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Matt flying the flag
After his BOB flag + upper half of 'flag pole' went missing, suspiciously through a village, Matt is now flying the Aussie flagSince the last blog we haven't done so many k's on the bike, instead exploring the 'touristy' area of Tengchong, and in the last couple of days doing very little in Dali. I say 'touristy' as we didn't see the hordes of (western) tourists that we were expecting (Tengchong is in the Lonely Planet - a first since Jinghong more than 3 weeks ago), although there have been quite a few Chinese tourists at the sights.
I should start the blog with a description of events following the earthquake in Sichuan. The news has been dominated by the earthquake rescue efforts, and although the images and content having been getting a little repetitive (especially as there is only one english channel) a huge amount of progress has been made on rescue and recover. The sudden and ongoing emotional reaction by the Chinese public has surprised us, and we have seen donation centers in the big towns, although not quite the scene of local people donating hundreds of Yuan (a lot of money here) as seen on the TV. However the army has mobilised huge resources and by trekking in over mountains where roads have been rendered impassable are achieving great
Western Food!
A takeaway bar selling chicken burgers - it was a lucky spot as they wasn't any advertising things, and are now being followed by disease control and tonnes of medical supplies. We were a little concerned by footage of the prime minister parading around the affected areas less than 2 hours after the quake with messages such as 'be strong, continue with your rescue efforts, professionals are coming soon' and 'we will not give up till the last person has been saved', taking these to be propaganda, but behind the scenes, efficient wheels have been turning.
We have not come across any affected areas in Yunnan, nor felt any of the aftershocks, and have been able to continue on our bikes without problems.
The quick summary:
Monday: Baoshan to mountain campsite near Daojie. 75km and 1150m climbed. Earthquake in Sichuan Province
Tuesday: On to Tengchong, only 54km in the saddle but with 1400m climbed and then about 30km in the back of a truck
Wednesday: Rest day in Tengchong
Thursday: Another wet day with afternoon ride out to Heshun + around town 30km
Friday: Day ride to Sea of Heat - around 30km
Saturday: Tengchong to Yun Feng Mountain area 56km and 700m climbed
Sunday: Yun Feng Mountain walk
Sunday: Back to Tengchong, 73km and
820m climbed
Monday: Day in tengchong and night sleeper to Dali
Tuesday: A very chilled out day in Dali
Wednesday: more of the same - except the internet addiction
I'll give a brief(ish!) description of what we have been up to and leave the photos to tell much of the story.
On leaving Baoshan we visited a takeaway bar containing chicken burgers we spotted on the first day there. Our first western food for a long time and it went down well. As we were mid way through the second one, we were surprised by another western encounter - two tourists! Seeing us stuffing our face they didn't approach us but went to have a wholesome bowl of noodles instead. Although surprised to finally see some tourists we couldn't break away from our burgers to say hello.
After stuffing ourselves the day progressed slowly and i could feel the burgers swimming around my stomach. We avoided the highway leaving Baoshan but this meant we stayed on the minor road, twisting and turning and heading uphill whilst the highway taunted us with its straight line, hill blasting route which we kept approaching then diving away dfrom. Eventually we
Our longest descent coming up, 40km...
... until the police turfed us off the road 500m further on! came level with the highway and crossed a building site to gain access. Almost immediately we entered a tunnel and were thanking our lucky stars to have avoided an uphill! No sooner had we left the tunnel that we were delighted again - a road signing indicating 40km of descent! We smiled and rolled on, only to be stopped by the police before we had even reached the sign.. Although we pretended not to understand them they persisted in telling us we needed to leave the highway, and eventually flagged down a passing truck to get enough people together to lift our bikes over an 8ft fence. We continued expecting ups and downs along the old road, but the gods were smiling on us and the old road actually took a quicker route to the valley bottom: in 12k's of serious descent.
Unfortunately the day was not all down and we started a long uphill after that - one that seemed not to end till we found a suitable campsite at 7.30 after the road turned to cobblestones. We would have willingly stopped an hour and a half earlier except for lack of concealed campsites and wanting to get
A huge petrol station
completely empty - the next in we saw had a queue at least 20 trucks long - and the service speed suggested this would take well over an hour to a decent elevation to reduce the nightmare that would be the following day.
Perched on the side of the mountain we felt quite isolated, and when i turned on my mobile received our first news of the earthquake via txt from Greer. Although we hadn't seen or heard anything (despite spending an hour drinking tea at a police checkpoint after the quake whilst the officers photocopied, scanned, faxed, emailed and seemed to try to carbon date our passports) of the earthquake we were slightly concerned that being on the side of a wet hill wasn't the best place to be but there was not much of an alternative. The night passed well and we didn't even hear a single truck - this was an ill often used road.
Rain greeted us in the morning and as i lay in bed awake but not wanting to get out of bed i amused myself by collecting water - getting half a mug full off a small part of the tent. The the rain stopped and we took the opportunity to pack up. The dry window lasted an hour and 20 mins, and we packed up in a record hour
Part 2 of the descent we actually got
This photo was taken a minute before the earthquake which rocked neigbouring Sichuan - we didn't notice a this and 30 mins! The road continued on upwards, for an unknown distance to an unknown elevation, our maps not providing close enough detail. We had previously expected a couple of small towns where we would be able to buy some food, but now on the road which was cobbles and dirt, we realised these were little more than 2-3 houses at a time. We had had one snickers bar for breakfast, and had one more to last till we found somewhere for food. We were also low on water, a problem when going uphill, even when in the mist/cloud (it had stopped raining again), as we were still sweating plenty. Fortunately one of the settlements had a water tank out front which we refilled at and then had our 2nd and last snickers bar at 2100m, as the thirst it would create could now be quenched. Eventually we reached the top at 2350m - over 1000m of climbing from our campsite, after about 20km of uphill taking over 5 hours. Not great progress but we knew we had a long downhill ahead of us! 1000 vertical meters but the dirt road kept our speed down. Reaching the valley we found
Mountainside campsite
Very cramped - but fortunately matt doesn't snore. The edge dropped away very quickly a bigger settlement, had a very late lunch, returned to our bikes, were forced to go uphill, reached a bigger town where we were able to arrange a lift to Tengchong - our intended destination but still 30km away over another high mountain ridge which was not going to happen by bike!
The following day in tengchong we struggled to find the motivation to see any sights, as rain and cloud engulfed the town. On our night arrival the previous evening many sights had been lit up so it looked like there would be plenty to see. Instead we got abreast of earthquake news.
Wednesday saw more rain and cloud (turns out this persisted throughout our time near tengchong, and from talking to other travellers since seems to have covered the whole of Yunnan - probably a hangover from the cyclone in Burma) and similar lack of motivation for tourism. Eventually after a long lunch we headed to Heshun - 'a traditional style village' - for our first dose of tourism. Here we met with China's tourist pricing system: 80Y each for a wander around the village - although not a huge amount of money (12AUD, 6pounds -
Mountainside campsite
The view the following morning - still surrounded by cloud yes AUD is very strong aginst the pound at the moment), this is what we were used to paying for a hotel room so it seemed steep in comparison to other things. The village has been heavily renovated, with some work that was still ongoing, and at times felt a bit manufactured, but it was nice to see how the houses used to be. So much has been bulldozed in the towns recently to make way for tower blocks, and in the countryside the old building type - with mud bricks - a refection of poorer communities, is not as pretty. Our late departure for the day did not restrict the time we wanted to spend in the village and on the way back we did a circuit around Tengchong to see the main sights - again heavily renovated.
The following day we set off with more vigour (mainly because it was further away thus requiring an earlier start) to the 'sea of heat' an area of hot springs. When we got there we found more steep admission prices, 168Y to go in hot baths, but there wasn't much else to do so we decided to go for it.
More misleading packaging
Colour and flavour were definitely lacking from this pack Unfortunately they also wanted 40Y to enter the area, and 30Y to buy regulation swimming costumes - our boardies were not permitted. This caused problems as we did not have that much cash (short by 40Y) , i produced my Australian cashcard but this was useless. However they were more impressed when i got out a Mastercard. Not sure what a Chinese Mastercard looks like but the excitement of an Aussie card (remarkably similar to a UK one) had the 5 staff behind the counter highly excited - a whole stream of Chinese followed, punctuated by a perfectly pronounced 'Mastercard' in English - Now that was 'priceless'! However the card didn't work and it looked increasingly likely that we were going to be turned away. But then Matt had a flash of inspiration and dropped his shorts to reveal his lycra cycling shorts. Despite the shock, these quickly met with approval and we were able to hand over almost all of out cash for the tickets.
The hot springs were nice but after seeing a few we wondered to what degree they had been left in their natural condition - the one in the shape of a heart, with
Going up..
..and resting often - fortunately there were frequent concrete blocks to stop trucks going off the edge and they made great resting points light pink surface tipped the balance! We then encountered some other baths which you could bathe in for 60Y - we were well tempted to call the prominently displayed complaints hot line - it would have been much easier if we had been told about this one!
In the evening we set out to find a restaurant described in the guide books, as once again we were after some western food. I haven't mentioned the maps in our books yet, but they have been almost useless for navigating this town - road names in english are very little use as signposts were few and the locals knew the roads only by chinese script. There was also much discussion about the name of roads when we asked groups of people.. Also the road layout was very misleading so we had really struggled to navigate the town. But eventually we found the place and tucked into pizzas, burgers and curry (yes all in one meal). And who should we see passing - the 2 western tourists we saw in Baoshan! Needless to say they didn't stop to talk to us - they must have thought we were tourists who avoided chinese
food and chinese experiences where ever possible!
After a few days around Tengchong it was time to go further afield - this time North to volcanoes and mountain monasteries. Thursday saw us cycle along a wide plain peppered with Volcanoes and enclosed by some big mountain ridges. We took a side trip off to a lake noted on our tourist map obtained in Tengchong. The path to this sight caused us some concern - after following the biggest road from the turnoff we were told to go back and it turned out to be the track in the worst condition that was the right one. We should have smelled a rat then - no tourist bus would ever come down here, and 500m later we were presented a rubbish filled lake as the tourist sight! From our map it looked like the path was some 10km long, but the photo bore striking resemblance (minus the rubbish). Somewhat disappointed (but at least there hadn't been an entrance fee!) we returned to the main road and got to the area we intended to stay earlier than expected. We had planned to camp but no spots were obvious so we approached a
A new friend
I missed this frog by less than a tire width, and prompt skidded to a halt to go back and observe. It didn't move so we got some photos and then thought maybe it was dead. Some light propping releaved it was alive, but not keen to move out of the paths of an future (infrequent) vehicles temple hoping to find some flat ground at the top of the hill it was on. It occupied the whole top and was being renovated - we had a wander round and then Matt asked if we could stay. The response was so casual that i thought they had not understood us. But the same response came again and they even waved us towards rooms. We opted to pitch our tents for mossie protection, but inners only as we got a shelter from the temple buildings.
Many of the guys working there lived there too - we figured they were from out of town - so Matt popped to the shop and bought all 4 beers they had. He had to come back to get change off me as the shop keeper didn't have change for 100Y note - infact Matt reckoned he had never seen a 100Y note, and maybe this explained the super cheap beers. We used the beers as an icebreaker and they offered us dinner + the usual cigarettes. Their kindness to a couple of tourist was amazing and the following day we returned and were welcomed again. This time we ate with them -
First decent settlement
with most welcome restaurant for lunch (it was 5pm). The bike had picked up some mud on the wet, dirt road decent basic but tasty boiled spinach + rice, manged to converse with them through a mobile phone which chinese script /english text could be drawn on, and sampled some strange alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks.
During the day we had climbed Yungfen Shan - a mountain with Taoist monastery at the top. Climbing up through the cloud to be eventually rewarded with great clear(ish) views and an amazing isolated atmosphere around and within the monastery. This was one of the special moments of the trip so far and i could almost imagine Monks walking around 'at one' with the mountain airs - a taster for Tibet which still looks like will be off limits to us.
The following day we headed back to Tengchong and saw a whole host of sights - volcanoes, deep gorge with odd rock formations, huge tobacco fields. The least publicised we found the best - the photos describe them best.
Then we had another day in tengchong - the weather still not inspiring us to check out the last sights, but we had to find out about the bus to Dali. This proved to be a painless process as a english speaking chinese
guys helped us - he had worked in Australia for 5 years 20 years ago and was really pleased to meet another Aussie. We opted for a sleeper bus and were told that it was 'mostly' non-smoking..
The sleeper bus was a experience that really deserves a whole blog post to itself! No room for our bikes in the undercarriage due to a huge load of mushrooms we got up on to the roof to secure our bikes. Then inside, stacked two high and three across we were subjected to music blaring from various mobile phones around the bus. Needless to say the smokers didn't take long to light up. Add in a very bumpy road surface no one was sleeping. After a few hours we made it to a decent highway and the smooth road helped us sleep. We arrived in Dali new town at 2am but fortunately were was able to stay on board till dawn and we dot some reasonable sleep. From there we cycled to Dali old town, where we have spent a very lazy couple of days. Our first priority was to find a guesthouse/hotel where we could leave our bikes safely (Our girlfriends,
Greer and Lucie, are coming our to join us for a couple of weeks 😊 We won't be riding our bikes, so they are going into hibernation). This amused some of the hoteliers - wanting to see where we could house our bikes ahead of ourselves, but we have found a great spot. As we will be returning here later, sightseeing was not pressing but we wandered the old city - a well restored town which is hugely popular with tourists. We relaxed in cafes, restaurants and our guesthouse and met another cyclist - our first for weeks. Yann, a french guy had started his trip in Singapore after meeting various other cyclists and deciding it was the best way to travel. When he bought his bike the longest ride he had done as 30km, and he now does 100km days..
We are now in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan where the girls are arriving today/tomorrow. Matt and I will part ways for a couple of weeks as we have different itineraries planned. With Greer, I are going to do a well travelled loop in Yunnan, with excursions taking us to around 4000m altitude. She leaves before Lucie and
Rather worn front disc brakes
No wonder they were squeaking a bit! Having already used my spare set a couple of weeks ago for the rear brakes, I am hoping Greer has managed to get some replacements - haven't seen a single bike with disc brakes in the chinese shops.. then I will probably head to Beijing before meeting Matt in Dali to continue North towards Lijang, Shangri-la and then 5000m of elevation either in Tibet to Sichuan.
Chris
blogsite: www.mytb.org/chrish
china mobile: (+86) 15969191370
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Tash
non-member comment
what is china doing to you matt! not only are those shorts disgusting....i hope to never see them again just like your european bathers, but also they are girls thongs strappped onto your bob...i think they belong to lucie!!!!