced with the Mandarin I have learnt. Now there is just one way to see how it will be – go there.

China, here I come!

My companions for the day

My companions for the day

Older Entries
Newer Entries