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Published: April 28th 2009
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And so...weve spent most of the past few weeks in china! What a culture shock. China was always going to be a voyage into the unknown as we decided whilst out here to go and have a look at it and so had no proper guide book or map! The map thing was solved pretty soon by our belgian mate Ben who told us about this incredibly detailed web site with directions, decriptions of towns and even an altitude graph! (www.pazu.com) However everything else has been a bit of a struggle due to lack of phrase book and inability to read chinese script!
The cycling has actually been really good with some incredible views. In most of China there are expressways that are big motorway type roads cutting through hills in tunnels and with huge elevated bridges over valleys. Of course cyclists arent allowed which means the old roads are left to us! and theyre almost deserted for the most part. There are parts where the road surface has broken down completely but this only matters on rainy days...resulting in us getting plastered with a red mud slurry.
Almost every town or village in China has a half decent
china
hill country guest house or hotel, and theyre easy to locate after i learnt the symbols...you see nearly fluent! Just wish i knew symbol for tasty peking duck dinner! All the rooms have had ensuite bathroom and TV...complete with chinese TV channel 9 which is in english. It provides much amusement with the rubbish news readers and obviously censored news. And all this for 3 to 10 pounds for both of us.
The main downside is the food. This probably is mainly due to the fact we have no idea of the language and so have been limited to bland rice type stuff (sometimes cold) in order for ian to avoid meat. It is totally impossible to get a different meal for each of us. Plus its pretty difficult to buy any sort of decent lunch for on the road. There are bakeries here but inevitably something that looks like bread isnt and is sweet or greasy or has some sort of wierd jelly stuff in it! And all the packaged stuff tastes strange and chemical. Now living on jelly beans and peanuts.
Our introduction to China was interesting..as we were still in Laos! we arrived at the border town
china
deluge..we had to shelter of Boten latish after a 60 odd mile ride and discovered that the town had been completely taken over by the chinese. There were only two hotels in town, both expensive, and the cheaper of which had no electricity! So after protracted negociations we checked into the more expensive one and were shown to a lovely basement room that stank of smoke. Protracted due to the fact that nowhere in town could the Laos currency (kip) be spent despite us being in Laos!! and the exchange place had shut. We eventually came to some deal using emergency dollars (thanks ians co-workers!) The guy who spoke english (thank god) then proudly told me that this hell hole was called "boten golden city". hmmm. I think the main function of the place was for fat spitting chinese guys to come and gamble..the hotel was a casino.
I did some more ace negociating the next day to get our huge wads of kip (the notes were each worth about a quid) changed to chinese yuan at a less than extortionate rate, and then we passed through the border and onto the road with no further problems.
One of the things we
china
old road alongside river noticed was the sheer size of this place, in one town we found a huge detailed map of china and we looked how far we had come and had hardly made an impression on the province which is only the 7th largest in the country. The mind boggles. Even after 2 and a bit weeks and 600 miles we had got no-where really.
Entering china from the Laos border the scenery continues in jungly type forested hills, and the people harldy change, but the steady ever friendly Sabadee of Laos was replaced by the more reluctant and nervous neehow of mandarin. Ians joke was he had spent 2 years learning Cantonese and was gutted as we were in a mandarin area and couldnt understand a word / symbol.
Most of our directions were done on a character recognition basis. "Ok we are looking for a square box with three lines like legs and a funny J with a hat"
After many changes of scenery ranging from tea plantations as far as you could see, to jungle, to high sierra, to deep valleys, to terraced rice paddies, to small dirty industrial towns, to brand new shiny concrete citys
jinghong
alsorts going on in town square (barely marked on our map) we arrived at the first "destination". The old town of Dali.
Nothing could have prepared us for this place. The old town is a mile grid surrounded by city walls and in scenic location next to a huge lake with a big range of mountains to one side.
A lot of people hate Dali because of it is basically tacky, out of the 1.3 billion chinese i think they were all there the day we arrived! its Chinese tourist heaven but strangely very interesting. Ian loved to watch them. One street is "westerner St" and there are a number of western cafes etc Some of the chinese come and sit in the seats, take photos with the blondys and leave much to our amusement!
The local old ladies from this region wear brightly colourful clothes and potter around the town trying to sell their wares, from bags, headscarves and "smokey Smokeys" which I didnt believe they did even though Ian assured me he had been asked about 10 times, till it happened to me! We refered to them as drug dealers.
Most of the town had small shops selling a wide
jinghong
botanical park rangle of goods at amazingly cheap prices - after you had haggled to at least 30% of original asking price.
More great cycling north but this time on a busier road full of buses and trucks who basically just dont give a damn about the rules of the road - in fact maybe the rules are different over here and everyone here is taught dont worry YOU have the right of way all the time. The number of near misses we saw was unreal and we saw 2 or 3 recently happened accidents which had clearly been head on collisions due to overtaking into oncoming traffic. Mad mad mad. Amazing views though!
After 60 miles one day we turned up into a town to incredulously find that the hotel (of usual chinese high standard) was 38 quid with no negotation available. Usually we paid 5 or 7 quid for a hotel of this standard. couldnt believe it! So rode the next town to find one exactly the same for a fiver. Goes down as one of those unexplained accomodation mysteries!
We had climbed gradually through china as we came into Lijiang old town at 2500m. Only 120
miles away from Tibet and near the incredible location where the 3 great rivers of SE asia the Mekong, the Yangzee and the Salween all flow within 60 miles of each other in deep parrallel gorges yet end up in 3 different oceans thousands of miles apart!
Lijiang is a crazy haphazard array of old Naxi culture wooden buildings (but disapointingly all rebuilt after an earthquake in the 90s.) some places are "proud to have been established since 1998!!
Its also another chinese tourist magnet - those of the 1.3 billion who were not in Dali were here!
We found it the most expensive place in china yet. Nearly same prices as back home.
Undecided about it really. Very nice when the crowds had gone but...hmmmm...
This place is one of the places which calls itself Shangri-la. Although some clever council people from a town a bit further north outdid them by actually renaming their town shangri-la which i think is hilarious!
Anyway it could be shangrila with the beautiful streams, houses and amazing back drop of the snow mountain at 6000m (covered in snow believe it or not)
anyway our time in china is at
simao
yep red slurry mud an end and we rather roughly spent 2 days on buses via Kunming (dont ask how chaotic it was trying to find the 'other' bus station in the dark with inadequate map and crazy traffic) to the vietnam border at Hekou/Lau Cai.
For anyone interested our route from laos was via mengla, menglun, jinghong (a really pleasant city with palm lined streets and a great botanical garden) Dadugang (tea town) Simao (big city, really dull) Mohei, Zhenyuan, Jingdong, Nanjian, Dali, Lijiang.
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Taz
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Hey guys! It looks bloody rainy in china! i like the sound of the place where the three great rivers meet, i bet it was very atmospheric. not long to go now eh? hope you enjoy the rest of your travels. Love tara xx