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- Day Of Food – Thailand
- 23,000 Kilometre Photo
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- The Hot South
- Day Of Food – Cambodia
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Slow Motion Vientiane
We approach a set of traffic lights on our way to the COPE visitor centre in Vientiane and I can’t help but wonder where I last saw the familiar sequence of red, orange and green. Certainly the capital must be the only place in Laos with traffic lights. I wonder if this is a sign of modern times, but I quickly change my assessment as I pedal closer. As if the lights are an apparition, not one road user is paying them any mind. – Posted by Emma
Postcards From Luang Prabang
The pressure has been off since we reached the borders of South East Asia. As compensation against the last few months of racing against seasons and visas, we’re actively slowing down in line with the relaxed attitudes prevalent in Laos. The country’s second biggest city, which has a certain French colonial charm preserved in a central peninsula filled with guesthouses and cafes, Luang Prabang had just the right atmosphere for a week off and was a brilliant base for doing very little indeed. – Posted by Emma
Zooming Through Vietnam
The Vietnamese bus touts are convinced they’ll get business from us. “Bus to Sa Pa” they call as we tuck away our passports, re-attach helmets and roll bicycles down a short but sheer ramp from border control into Vietnam proper. “We go by bicycle,” we reply. They shake heads. “No…. you go bus.” I look the youngest and most hopeful tout in the eyes and assure him that we’re very strong. He shakes his head in response: “Sa Pa? You go by bus?” – Posted by Emma
Day Of Food – Vietnam
With just 11 days spent cycling in one of the more remote corners of Vietnam, we missed all the big cities, so didn’t have a chance to sample a wide range of the country’s kitchen skills. From our brief investigation we can report that the tang of Vietnamese fish sauce was refreshing after the sometimes oil-laden dishes of China, but some days it was difficult to find a variety of vegetables to supplement a meat heavy diet. Despite a few serious food miscommunications (rice served with noodles? just noodles?), the rice bowls of Vietnam fuelled us with enough carbs for a hilly ride to the border. – Posted by Emma
Chilling In The South
On arrival in Kunming, we had three very important missions: replace three of our tyres, arrange Vietnamese tourist visas and watch the Rugby World Cup final. A quick visit to Xiong Brothers bike shop near Yunnan University solved the tyre problem on Saturday. On Sunday the All Blacks scraped together a victory against France while we watched from bar stools amongst a crowd of New Zealanders, who all appeared to speak fluent Mandarin. Finally we handed in our visa applications to the Vietnamese Consulate early on Monday morning, arranging to pick them up two days later. With nothing much sparking our interest in terms of tourist sites, we spent a few days doing not much at all in the garden of Camilla Hostel. – Posted by Emma
19,000 Kilometre Photo
The 19,000 kilometre photo was taken approximately 30km outside Jianshui, China on 28th October 2011. This would become our longest cycling day in China due to lack of camping spots and the fact our map’s distance markers were out by 30km forcing us to cycle 127km – a little further than we intended. Out of shot was a small Chinese boy who continued to shout “hello” from a nearby house for the duration of our photo shoot. – Posted by Emma
Searching For Shangri-La
Far from any dreams of enlightenment, we find ourselves in Shangri-La primarily because the town is on our way south. Formally known as Zhongdian, in 2001 some clever marketers decided that the town was the location on which a 1930s fictional account of a lost utopia was based. Before we enter the old town, we cycle through typical Chinese modernity, the main street of town rich with tourist dollars. Against the blare of loudspeakers from shopping malls we spot several wedding convoys, made up of gaudily decorated Humvees trailed by pickup trucks carrying exploding firecrackers. I doubt we’ll find our personal utopia in town, but thinking of the things we need to fix and replace, we are sure we will find something. – Posted by Emma
High Life In Litang
We hated it at first. Arriving exhausted and cold into what looked like an unfriendly frontier town in the late afternoon, I wondered what the hell we were doing in Litang. Every hotel we entered looked battered and beaten up, beds were unmade, hot water was unavailable and prices were extortionate. A group huddled around me as Justin enquired at yet another. An elderly man touched my bare knee – ‘Wasn’t I cold?’ I could tell he was asking. Cold? We were at 3900m. – Posted by Emma
Breath Of Fresh Air
It takes us 150km to clear Chengdu and the surrounding towns, all merged together in one endless noisy highway. We’re hoping that our salvation will lie in Western Sichuan, rumours of proper mountain passes, pockets of Tibetan culture, Buddhist monasteries and the quiet that we’ve been missing leading us west as fast as we can pedal. – Posted by Emma
Sichuan Foraging
With Chinese food a lot more regional than we ever would have guessed (so far no soya sauce, no dim sum and no crispy duck), when we crossed into the Sichuan province just before Guangyuan we suspected dining would get a whole lot more interesting. According to our annotated English map of China the region is known for Sichuan spicy food. By this, we had imagined noodles laced with red hot chilli paste so we thought we’d be able to spot and stop any over-hot food with a polite ‘bushi’ (no, in Mandarin). – Posted by Emma