Day 7: Quinn Yuan to Jiu Long

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Distance: 45km?

Getting sick when you're on holiday is always unfortunate. But in our case, it was our Tour Guide that got sick! Poor Frank got terribly sick and spent the day in the van while we did our tourist duties.

More Dim Sum for breakfast, then an hour drive out of town and we began our ride. I didn't go far before I flagged down our truck and asked them to fix my brakes. The ride took us through small towns and another infinite number of rice fields.

I had to go down some gears to get up a hill, until I realised that there wasn't actually a hill - rather, my tyre was flat! I turned my bike upside down and waited for our truck, snapping photos of the rest of the group as they rode past. The truck eventually pulled up, swapped out my entire wheel and I was off again, to the amazed looks of nearby people. It must be like watching a racing event with pit crew.

Further, my GPS failed this morning, no doubt due to getting wet during yesterday's ride. The instruction manual warned not to get it wet, but I'd imagine it should be built to withstand rain while riding. Alas, it means that I will not have a record of the ride and I cannot tell how fast I'm going nor how far we've ridden.

We passed a group of school children walking down the road and they happily waved and called out Hello. I pulled over and got some photos with some kids, and they even said things like "How are you?" and then shook hands, saying "Pleased to meet you!" this generation will have a fantastic future.

Today we had a serious uphill ride, followed by a downhill run. We were greeted by a sign announcing "Welcome to Ying De", which was accompanied by an artist rendering of a suburb full of buildings where empty land now lay. It seems that real estate sales people are the same the world over.

In Jiu Long, we stopped for what was probably our best meal to date. A simply cooked, but very tasty Chinese meal to give us back our energy. We wanted some chilli to go with the meal and used Google Translate to request it. Ain't technology great! We then mounted our bikes again and went to an "Underground Drifting" attraction at the Yingxifeng Linzoulang Scenic Attraction. We all hopped in a wooden boat and were taken into a majestic cave with light pouring through an opening at the top. I could imagine the It's A Small World theme song playing in the background. We have no idea how the caves were formed because our tour guide was working off his fever in our van, so we made up our own stories about dragons coming here to feast.

Returning to our bikes, Birgit realised that she was missing her water bottle, which was last seen on her bike at the restaurant. We kept an eye out for it, but couldn't find it on our ride back to town. We checked into the Jiu Long Guesthouse (apparently the only hotel in town), grabbed a shower and then regrouped to explore the town. In my case, the shower was cold. I used Google Translate to ask the front desk whether the showers should be hot, and she typed up a response that said something about 20 minutes. Hopefully it would be warm for the others later. (Update: No, it wasn't.)

The township is quite big, with one major road and several smaller commercial streets running off. We had a good time looking at the shops, sampling roadside food. I got a bubble milk drink, similar to Easy Way. I saw some school children drinking it and, when they stopped to say Hello, I used gestures to ask where I could get one. They directed me to a small shop and helped me order one, for the grand price of ¥1 (15c). Beat that, Easy Way!

We managed to find our lunchtime restaurant and Birgit's water bottle was sitting outside, waiting for her. How lucky was that! We found a small variety store and I bought gifts for my children. Then, some school girls bought some ice creams, stepped out of the store, peeled off the wrappers and dropped the wrappers on the footpath. Later I saw a women cleaning the street, so this seems the appropriate way to dispose of rubbish. There are no bins on the street, anyway.

We saw markets with live animals, vegetable stalls and numerous barber shops. We saw locals playing strange card games, quite delighted to have us watching. All up, a lovely couple of hours walking around the town, being as much an attraction ourselves as they were for us.

Dinner was an interesting affair. It would appear that we are the only people staying in this hotel, so we were also the only people in the hotel restaurant. We ravaged the drawers for glasses, a corkscrew and hot water, which led to much faster service than waiting for the ghostly waitress. Dessert was a Dragon Fruit that Dimiter bought in the markets and we spent a good hour after dinner telling "travel disaster stories". Most of us are seasoned travellers, which is why we went on this trip in the first place!

Tomorrow is 100km with some serious hills. Gulp!

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