Scott and Becky go East

At first we thought it was the sound of an Espresso machine as the steam bubbles through the coffee. Then we realized it was coming from a person. Every few minutes, we would hear the sound again, at such a volume that we could hear it from a distance. It echoed through the corridors of our hotels and the bowels of the subway stations, and was audible through closed doors. In the hotel restaurant, we heard the sound, and it took a moment to realize that it actually was an espresso maker! It isn’t that many people do it, it is just that those that do, do it with such volume and force that is brings up the taste of bile into the back of our throats. It is that nasty Chinese habit of horking[1] and it is one aspect of China that neither of us will miss when we leave this country.

We have a much better appreciation for the draconian anti-spitting laws in Singapore. We are a little surprised that the SARS and now Swine Flu scares haven’t caused similar regulations to be enacted in China to stop this practice. To be fair, unlike our previous visits to China we are seeing more people spitting into garbage and cigarette disposal containers than onto the street, so the public education campaigns which do exist seem to be working. There is hope yet.

Our morning began with the task of finding a Starbucks, although they had an espresso machine at the hotel, their coffee was pretty mediocre. With all our wandering around yesterday, we had yet to see one, but Becky knew they existed. Scott could not believe that they did not have a map on the web, only a listing of addresses, which, when plugged into Google or Yahoo Maps, produced no locations near us. Eventually Scott did find a website for someone who drew a crude map of the Starbucks locations, and with some further research, guided us to what we believe was the nearest one – just around the corner!

Our main task for the day was to purchase a ferry ticket (or at least make a reservation). Our initial thought before arriving in Beijing was that we would find one of the many travel agencies in Beijing catering to tourists, and they could help out. Unfortunately, there were no international travel agencies to found – just a few tour companies offering tours of the city and the Great Wall.

After much frustration, We made contact with Jessica and Terry from Incheon via Couchsurfing, and asked if they could help since the ferry website was only in Korean. Terry sent us a couple of phone numbers for travel agents in Beijing, so we asked the folks at our hotel to call them. The staff at the New Dragon Hostel continued to be helpful, and with their assistance, we confirmed that they did indeed sell tickets for the ferry in question and we were given their address and directions on how to find them.[2]

A Starbucks stop and subway ride later, we found the travel agent only to learn that the only person that could help us was on a lunch break and would not return for 90 minutes. D’oh!

We had also hoped to also visit the Pyongyang Art Studio, a museum, gift shop and travel agency for North Korea, so we hopped back on the subway and walked to the Red River Hotel, only to learn that the museum had moved. A further 30 minutes of walking, and we found the museum, which was small but mildly interesting. We did pick up a set of interesting North Korean propaganda post cards though,

We stopped into a shopping centre for lunch, which turned out to be the Yashow Clothing Market – filled with busloads of German tourists. Becky’s sharp eyes spotted a Spider jacket along with the other ski jackets for sale. She asked how much and was told 400 RMB (about $80 CAD) – note that these jackets (the real ones) go for about $500-750 CAD back home. We were not buying anything – what good is a ski jacket on a bike? As we left the price decreased to $40. Real or not, we were sorely tempted to pick up a few for our friends back home, especially if we could get the price down to $20 each, but alas, carrying jackets on a bike unnecessarily isn’t much fun.

We returned to the travel agent and successfully purchased tickets for the ferry. We opted for the extra $20 per person for the business class cabin. The economy price was 760 RMB ($150 CAD), so the extra $20 each did not seem like much at the time. Business class would guarantee us a cabin with only a couple of other people, rather than a bed in a room with 40+ people. This is another example of where we might have chosen the less expensive option earlier in the trip, but we are too tired to contemplate sharing a room with 40+ strangers from a totally different culture.

To end the day, we enjoyed a traditional Chinese hot pot dinner at a place that had the fancy cone shaped hot pots. Becky first experienced this type of hot pot when she was in Taiwan on a business trip about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, we found the particular restaurant to be expensive and the broth to be rather bland. Oh well, that’s what you get for going to dinner in a tourist area!

[1] hork – (slang, offensive) To snort from the sinuses. (Similar to hocking.) “I felt something plugging up my sinuses, so I horked a big loogie.”

[2] For future reference, the numbers for the “Kook Je Travel Agency” were (010-6512-0507) and (010-6515-8010). The agency itself was located just south of the Jianguomen metro station. If we recall correctly, the instructions to reach it are: Leave the metro station through exit 2, take the pedestrian underpass south under Jianguomen road, then keep walking south for another 100 meters. The agency is on the first floor of building no. 28, a highrise set back behind a large hedge, just north of one hotel, and south of another.

54 km, 4 hours

For our first full day in Beijing, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and the bike lanes and head out for a bike ride. The Lonely Planet mentioned a nice ride out to the Summer Palace along a canal path. We thought we would give that a try. Every time we found the nice canal side road, about 200 meters later, it intersected with a major road (4+ lanes). This posed a problem because there were no tunnels, bridges, or overpasses. There was no way to cross the crazy intersections, rather you had to follow the road for a bit until you could find a place to cross it and then backtrack. It took us 27 km of riding to find our way out to the Summer Palace, which the Lonely Planet says is a nice 15 km ride! We aren’t sure if we did something totally wrong, but our best guess is that the Lonely Planet author has never actually ridden or even attempted the canal route on a bike, and indulged in some poetic license.

Once we found the Summer Palace, we followed the outside wall for awhile, and then decided to go seek out the funky Olympic buildings. When we did make it to the Olympic Park, we were very sad. At all the Olympic Park entrances there were security gates, with big signs saying “No Bicycles!” It was such a large open space, that would have been a pain to walk around in – the buildings are all so far apart. Alas! Instead, we chose to ride around the security guarded enclosure so as to not need to lock up our bikes.

We did see the “Bird’s Nest” a.k.a. National Stadium from a distance as well as the strange outer cladding of the “Water Cube”.

The Olympics definitely have had a few nice influences on the city of Beijing. All the major street signs now have both Chinese characters and Pinyin names, as well as cardinal markings (North, South, etc.) on them, so it is much easier to get around. Also, the city has well signed, clean, free toilets almost at every corner (you only pay if you need to buy toilet paper). Finally, most of the restaurants have picture menus (at least in the tourist areas). They certainly have made Beijing much easier and more pleasant to visit.

After 4 hours and much fun riding, we were happy to get back to the hotel and shower. Over the last few days Becky has been experiencing some stomach issues (yet again) and they were getting worse. Adding to the complications, Scott had gotten something in his eye while riding, and it had not cleared up. After an inspection by Becky and a call to our insurance company, we booked an appointment for Scott to see an eye specialist at the “Hong Kong Clinic”. At first, we planned to just pay for it ourselves, but they wanted over 1000 RMB ($200CAD) for a consultation, so we decided to use our insurance. The Hong Kong Clinic is in the Swisshotel, one of many 5-star hotels here, so we’re sure there are cheaper options. We decided to use them anyway, since finding another eye specialist at 7 pm appeared difficult, and we were hoping to go to the Great Wall the next day.

The specialist checked the inside of Scott’s eyes with a standard slit lamp, and diagnosed conjunctivitis (inflammation of the white of the eye). Some antibacterial eye drops and low-dose steroid drops, and we were on our way. Scott’s eye didn’t look nearly as bad as other conjunctivitis cases we’ve seen, so we wondered about the diagnosis, but figured better safe than sorry.

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We arrived in Beijing expecting utter chaos but found the train station to be relatively calm. After searching and walking in a few circles, we eventually found the luggage consignment department and were able to claim our bikes. We reflected upon how in China we handed over our bikes confident that they and our gear would arrive safely, not worrying about theft for damage, and in the USA we did not even consider sending the bikes via Amtrak because they did not insure them! What a contrast after a year and so much travel. In some ways, we wonder if the lack of familiarity with the country allows us to have more faith in its mechanisms.

At first riding posed a challenge, as the road just outside the train station was big with eight lanes of traffic and no bicycles. We wondered if bikes were not permitted on this road? Becky spotted a bike lane sign on a cross street, so we made our way to it. Once we found the street with the bike lane, riding to the area of our hotel was much easier.

At one point we pulled up to the entrance to the Forbidden city and Tiananmen square. Becky knew where she was, recognizing it from her previous trip to Beijing eight years ago. Scott did not believe her at first, as the GPS had us on a different street – he did eventually realize that she was correct and that the GPS was showing that blasted 500m+ “security offset” such that the map and our current position do not line up! (To his credit, after that he navigated us right to the first hotel on our short list, notwithstanding Becky’s concerns that we were going the wrong way as she checked the map).

We rode around the streets finding the Hutong that had our short list of hotels on it. The first hotel no longer existed. The second one was much too expensive for what you got (200 RMB – $40 for a hostel room without an ensuite bath). We found a nice place at the New Dragon Hostel just down the street from the Saga Hostel (the expensive one). For 180 RMB (about $30) we got a nice clean room with ensuite, hot water, and air conditioning. Trip advisor reports that the hotel staff were rude, but we did not find this at all. The hotel staff were amazingly pleasant and helpful – especially given the large number of excessively rude tourists that we encountered there!

We noticed that Beijing is very dry compared to southern China and Thailand. We felt the need to gulp down water in order to keep our throats moist – this is likely caused by a combination of the dryness and the pollution. The pollution is visible, but does not seem to be having an adverse effect on either of us (to Becky’s great surprise, she is not experiencing any breathing issues here).

We went for a walk out to the park, which has a large hill made with the dirt from the moat around the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, it was rather dusty/smoggy and there was a storm in the sky blocking the sun – so the sunset was rather unspectacular. It was interesting to look over the rooftops of the Forbidden City though. As we were leaving the park we saw a bunch of people playing a game similar to hacky sack, except the “sack” looks more like a badminton birdie, with feathers attached to a weighted sack. What was especially amusing is that the people playing this game were all older people – age range 50 to 70 at a guess.

Another observation about Beijing is the distinctly longer days. The sun was up by 4:45 am and it did not set until 7:30 pm. After being in the 12-hour day tropics, the longer days and slightly cooler temperatures (it is still getting up to the mid 30s) feels much more familiar to us. Becky is especially enjoying the occasional cool breezes. Scott was surprised when he went out with long pants and a t-shirt and actually felt cold for a moment or two. We guessed that the temperature was 20 C at that point!

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We paid the extra to ensure we had two bottom bunks in a soft sleeper (1st class, 4 person cabin) on the train from Kunming to Beijing. With any luck this would mean we had a private cabin for the journey, as the upper bunks in soft sleeper class are usually the last to sell – they are expensive and you are guaranteed to not have a private cabin since the bottom bunks sell first, most people would just buy hard sleeper (2nd class). If we were earlier into our trip would have welcomed the adventure of hard sleeper class, but we are mentally tired and the lack of privacy in hard sleeper class would have been even more tiring.

Our cabin is comfortable but the first night Becky felt like she had entered into her own personal hell. The toilets on the train were gross within the first hour and we still had 37 hours to go. As seems to be a problem with public toilets throughout China there is a lack of water, so it is difficult to flush things clean. Moving through the narrow hallway has been a challenge at times, and some people are incredibly rude – you step aside to let someone who is coming the other way through and the people behind you just barge through. Adding to this, the scent of cigarette smoke often pervaded through the hallways and seeped into our cabin. Becky’s worst nightmare for this journey would be the need to share the cabin with Chinese smokers, who don’t seem to understand the offensiveness of second hand smoke.

Fortunately, a night’s sleep seemed to relieve Becky of her feelings of being in hell and things began to look up. We awoke to a dreary rainy day, but the scenery was amazing. Rocks and mountains were jutting out of the landscape with valleys filled with terraced fields. There did not appear to be roads into most of the fields, so we would not have seen this area if we travelled any other way. At one point, Becky saw a valley that looked like it was right out of a model railway – with a small village, surrounded by terraced fields and stony mountains, and railway tunnels opening up to show a train running through on a track about 500m away. It was all very surreal. Unfortunately, the spectacular views were often broken up by the train entering into a tunnel. It must have been a real challenge to build the tracks through the area (southern China between Kunming and Nanning). Unfortunately, wet windows do not make for good photos.

Although the smoke occasionally seeped into our cabin, for the most part the air was clean. The conductors on the train seem to do a good job of keeping the toilets reasonably clean, such that their worst condition was in the first hour of our trip.

The food on the train ranged from very good to OK, but generally was quite acceptable. We ate in the dining car, where they had an English menu for us, as well as selecting food by pointing at the carts which went by. While in Kunming, Becky bought a cheap bottle of Chinese wine for us to enjoy with our dinner on the train. Upon opening the wine we discovered that it was truly awful – very sweet. Fortunately, adding orange juice (or 30% real juice orange drink) made it taste like cheap sangria – good enough to allow us to enjoy the wine if not savor it!

Every time the train stopped during the day, Becky got nervous. Several times people poked their heads into our door only to realize they were in the cabin next to us. This lasted right up until the second last stop of the day, where two men joined us in our cabin – an older man and a man about our age. Neither spoke any English. They were both very polite. Becky got worried when she noticed that both of them smoked, but neither even considered smoking in the cabin, rather they both went out to the smoking corridors of the train. The younger gentlemen climbed up into his upper bunk after his smoke and proceeded to watch a movie on his laptop. The sound was slightly annoying since it was in English but not quite loud enough to hear it – fortunately we both have iPods and earplugs. We setup for sleep and went to bed relatively early (9 pm). The older man was not quite ready for bed so he went somewhere – we guess the dining car to read his newspaper and smoke.

We had read that to Chinese people, white people have a particular smell – something akin to cheese. What Becky discovered is that some Chinese people – particularly older ones – have a spicy smell. When the older gentleman climbed into bed, the cabin was filled with his scent. Unfortunately, it was a little overwhelming for Becky, such that she did not sleep as well as she’d hoped. Scott’s less sensitive nose caused him to notice the scent as well, but it wasn’t enough to bother him or disturb his sleep. We wonder what we smelled like to them, after 24 hours on the train, and 36 hours since our last shower?

In the morning, both our cabin mates left the train at the 8:30 am stop. Although they were polite and better than we expected, we were happy to have the cabin back to ourselves for the last 3 hours of our journey. The train arrived in Beijing on-time, and we were happy to disembark after 38 hours.

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In order to ship our bikes and most of our gear, we needed to bring the bikes and gear to the “luggage consigning office” at the Kunming train station a day in advance of our train. After some confusion and going to the wrong place, we were guided to the correct office by a friendly employee. We removed our bags and placed them all into a large tarp bag that we bought in Bangkok for just this purpose. They had a strapping machine that ensured the bag would remain closed and hopefully will prevent the zipper from breaking (it was awfully full). Once the paper work was completed, we were charged 454 RMB (under $100 CAD) for the lot of it. 31 kg in the tarp bag and 25 kg for each bike. Hopefully we will see it all when we get to Beijing!

Note, the paperwork does ask for a contact address and phone number in your destination city. Since we have not booked a hotel in Beijing and have not purchased a SIM for our phone here, we had nothing to give them. We recommend to other cyclists shipping bikes and baggage via train in China to book a hotel or find someone who can be the telephone contact person.

The rest of our preparations for the train ride involved spending a lot of time relaxing in our hotel room, updating the blog and doing some Internet research, and eating many different types of Chinese food. Of note, we tried the Yunnan specialty “across-the-bridge-noodles”, where you get a bowl of really hot broth and a bunch of items to throw in the broth. The number of type of items varies based on how much you pay and the restaurant. Our across-the-bridge-noodles were yummy. We are reminded just how good the food in China is – don’t even dare to compare it with North American Chinese food.

An interesting thing has occurred a few times now, with us not speaking any Mandarin (or whatever dialect they speak where we are) and waitresses at restaurants who speak no English. We often only have a slight idea of what we are ordering. Once we randomly ordered a beer once and what came back was a Budweiser! (that was quickly rectified with a trip to the fridge and to select something else) When the waitress asks us a question, and we don’t understand and end up giggling (smiling and giggling seems to work well when we don’t understand, it is exactly what the waitresses do when they don’t understand us) the immediate response is to write it down. Since the written language in China is the same regardless of dialect writing it down is an effective way to communicate with anyone who reads any Chinese dialect – unfortunately, we just end up giggling a little more, since it doesn’t help us at all. After some futile flipping through the phrasebook, eventually the waitress will just bring us to the counter and allow us to point at what we want. So we are successfully eating well, but it is a little bit mentally draining.

On Mother’s Day, I found out that my Grandma had died the previous day, after a short illness. Fortunately my Mom was able to get to Montreal before she died, and my Uncle and family (who live in Montreal) were there also.

Throughout our trip, we have prepared monthly packages consolidating our posts and photos for her and other family who are not on the Internet. I was looking forward to sitting down with her when we got back, since we have always enjoyed talking about travel. She and my Grandpa were among the few members of my close family who have travelled extensively – perhaps I inherited the travel gene from them {grin}.

Today was her memorial service, and as we were getting ready to board the train, a part of me was wishing I could be back in Canada to attend. I’m happy that the rest of my family was closer, and was able to make it to Montreal. Becky’s and my thoughts are with our family, since we can’t be there in person.

–Scott

Mom and Grandma at Grandpa's grave - September 2008

For our first morning in China, we returned to the noodle shop we visited the night before, to have another bowl of the best rice noodle dish we have had on our entire journey. It was especially yummy, and Becky took a picture of the noodle lady (although she did not smile). She remembered us from the night before and prepared our orders as before.

Arriving in China, a couple of things hit us immediately – it is much noisier here with cars and buses constantly using their horns, and young children belting out karaoke songs from loud speakers on the streets in order to make money. It is also much smellier here: the smells of burning coal, cooked meat, flowers, and human waste hit you separately and mixed together as travel through this country.

Upon investigating buses to Kunming, we learned that it was a 10-hour ride and that we could book beds in a sleeper bus that evening. We chose the 8 pm bus, and then headed out to find a place to hang out for the day. The weather wasn’t the greatest, with intermitted rain showers. We eventually made our way to Meimei café, which had free wireless Internet and a variety of western and local foods – oh ya, and an English menu and a couple of staff that spoke excellent English. They allowed us to place our bikes under an umbrella, and we found a dry seat under the veranda. We spent the whole day there eating and drinking a bottomless cup of Chinese tea.

Now, spending all day drinking tea before getting on a 10-hour bus ride where the bus does not have a toilet was not one of the brightest things we’ve done on this trip! Becky spent the first 2 hours of the bus ride in agony waiting for the bus to make its first pit stop. The sleeper buses do not have seats, rather they have three rows of pretty narrow beds. Laying down with a full bladder was not an option, so Becky propped up her bedding and sat listening to her ipod and waiting for the first stop. Unfortunately, the roads on the first section were really bumpy, which certainly did not help her predicament. When the bus stopped, Becky followed a Chinese girl to the ladies room (this became a pattern with every stop, Becky following the same person to find the ladies room). We officially vote the bus station / gas station toilets in China to the most disgusting we have ever seen! They were much worse than Syria and that says something! Part of the problem is that it appears that in the evenings / overnight they turn the water off, so there is no way to flush toilets. This of course does not stop the folks on buses with full bladders and runny bowels from doing their business, so needless to say, by 3 or 4 am the places are pretty gross. OK… enough about that, we think you get the picture.

After a long night on the bus, neither of us having slept particularly well, we were both exhausted when we arrived in Kunming. Now that we have done the long-distance sleeper bus in China, we’ll try to avoid that experience again. Hopefully, the train will be more restful, as we’ll have at least 38 hours on the train from Kunming to Beijing.

After arriving in Kunming, we quickly loaded our bike having gathered a large audience. We do get much bigger audiences here whenever we stop. It is common to have 20-30 people stand around the bikes gawking and asking us questions in some dialect of Chinese, and us having no clue what they are saying. With miming and our experiences so far, we gather the two most common questions in China are “Does it convert to a regular bike?” and “how much does it cost?” We expected riding on the streets in the city to be a lot more chaotic than it is. Both Jinghong and Kunming are not as busy as we expected, and as a result the riding hasn’t been that difficult. The biggest challenge is the roundabouts, because they have a bike lane on the outside, but cars and scooters completely ignore it, so you must be constantly watching for the guy that will cut you off as you go around. Once you are on a street, there is often a bike lane that is separated from the main road, so cars cannot access it, and most scooters avoid it. There are occasionally pedestrians which you much avoid, and slow moving bicycles, but for the most part it is an efficient way to travel through the city streets.

We found ourselves a nice three-star hotel on the main street close to the train station. We are amused at how all the hotels we have stayed at provide condoms in the room (either free or as part of the minibar). Our room here even has female condoms! Neither of us recall this from our previous business travel to China. We wonder if it is a combination of HIV/AIDS awareness and the one child per family program here in China.

The lady at the travel desk in our hotel spoke pretty good English, so we asked her to help us get train tickets. With the help of Yahoo translator, we were able to get most of our questions answered, and purchase tickets for the train leaving on Sunday at 8:43 pm. We purchased the most expensive class available, two bottom bunks in a soft sleeper. The soft sleepers are in 4-person cabins, so by purchasing the two lower bunks, we are more likely to have a cabin to ourselves. After our experience with the second class sleeper in Thailand, we knew we did not want upper bunks, as you don’t have anywhere to sit when the folks on the lower bunk are sleeping. Plus there are no windows visible from the upper bunk (at least on Thai trains).

We also learned that we must bring out bikes to “consignment” a day before. Here we will pay 5 CNY (about $1 CAD) per kilogram for baggage. We plan to ship both bikes and one large bag containing most of our panniers. Hopefully they will arrive in Beijing by the time we do!

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Our short night at Gin’s Guesthouse was restless. It was quite warm, and the wood floor was very squeaky in places. Every time Becky got up to go to the bathroom, Scott awoke thinking she had fallen because of the loud crack.

We arrived at the dock at 4:30 am and met another western couple – unfortunately they didn’t have tickets yet, and so hadn’t officially exited Thailand. The girl at the port pressed Scott into service to explain that they had to wait for the next boat. Luckily, this week there is a Friday boat. Scott talked briefly to them about their trip, but was soon urged to get our luggage down to the boat – a steep set of stairs, then across a larger boat and onto the fast ferry. Fortunately we were in enough time that it wasn’t too rushed.

The boat was quite nice, although the seats are fixed in position. Fortunately we were two of only four passengers, so there was lots of room to spread out. The crew of 6 or 7 actually outnumbered us.

The boat stopped several times along the Laos border, never stopping on the Burma side. Our first thought was, are we in the middle of something illegal? We aren’t sure why they stopped the first time, but the second time was to re-fuel, and the third time was to buy some fish from a local Laos fisherman. This must happen frequently, as the fisherman had a scale ready. Each time we stopped the boat dropped off a bag or two of fresh produce.

We were surprised by how much of the Mekong River shoreline is undeveloped. For much of the ride along the Laos and Burma borders, there is nothing. Occasionally, we saw some cleared forest where crops are planted high up on the steep sloped and some small villages. The Laos side seemed to be a little more developed than the Burma side. Once we reached the Chinese border, the amount of cultivation drastically increased, but there were still sections of jungle. We both expected to see many more people living along the Mekong.

The river is much rougher than we expected – fast moving with rapids along the way, and very narrow points. The water level is also clearly much lower than it used to be, since there’s sand and bare rocks up 2-3 meters from the current level. There was one place where the water level sign went up to 14 meters, and we were down below 2. Even with the rough conditions, the river still carries a fair amount of cargo. We passed at least 10 cargo ships along our journey. One of them had a cage full of water buffalo on its upper deck.

We were given a breakfast of a bag of sweet pastries and some soy milk. For lunch, we had a nice tray of rice, fish, and two vegetable dishes. We do recommend that if you take this boat you bring along a few snacks. Becky was happy that we still had some granola left, so she had a bowl at 5 pm when hunger hit again. Supper was not served on the boat.

Around 6 pm we arrived at a China Customs and Immigration post. This was well before Jinghong at Guan Lei. Several Customs officers came on board and did the most thorough search of our bags we’ve seen on the trip. They were very intrigued by our camp stove and pots, but didn’t ask us any questions. Just before they arrived, some CIQ (China Immigration Quarantine?) officers came on board, one spraying something on the deck of the passenger compartment, and the other two taking each person’s temperature. They used a handheld device which focused a red dot on our foreheads – perhaps using IR sensors? We guess that CIQ people probably got them in response to SARS, and have dusted them off in response to the Swine Flu.
After all this, we climbed many steps to the Immigration hall, where our passports were stamped, then we returned to the boat. All the officials we talked to spoke at least a bit of English, which made things a bit easier – perhaps part of the pre-Olympics training?

We continued upriver, and noticed everything is much more intensively cultivated here, with what look like tree farms planted on huge terraces going all the way up the mountains. Before we reached Jinghong, the land flattened out – lots of gravel beaches, with people on motorcycles in the middle of nowhere, apparently taking picnics.

Shortly after dark, when we were about 25 km south of Jinghong, we arrived at a ferry crossing and tied up. A small 20-passenger bus was waiting to take us, most of the crew, and a big pile of cargo (food, plants, boxes of various shapes, plus our bikes and bags) into Jinghong. The bus ride was very bumpy until we reached Jinghong, and on very narrow roads – probably better that we didn’t ride. We had very limited communication with our boat crew, but ability to point to words in phrase book (like “hotel” when we saw they wanted to leave us in the suburbs across the Mekong from downtown) proved very helpful.

Becky found us a nice hotel for 140 RMB, much better than the 40 RMB place she looked at previously. The hotel has the ubiquitous Internet-connected passport reader, which means Chinese immigration knows where we are each night.

We walked down the street and found a hole-in-the-wall noodle stand where we had the best noodles ever! Fresh noodles, very tasty and spicy but not too hot, with a flavor combination we’d never experienced before – a wonderful introduction to China. All this for only 3 RMB per bowl (about $0.50 CAD)

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51 km, 3 hr, max temp 43

Is there any better way to spend your last evening in Thailand than having a great Thai massage, followed by a great Thai meal, all for under $25 CAD?

Our ride back to Chiang Saen was uneventful, although we definitely were feeling the muscles we abused in the mountains. Fortunately it was a quick ride, and we were able to check in at Gin’s Guesthouse, have lunch, drop off our passports at the boat office, mail a package home, shower, change, do laundry and still have time for a two-hour massage before dinner.

Unfortunately, after dinner we discovered that Julie, who we had talked to a few days earlier, would not be back before we left. This meant that the staff wanted to charge us more for the room, and weren’t able to provide the Internet or extra fan we had been promised. After a quick phone call the room price was sorted out, and we were able to change our remaining Baht for Chinese RMB. Scott was a bit grumpy about the exchange rate, which was well above market, but still possibly better than we would have done in Jinghong.

By 9 pm our bikes were packed and we were in bed, ready for our 4 am alarm and a quick ride to our boat up the Mekong to China.

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73 km, 6h 10 min, max temp 43

Our plan for the day was to leave most of our baggage at the Yeeson hotel, and do a loop ride up to Doi Tung – the “Flag Mountain” with its famous twin chedis. Apparently one of Buddha’s collarbones is interred in one of the chedis, so it is a significant place of pilgrimage. Along the way is the Royal Villa of the “Princess Mother”, the current king’s mother, who died in 1993. It is partly a museum, and his sister still lives in another portion.

On our way out of town, we saw a sign for the “Afterglow Hostel” with a price of 585 Baht. We aren’t sure if that was for the night or the hour, but with a name like Afterglow we don’t think it is your standard backpacker place!

The climb up to the palace was nice, with a few steep climbs separated by less steep sections on a nice smooth road, and much easier without the weight of our bags. When we reached the Villa, it turned out to be quite a tourist attraction, with lots of small tour buses and visitors. As usual, our bikes turned us into quite the tourist attraction ourselves, and we answered many questions and posed for a bunch of photos.

In addition to the Royal Villa, this is the site of the Mae Fa Luang Gardens, and Doi Tung handicrafts – all part of an effort by the Princess Mother to provide alternatives to opium production for the local hill tribes. From what we can tell it is working, with lots of handicrafts available, as well as various cash crops, including coffee. Becky was sorely tempted to buy some beans, but decided she would refrain, and skip the extra weight for our afternoon of climbing.

The climb after the palace was steep in places, especially one shortcut to Doi Tung. The road was in great condition, but the constant 20% grade was a bit much. We aborted the attempt of the short cut after a few hundred meters because it was just too steep – Becky did not want to push her bike up 3.3 km of steepness after all the climbing we had already done today! (600m elevation gain in 3.3 km is almost 20% on average – steeper in places).

Sadly, when we reached the turnoff to Doi Tung, it turned out to be a large downhill – not something we were prepared to contemplate at 4 pm, since we would need to climb back up again to get home. Instead we decided to continue along the road and finish our loop.

Note that after the Villa there are very few services along the road. We had planned to fill up with water at Doi Tung, but when we deviated so as not to go there, Becky was getting pretty low. We were lucky that when we reached the top there was a kiosk selling wine that also had bottled water and fanta. We recommend that you fill up at the Villa before venturing further afield

The road back skirted the Burma border, and we needed to clear a checkpoint before we could get on it. This was the first checkpoint in Thailand where we actually showed our passports, but we passed through without questions. Just past the checkpoint was a Burmese border station. The bamboo buildings and fences were quite the change from the concrete on the Thai side. Becky stopped to adjust her bandanna, and Scott lost sight of her for what seemed a long time, especially hearing the barking of some dogs behind. He was getting quite concerned by the time she showed up, with a pack of Burmese guard dogs right on her heels. Fortunately it was a nice bit of downhill and we outdistanced them quickly.

Scott had showed Becky Bill Weir’s comments about the road along the border, including “The ridge-top road dived and climbed–I alternately squeezed my brakes for dear life, or winched up in bottom gear. Downhills outnumbered climbs and I was soon back in Mae Sai.” Unfortunately, Becky missed the first sentence, and was expecting a nice downhill back to Mai Sai. We can report that the road is still really steep and the in poor condition, so we rarely were able to go over 30 km/hr. We would not recommend this decent for anyone without disc brakes – as it was our brakes were hot and smelly! Going down the way we came up would have been a much more pleasant ride, but much longer too. We understand why the Lonely Planet says that only experienced motorcyclists should attempt to ride that road – the curves were pretty crazy even on the bicycles.

We were surprised by the number of people walking on the road, but there are several small encampments along the way.

The returning road did not just have steep downhills, it also had some steep uphills to ensure you did not get cold and your brakes had a chance to cool off. This was OK the first few times, but 10 km before the end of the road when it turned up again, Becky gave up and made Scott turn around. We headed back to the village of Pha Mi, and took the village road out of the hills to highway one. This is a hill tribe village, but not a “tourist village” and we didn’t see anyone in traditional dress.

As we approached the valley, we hit a wall of smoke from the burning fields. It pointed out just how smoky the air was down at the lower elevations. It was nice to be out of the pollution while we were climbing in the hills.

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