China: An Epic. Part 2

Food varies quite a lot across China. For the first month or so we ate very plain food, eggs with tomatoes, cabbage and beans with rice, or else plain noodles. I'm not sure if that's because that's all there was or because that's all we knew how to ask for!

Sichuan cooking is what the Chinese call "Chinese food". The strangest flavour we've come across is the Sichuan pepper which has a bitter taste and a numbing effect - it makes you feel like you've been to the dentist. The first time we had it was in the otherwise very plain noodles in the south. There it was all ground up and mixed in so we couldn't avoid it. It gave me pins and needles in my lips and made me dribble everywhere. Once we got to the Sichuan province and especially in Chengdu, it was in everything but it was whole so we could pick out the pepper corns. It is supposed to offset the fieriness of the piles of chillies they cook with, especially in the Sichuan hot pot which is famously lava-like.

Sichuan hot-pot

Spicy stuff!

Noodles are much tastier in Muslim areas. Lamyen is a dish of hand pulled noodles with meat, onion and peppers and is very delicious and perfect cycling food. Listening to a restaurant full of people slurping them up can be off putting. I actually made a recording on my ipod once, it was like an orchestral performance.

Making the noodles

Noodle stew!

Lamyen

Making bowzers

Yum!

Hot pot noodles

Line them up!

Knife cut noodles, really tricky to eat

Dishes in China don't tent to have more than two ingredients which means if you want a selection of food you have to order three dishes, one meat, one tofu, one veg for example. We found we were getting full to bursting eating three dishes at a time so we bought ourselves a tupperware box to fill with rice and leftovers. It's perfect, we get two meals out of every one.

Mystery meat

Food waste in China is incredible. People in a restaurant often order far more food than they can eat to show how wealthy they are. It is common to see dishes which are completely untouched cleared from the table and chucked straight in the bin. One evening we stayed in a hotel where we were the only guests not part of a wedding party. The car park was full of tables absolutely laden with food but there were only enough guests for a third of the places. At the end of the party we watched the hotel staff chucking the untouched food into massive bins. We were invited to share some of the left overs (and bijou, the very strong Chinese rice spirit) with the hotel staff. It's funny eating with people, when they're finished they just all up and leave without warning, we're done, bye!

We saw a report on TV about a man who is trying to start a "Clear you plate" campaign encouraging people to take doggie bags from restaurants and particularly targeting Government conferences where huge quantities of foods are wasted (the report showed three wheelie bins full from just one dinner party). So we are trailblazing the "Clear your plate" campaign with out tupperware!

He loves mashing potatoes!

Happy food sellers in the market, making meat sandwiches

Meat in the market

Sweets and grains

At the other end, toilets in China are really something, the worst I've ever seen. A typical public toilet is a tiled trough with low dividers between you and the person in front, no doors and definitely not any loo roll. They get flushed once a week. It can be tricky using these as you don't want to touch anything or anything to touch you so you're holding your nose, holding up your trouser bottoms and swatting frantically at the poo flies all at once. And they're the nice ones.

No peeking!

When we're riding and can't find a suitable spot out of doors we have to resort to using petrol station loos. These are concrete bunkers with holes cut in the floor. Depending on when the last poo collection was the poo mountain might reach the hole and if it's really bad there might even be poo maggots to poo on. It is all quite traumatic. The worst experience I had was when a dog wandered underneath and I got a shock and peed on it. In the countryside the waste just all flows out into the rice paddies to make poo rice.

Some of the nicer petrol station toilets

China: An Epic. Part 1

It has been a really long time since I posted a blog and I blame China! Apart from The Great Fire Wall which blocks this website among many others, I didn't really feel like writing about China while I was still in China. We were there for four months, a full month longer than we had anticipated. It hasn't been an entirely relaxing time to say the least and the next person who tells me I am on a three year long holiday will get an ear-full of cycling in China stresses. You're about to get one right now. So, here is the Chinese epic blog in three parts!

Having been in China before on this trip did nothing to soften the shocks which come as soon as you roll over the border line. Our holiday within our "life style choice (!)" of Thailand and Laos was over and we were back to big cycling days in big hills with visa time constraints snapping at our heels and cold winds heralding the subzero temperatures of a Chinese winter just around the corner. China is an incredibly loud place, everything is at full volume. People don't talk, they shout, the don't eat, they slurp and burp, they don't blow their noses, they haaaaaaaaark it all up and spit it all out all over the place. Quite often Julian and I would eat in silence because the restaurants are so deafening it's not worth trying to make yourself heard. If you're near someone who's on the phone and you're not expecting it you might poo yourself. And the horns, oh the horns. As Troy Cobb once said, each time someone blasts you from behind it shortens your life by five minutes.

I found dealing with the traffic to be the biggest challenge in China and I admit I have developed some quite serious road rage (and pedestrian rage). The driving is the worst I have ever seen, worse even than India and Indonesia. People can't seem to see past their own noses. More than once I watched two cars turning into a road at the same time, going very slowly but neither giving an inch until they're actually bumper to bumper and totally stuck. We watched one car almost take it's wing mirrors off trying to squeeze between two huge stone bollards put there to stop the cars. People would gladly risk our lives to get to the red traffic light three seconds sooner. It beggared belief. I swore at many people but they all just smiled and waved back which was most infuriating. In the cities the electric scooters zip past like silent stealth loonies, close enough for you to reach out and hit them if you wanted, which I did.

In our first two weeks, according to www.bikeroutetoaster.com, we climbed 28,000 metres. That's about Everest three times and an average of 2,500m a day. Hardcore! Still, the roads weren't too steep and we made good time.

As we rode towards Kunming, a big city in the South, we saw the biggest annual human migration in the world: 200 million Chinese people rushing home to be with their families for Chinese New Year. For many people it is the only time they see their families each year and they cram all their gifts onto scooters and ride for days to get home. We watched a news report about a group of cyclists riding back for their holidays. Six out of ten made it without incident and everyone considered that to be a good result. We made it to Kunming for our New Year celebrations, only slightly hampered by a storm, landslide and some really atrocious Chinese roads. 

In Kunming we stayed in our first backpacker hostel in ages. Some foreign English teachers had joined the mass migration for their holidays and come south for balmier temperatues. Ben, Daniel and Balin had come down from up north where it was -25 degrees. They were very pale and wore their down jackets despite the sunshine. We hadn't got ours out yet. Another cyclist arrived, Neil from England on a world tour in aid of Oxfam. He's raised quite a lot already, mostly from generous Sheiks he met in Central Asia. His blog is on facebook under the name of "I were right about that saddle though". We spent most of our nights in a great little bar called Moon Dog, run by two Germans, one of whom had cycled there and never left. They were both married to very understanding Chinese ladies who didn't mind that they didn't get home until six am each morning.

It started getting chilly on our way up to Chengdu. We climbed up into snow topped hills through freezing headwinds. At one point I was climbing in my thermals, cycling top, fleece, shawl and raincoat and I was still frozen. At the top of the highest climb we were enveloped in a thick cloud which reduced visibility to a few feet - we could just make out the snow and had just enough time to dive out of the way of the trucks as they came looming though the fog. Very unfairly, just as we'd congratulated ourselves on reaching the top, it started raining. We had all our rain gear on but our thick gloves and shoes were soaked immediately and our hands and feet went numb. The road was all shitty and broken up and it's probably the least fun I've had on a 25km descent. Thankfully we came to a tiny village before our strength (and the road) crumbled entirely and we found ourselves a freezing room and watched our breath rising as we tried to sleep.

A couple of days later we rolled into balmy Chengdu and didn't roll out again for a whole month. Jules had been concerned with his pooing situation (there was blood in it) since we arrived in China. We had been to various hospitals where he'd had various tests and been given various anti-biotics. Chinese hospitals are generally hectic, crowded with the standard unbearably squalid toilets but with "Lawai" (foreign devil) preferential treatment blood, stool and urine tests can take as little as ten minutes including the results. However one might wish they would take a little more time over them when the doctor diagnosis a sinus problem from bloody stools.

It was time to go to a Travel Clinic - a very expensive one but with foreign doctors. While we waited a bit longer than ten minutes for test results we holed up in the wonderful "Simm's Cozy Garden Hostel". This enormous hostel has the friendliest staff who actually wanted to be friends with us, the biggest collection for bootlegged DVDs (about 2000 and a DVD player in each room to watch them on), a nice garden, cheap bar and weekend regulars in the form of English teachers Denise and Cat who took us out and showed us a good time.

Piglet in the supermarket

Drying spinach or something

Life... Don't talk to me about life

Chengdu is a nice city and not too big by Chinese standards, only about 15 million people and growing. There was a literary festival on at a bookshop/bar called The Bookworm. We went to see Lionel Shriver talk which was interesting, although I think I was the only person who'd read any of her books, including the compare. That same evening in the bar part of the venue we watched a jazz band. As I looked at the singer it dawned on me that I knew him! He was a regular at the Lion and Lobster pub where I worked in Brighton! He wasn't really sure who I was at first but I blame that on the fact that he was always drunk whenever I served him.

Gil Goldman gets his ears cleaned at The People's Park

Tea tasting

The cool way to pour tea

Sugar art

Dericious!

Everyone gets a lolly

Mao keeping an eye on everyone

Rah!

After a couple of weeks and a rather scary diagnosis for Julian of Crohn's disease we decided that even the foreign doctors weren't quite up to solving the mystery of Julian's poos so we hopped on a plane to Hong Kong to see some REALLY fancy doctors. We stayed with Phil Sams, (a man most capable of guesting on and hosting his own chat show), the Yorkshire born Couch Surfer who hosted us on our last visit to Hong Kong when I was still rehabilitating from my broken ellie-bow. He was a great host and we had fun cooking together and watching old movies. He even took us to school with him to "help" in a couple of lessons.

Julian had done some research and found a doctor who was both a gastrologyst and specialised in tropical medicine. His practice was in the really fancy part of town. While we waited for the appointment we wandered around what must be the most beautiful shopping plaza in the world. It really was beautiful. When I went to the loo I recognised the hingeless toilet doors and realised the building had been designed by Thomas Heatherwick, the British man who designed the Olympic torch among other things. We had seen photos of the hingeless toilet doors in an exhibition at the V & A.

Bendy doors

The nicest shopping mall in the world

After a week or so the very posh doctor told Jules the diagnosis of Crohn's disease was rediculous and to be sure to see good doctors next time. He gave Jules yet another course of really hard core anti-biotics and sent us on our way that'll be 800 pounds thank you very much. We said goodbye to Phil again and as a parting gift I hid easter eggs all over his flat. He didn't really get into the spirit of the hunt and I don't think he's found them all yet. He wrote to us to say he'd found the one I put in his shoe but only after he'd put it on and walked to the bus stop.

Phil and Julian at the bus stop

Back in Chengdu with brand new three month visas and a whole month further behind the winter (would we ever wear our down jackets again?) we got ready to depart. We couldn't leave without visiting the pandas however. I wuv them. I'd bought myself a snazzy new camera to replace my little one which had given up the ghost for the third time, and I made good use of it. I took 300 photos of pandas. Here are just a few:

Red panda on the run!

Sneaky panda

Nimble eater

Wrestling youngsters

Fat daddy panda

Chillin' wid me homies

We were joined by Mark for the first day on the road again. Mark is an English English teacher in Hong Kong. Highlights of our day together were pigs ears, Shiting River Bridge and sharing a room with a glass walled bathroom. Our legs were a little stiff that day but it felt very good to be on our way once more...

Pig's ears, my favourite

Shiting River Bridge!

HORN to be wild!

So after Christmas comes New Years Eve. We hadn't managed to stay up until midnight for the past two years so I was determined to make it this time. We were in a nice little town on a lake called Payao. In the evening families brought their picnic blankets, food and bottles of Hong Tong whiskey to the lake side and drank and ate and ate and drank. People set off fire works and sky lanterns over the water and it was very pretty. We drank beer by the lake, ate a delicious dinner, ordered what turned out to be an alcoholic slush puppy and stayed up until ten past twelve! Rocking. In the morning we saw some men still drinking Hong Tong with their breakfast noodles. There were lots of people asleep under their picnic blankets, empty bottles strewn all around but no one seemed to mind. We started our new year with a huge new year pizza!

The perfect evening

New Years Eve fish

Full!

Thai version of a Singapore Sling

New Years Day pizza!

Then we had some very sad news. Julian's Uncle Mac passed away unexpectedly on the 2nd. Julian wanted to be home with his family and it was very tough to be so far away. He decided not to fly home in the end but we managed to find wifi each night to call his mother, aunt and cousin.

We've had some varied camping experiences in the last few weeks. The first time we took the tent out of hibernation was just before we crossed into Laos. Having only done half a day out of Lampang (there was some back and forth and a momentary bottom bracket panic) we asked if there was anywhere to camp down by the big reservoir. We followed a Mr. Chan who led us to the house of a Mr. Theo, a retired Swedish chef, who invited us to pitch up on his veranda right on the water. Mr.Chan took us for a ride in his boat, pointing out famous climbing spots, monkey ladders and the party boats. Party boats? Yes, party and karaoke boats! Big groups of Thais arrive at 10am armed with beer, whiskey and some fish, go out on the water, get drunk and sing and sing and sing until 5pm. Then they all pile back into their trucks and crash immediately. The tiny village which is sustained by these party boats has its own rescue vehicle to pull out the cars which don't make it round a particularly sharp bend and end up in the forest.

Mr. Chan's wife made us breakfast of fish laap, fish soup, fried fish and rice. Mr. Theo's wife made us breakfast of rice porridge so by the time we rolled out we were very full. Camping is fun!

Fishy breakfast

Theo and Julian at breakfast on the resevior

Morning view

The next camp spot was in Hong Sa, just over the border into Laos. We'd spent a day or two on what must be the best road in Laos, a huge, wide, brand new road built specially for the thousands of trucks coming and going across the border working on the construction of a huge lignite power plant. Lignite is the lowest and dirtiest form of coal. The power plant is Thai owned, Chinese built on Laos soil using Laos resources. All the wood from the huge and ancient tropical trees which have been cut down is going into Thailand. There are 6000 Chinese workers and 2000 Laos villagers have been relocated, most of them to the once peaceful and sleepy town of Hong Sa which is now smothered in dust from all the trucks thundering through it.

Up the 10% hills on the best road in Laos

Down again to the new lignite power plant

Old and new

We camped in the garden of Jumbo Guesthouse, owned and run by Monica, a very nice jam making German lady. She and her friend Boris, another German who was straight out of The Great Escape (khaki shirt and trousers, pocket knives on his belt, a big jeep and boy scout tricks like making a joint roller from a piece of bamboo saying "This is how my Grandfather did it in the Second World War!") entertained us with stories while the beer and a spirit they'd dubbed "Enlightenment" flowed freely. We also had fun with the cats. They took a liking to the tent and Julian found one curled up on top of it under the fly sheet. The other one shredded Julian's bit of foam he's been carrying for a seat.

There we met Pierre and Annette, a very nice Swiss French couple who invited us to stay with them in Luang Phrabang. 

Sadly we couldn't stretch the budget to an all day elephant ride but I did finally get to feed one a banana. As we left Monica gave us a jar of her precious home made mango jam and waved us off. She wanted to hear me honk my horn and was very disappointed when I said I haven't actually got one. She said, "But you're horn to be wild!"

Long and winding roads

After the new smooth and graded road ended, we were back on the type of Laos roads we know and love. They were possibly steeper than I remembered. It was the first time I'd seen signs for a 15% grade anyway. It was very slow going and in fact my cycle computer doesn't think that anything slower than 3.6kmph counts as actually moving and so didn't even register those hardest won kilometres which probably cost me the last remnants of my youth. 

The roads were quiet and the only people around were in the tiny villages we went through. With the aide of the Point It we would ask whoever looked like the chief of the village if we could camp there. The first time we asked the owner of the shop who pointed out his house and said we could stay in there. It was bare except for a table and some empty Beer Lao bottles so we just pitched the tent inside while the village children giggled and tumbled around under the table.

In the evening the kids sat on the floor of the shop to watch the huge satellite TV (the only place with a generator). A film was on showing an English family living in a mansion and driving around in their Rolls Royce. I wonder if that's how the kids think all English people live. The men of the village were holding a meeting in the room where we'd pitched the tent but I climbed in anyway. In the morning I saw all the men filing out of one room and all the ladies out of another. It seems the men and women sleep separately in that village.

Serious sandwich at the beginning of the day..

And Beer Lao at the end of the day!

On the last stretch to Luang Phrabang, we crossed the Mekong on a vehicle ferry, getting wet feet, scrambled up the obscenely steep dirt track on the other side and slipped and slid through the wet cement and gravel of the almost paved road. Then we turned away from this main highway, we knew it would only get worse with more road works and terrible dust. We took an alternative road along the Mekong which absolutely no one had heard of except some friends of Pierre and Annette's, not even Boris. We were feeling all adventurous when five km down the road we met a cyclist! We couldn't believe it. He had come all the way from Luang Phrabang that day and was very glad he was almost at a guesthouse. He told us the road was fine except for a stream or two with no bridge.

The road was a perfect dirt road, hard, not too rocky and not even hilly - except for the almost precipitous drops to the streams (there were more like ten of them) and vertical rises out of them. We had to take our shoes off a few times to wade across and push the bikes up the other side.

That evening we asked in a really tiny village if we could camp. After some confusion and discussions among the older men we were pointed to a perfect spot at the "Incomplete Primary School". It was quiet, sheltered and off the road. We'd carried sticky rice and fish and bread for peanut butter, banana and mango jam sandwiches (they are so good!) and I was so looking forward to a very early night. It was not to be. We'd just got the tent out when a little lady with a really little baby came up and said "You stay at my house tonight." It wasn't a question. We tried to protest and explain we were very happy camping but she just frowned and said "You come now." We had no choice! We packed up and she led us down to her shop. The rest of the village came too. There we all were, us, the bikes, thirty men, women and children, sitting in the dark. Actually it was quite cosy by the light of tiny paraffin lamps but as a special treat the men got the generater going and turned on the one light bulb. It took them an hour or so. The ladies cooked us some eggs and we drank some strange tasting tea. By nine pm the shop was still full of people and no one seemed to be showing signs of leaving, so I climbed into my sleeping bag anyway. The men were working on something electrical on the floor and I'd just dropped off when they got it working. It was a karaoke machine. A very loud one. I couldn't believe it, right by my head! Did they think we wanted to sing? I was asleep! They didn't ask us anyway, the old men just kept belting out songs to the terrible computer sound effects music for hours - until just about the time the roosters started roostering. That's what it seemed like anyway. I was quite grumpy in the morning.

Anyway it was just another 30km of dirt road and streams and then a fun 20km of good flatish road into Luang Phrabang. We phoned Annette and Pierre who cycled to meet us, bought us a delicious dinner and then installed us into their lovely home on the mighty Mekong. They have fed us, watered us and really looked after us. It has been wonderful. We have stayed four days already! Anyone would think we weren't so keen on heading North towards time constraints, big hills and a Chinese winter. But we are really. Probably.


Pierre and Annette's beautiful veranda on the Mekong

Pierre preparing his rabbit lunch

Annette very kindly sewing patches onto my cycling shorts

Beautiful hanging orchids

By chance we were in Luang Phrabang at the same time as an old school friend of mine Jess Francis and her boyfriend Sam who are also cycling around South East Asia. They're going to Myanmar next which we're jealous about and then to India which I'm less jealous about. It was really nice to see them, we never get to meet up with anyone I know! We had fun in the Luang Phrabang's amazing night market and ate too much, it was great.

Cheese!

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!