The road to Vietnam

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After spending a few more days in Kumming checking out the sights and sounds, we went to Dien lake and the Bamboo temple which involved a 50km bike ride around town, good training for the days to come. Then we hit the road towards the border, via the stone forest and the swallows cavern. Getting out of Kumming wasn't too bad thanks to Katherines GPS but unfortunately China likes to move where you are by about 20 metres which is cool when you are on the open road but when you are in town it makes everything that much more challenging. In china there are 3 types of roads, expressways, which are straight and well paved but we are not allowed on them plus they are really busy, then there are the standard roads which are in a slightly worse condition and hence are not usually nearly as much and lastly there are the other secondary roads that haven't really been used by anyone in the last 50 years so are perfect for riding, except they aren't all together direct and love to go up and down plenty of hills, apparently south China isn't actually all that flat. Consequently we are using both the major and minor roads.

It took a couple of days to get to the stone forest, had lovely weather and not many cars on the road (everyone was on the expressway). Stayed at this random little town, in what would have been the flashest hotel ever 15 years ago but now sadly was very run down. Found it pretty hard to find hotels the first night (and also to get a room) as we couldn't read the writing on the door saying "hotel" but now we've learnt that most of the hotels like to have clocks with time from around the world so that's how we tell. But it was pretty good that that we had the mandarin phrasebook with us as there was no English, not even a hello. So for dinner we managed to got to the the busiest restaurant that we could find and point at some someones meal and thats what we got, tasted pretty good although we have know idea what we ate.

Spent the day at the stone forest with hundreds of other tourists, have no idea were they turned up from but they all stayed on the main trail so we did the bolt and found some pretty cool stones off the beaten trail which was wicked, they were amazing. That night we ate a whole duck for tea, they actually put the head on the table, yum.

From here we continued our merry little way to Kaiyun which took another couple of days but unfortunately the weather got pretty cold so after spending our rest breaks warming our hand around fires on the street with all the locals we thought it would be a good idea to buy some gloves, well worth the 4 bucks. Found a premo little hotel that was on the first floor (didn't have to carry our gear up the stairs) and included breakfast (spag bol of all things) but in the morning when we were planning on leaving about 6 police turned up and started checking through our passports and documents. The problem was that we had out Tibet group visa and not a china visa (the reason for having to go to Vietnam) and the hotel people who couldn't speak English didn't know what it was and didn't think we had a visa. Pretty damn funny but they photocopied our entire passports incase that would help - it didn't. Finally explained the situation but was told to fill in the forms better next time (hadn't fill half of it in as my fingers where frozen from riding).

Spent a few nights in Kaiyun at a rather dodgy hotel that rented the rooms by the hour and had condoms and lube for sale in each room, and someone got married there on one of the nights, so strange. But from here we did a day trip to the Swallows cavern, these massive caves about 50km away that were over 5km long and 500m deep. So amazing. Some rock climbing expert did a demonstration and climbed to the roof without any safety gear, osh would have loved that. In the cave it was lit up with coloured lights which was quite cool. But the funniest thing was right in the middle of the cave they had this massive restaurant that must have been able to seat 200 people - china really doesn't do things by half. We then made our way back to Kaiyun which involved standing in the middle of the express way and flagging down a bus traveling at 80km. Most people know which bus to stop (its quite a common occurrence apparently) but it took 4 mildly angry bus drivers and passengers until we finally got the right one.

Our journey then continued to Hakou, the town on the boarder of China and Vietnam, where we hung out for a few days until we were allowed into Vietnam.

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Photos

Green Lake
Feeding birds with bread that Katherine thought was for eating.

The road to Vietnam costs
but not for people on bicycles

Nuclear Power
or maybe coal but still didnt have power in that town at night.

Bamboo Temple
A steep hill up but worth it for Jane

One of many hills on the flats of South China
Jane made it, but pushing would have been quicker

Comments

[Mark Valentine]

Hi Jane and Katherine, great stories and great photos! Really enjoying reading about your adventures. Mark