Sapa,Vietnam to Lijiang China via Kunming

---

Sapa,Vietnam to Kunming,China to Lijiang,China

Sapa>Hekou(China) 42km 27km/hr
1:40:23

The downhill to Lao Cai was super fun-barely having to pedal for 32km or so is pretty cool! We decided to make up a little time again and take a bus to Kunming as we'd need at least a month further down the road to get from Shangri-la to Lhasa,Tibet. There were no more buses that day so we hit up hotel. Oh yeah, shortly after getting our passports checked and stamped and bags x-rayed in search of the oh-so bad Lonely Planet guide which doesn't include Taiwan as part of China, a guy in military fatigues in Hekou at the border post asked me to pose with a touch screen tourist info. machine and give a big thumbs up while he took a photo for promo purposes-lol! Anyway, after a lot of haggling with the bus people the next day we managed to negotiate a price to cover the extra fees for taking our bikes along(initially they wanted a full passenger fare for each bike!) we took the 11a.m ten hour bus ride to Kunming that somehow manages to take 12hrs-lol! Kunming is a nice big town with a really nice year round climate as well as an excellent geographical location that makes it a great staging point to other parts of China and southeast asia which attracts a lot of travellers as well as foreign students studying Chinese etc. We stayed at a funky hostel called the Hump right in the middle of all the thumping bars that had a stellar rooftop patio and cheap beer and good food. We hung out for several days shopping for supplies(mostly lots of food) for the Shangrila to Lhasa 1600km epic as it was the last big town with peanut butter-lol!! We also bought a bunch of good quality knock off warm outdoor clothing articles and picked up our China guidebook that we had mailed to ourselves-the poste restante worked super well and the fee to pick it up was only 3 Yuan. We wanted to tune-up the bikes as well and lucked out finding a Shimano sponsored shop with a really nice guy who had a nice range of really good bikes and was into downhilling! He put in a decent new lx bottom bracket for me as mine had seized once already as well as a new diacompe headset for G as the cheapo one we had installed for her earlier wasn't holding up and we bought a few more tubes. All this cost us around 300 Yuan(around $50)-a bargain! Anyone needing a bikeshop in Kunming-this is your guy! Just email us ([e-mail]) and we can send you his info.

We knew from G's previous research that to go from Kunming to Dali or Lijiang you can't ride your bike on the expressway and to get around it meant a lengthy detour so we had planned on taking the bus. It was such a pain negotiating at the bus stations etc that we decided to look into flights and found that it wasn't a lot more! So we had a very pleasant experience flying to Lijiang and we were there in 1.5 hrs instead of 10! We did have to bike 25km to town but it was a nice sunny day and nice riding! Lijiang was very interesting and well worth a visit. Most people go to visit and stay in the old town which is very cool old cobbled streets and neat old wood buildings with lots of cool detailed carving and ornamental doors etc. It's a big tourist destination for Chinese tourists as well and there were quite a few around as many people were still on New Year's holidays-although we heard there were MUCH more people a week earlier and hotel prices definitely reflected this so our timing was pretty good. My feeling for Lijiang was sort of a love/hate relationship as the architecture of the place was so cool and the people super friendly and also a well preserved minority culture, but it was just SO touristy (G referred to it as a mini Whistler) especially at night where every restaurant and pub(and there are TONS) had some sort of native singing or dancing going on and were very aggressively trying to get you in the door! What especially made it for us too was Norm and Nicky at N's cafe(word up you guys-we love u!!). Great food and conversation-as well as hacky sacking! Just a special couple. Anyone passing through should definitely look them up (especially if you're into cycling as they have a rental fleet and are into mountain biking and do tours and stuff!).

---

Photos

Lijiang to Tiger Leaping Gorge
This was a nice day and the riding wasn't too bad. There was a little climbing at first and then a descent into this valley.....

Road safety
Let's just say that road safety isn't paramount here!!