Ferry, cross the Mersey...

 

Ferry, cross the Mersey...

So we left for the Cambodian border relatively early. Relatively because our hotel in Laos was just too nice. We had had very heavy rain during the night and we didn't even bother having a second look at the ferry crossing. In the end going the long way round probably didn't cost us any time.

We were at the border late morning and it was very QUIET indeed. Us clocking ourselves out, clocking the bike out, buying Cambodian visas, clocking ourselves in and then clocking the bike in probably only took an hour all told. They did want to stamp the Carnet de Passage for the bike though which is fine because we had one, but bought for other countries. There was just no point in telling the official that it wasn't needed for Cambodia as he had already collected a pile from other travellers in front of him. It is very good to see that all those backhanders necessary for border formalities have now got formalised and there was even a sign saying $20 for the visa and a further $5 for the 'stamping', which went straight into a different drawer. We went through the crossing so quickly that we didn't actually believe we had done it and we waited 10km before greeting ourselves with a 'Welcome to Cambodia!'

There is nothing more welcoming when you arrive in a new country than a good set of road works. Cambodia's version weren't really road works, because nobody was working. It was just that every 150m or so, there was a little volcano in the middle of the road.  Sometimes it wasn't actually 'so little'; it took up the whole width of the road and over quite a long distance. There had been a luxury coach going through the border just after us. We had been talking to a Dutch family in the give $5 to a good cause queue. They were following us when we had our first let's put the brakes on, stop and figure out how we get round, over, through this moment. In fact everyone got out of the coach to watch and photograph us. We got through that particular moment as well as all the remaining obstacles over the next 25km and rode relatively slowly for the following 25km too. The coach however never caught us up. Very strange.



We decided that we would spend the night in Stung Treng in the only hotel in town. This decision had been prompted by reports from the same Dutch family informing us of pretty dreadful roadworks on the road from Stung Treng to Kratie. This was, of course, our route to Phnom Penh. Our route being the only route...This information was then backed up by our hotel receptionist. We had one of those 'couple' moments for a few hours...

Whilst wandering around Stung Treng later, frontier town, dusty and dirty when dry and with no rain water drainage, muddy and dirty when wet, Paul spotted a young German who had just ridden into town on a Honda XT 250. She had not used the dreaded road, so could not comment on it as she had travelled from Siem Reap. We then got talking to a mini-bus guy who, too, confirmed the state of the dreaded road.

Ellen was a remarkable 23 year old lady who had spent six months in Cambodia, partly working to assist with her studies and partly travelling. She had bought her bike in Cambodia and was now travelling to Laos alone. Angela Merkel, either offer Ellen a job as Minister of Culture, Arts or Foreign Development or watch out!

Whilst we were chatting the winds picked up and then the rain lashed out. Time noted, be indoors  for 16.00, it can get heavy!

                                       

We abandoned our Phnom Penh plans and decided to head for Siem Reap and Angkor Wat even if it meant taking a ferry across the river. Once across the Mersey, sorry Mekong, and a short stretch of dirt road we were on a fine piece of tarmac that took us all the way to Siem Reap. The only way to describe the scenery en route would be, 'all logged-out'. All the women in the countryside also seem to be wearing their pyjamas at noon. Many children were walking to school, some of them bare foot. Each village we passed through had a little house with flags outside and a signboard saying, ' Cambodian People's Party' or something very similar. We arrived in good time and then it rained. Heavy. Time noted.

 

 

 

Siem Reap is Angkor Wat and Angkor Wat is laid out like some Country Estate Theme Park. It has a ring road with temples just dotted around the ring road. We are not sure what we think of it. At the moment we are simply overwhelmed by the two days we spent there. A Cambodian guide, ex Buddhist Monk, took us round on the first day. He left us with the following question:

'What do we think of a country that gives its branding rights to a beer, Cambodia beer? What do we think of a country who gives the branding rights of its, and possibly the world's greatest architectural treasure to a beer, Angkor beer? And what do we think of a country who gives the branding rights of its most sacred Buddhist temple to a beer, Bayon beer?'

 

 

At lunch time and for the rest of the afternoon it rained. We don't have much idea of how dry the dry season is but we are getting a pretty good idea of how wet the wet season is and we don't want to be on the bike when it's raining!

As we are in Siem Reap ahead of schedule we have had some time to spare. So as well as visiting Angkor Wat we have slowed down a bit and visited some tourist things too. We have also visited some local schools and helped out at one. Apparently Cambodia has the highest or one of the highest ratios of NGO's per head of population in the world and there are plenty of opportunities. From our very, very brief insight it seems that what they need most is the teaching of the teachers and not necessarily lots of bright, young helpers, cos the kids are awlrite!

                                                                                    

Time to say goodbye to those very gentle Cambodians and en route for Poipet, the border.
Exactly two months of travelling and 1,600 photos kept in files.

 

Paul & Francoise

 

 

 

 

 

Mekong Kippers

Vientiane was sleepy in the afternoon. Paul managed to get the bike cleaned. The build up and hardening and then setting hard of the crud on the bike worries him. He also needs to do a bit of basic maintenance on the bike but time and heat is against him. Vientiane was so sleepy on a Sunday afternoon that most of the car washers weren't interested - they were 'closed'; it was a Sunday afternoon. We just thought it was a funny way to spend your afternoon off, when you were closed, telling people that, well, you were closed. They just do things differently, we suppose.



On the way back from cleaning Paul met another couple of Harleys, local ones, who showed him their garage, or front room which had three other Harleys in it and four BMW's, and an older couple watching television...the security parentage.

Vientiane did come a bit more to life in the evening but it was still a bit of a disappointment. Rivers can make towns and cities, but this is a one sided River City as it is another country on the other side - and its a long way across.



It's incredibly green here and there is a big river just over there. There must be a lot of water. As the bike is often wet in the morning we have assumed that it always rains overnight as we have never been that wet when riding. Yes, it gets just about heavy enough to want to put your waterproofs on but you know how hot and sticky that will make you, so you don't bother and then it stops and you dry out. Except for the bottom of your jeans; so you tuck them into your boots and although Jeans In Boots might be a cardinal fashion sin, it saves on the washing.

 

It was the same when we left Vientiane. It had rained and it started spotting a bit but the clue was in the words Rain Forest and it rained for about an hour. We went 50/50 on the waterproofs on the basis that the jeans would take longer to dry out. Our jackets were very wet. And out T-shirts underneath too, but they were all dry before lunch.



The ride out of Vientiane was pretty boring. The roads, or road as there only seems to be the R13 in Laos, was very good with nothing to complain about. So apart from some houses on stilts, some rugged limestone scenery, the Mekong river, kippers, sausages being hung up to dry by the roadside, the water buffalos, the cows walking all over the road, ditto for the dogs, the brightly painted and often over-loaded tuk-tuks, the paddy fields, the roadside pineapple stalls, the roadside altars or Spirit Houses (they are not bird tables), the Buddhist temples with their red yellow and gold snakes or dragons and the squiggly writing on the signposts there was not much to see. Actually having said that, it sounds quite a lot! Paul and the bike can accept the boring kilometres, but there wasn't much for Francoise to snap at. She nodded off.



Well the Isle of Man has its Manx variety and Arbroath its Smokies; so why not Mekong kippers too? We didn't dare try them by the road, all those bones, and we haven't seen them in the restaurants we frequent.



And speaking of breakfast let's have some eggs too!



Lao cuisine hasn't really worked for us. Neither has the service in the restaurants. It is hot and sticky here and the first thing you want is a drink. It can take 20 minutes to come. And it would seem that unless it is a BeerLao, there is a 50% chance of them not having it. Then having taken your food order 30 minutes earlier, you are told they haven't got any of it. And ten minutes later they haven't got your replacement order either. So you get up and leave, having paid for the BeerLao and go somewhere else and its the same rigmarole there too. And this happens three nights running. You then start getting paranoid about it only happening to you because you are the infidel and the locals are getting served before you, except that some of those locals are clearly back packers. Ah well... Street food has the benefit of being instant, if not always piping hot or as cold as it should be. You point at it and it is given to you. The system works. So we ate some dangerous street sausages and dumplings before going to the restaurant on the third night when we found out after twenty minutes that they didn't have mudfish and the steamed carp,when it came, almost choked us with all those bones.

We changed our mind as to where we were stopping three times the next day as far as which town was concerned and it all worked out well with us getting almost halfway to the Cambodian border. Our hotel was a Communist era block down by the Mekong. You could tell it was Communist as it had the same traits as some soviet buildings: substantially varying stair risers. It also had an air-con unit that was dripping with condensation and spat mist on medium fan speed and what seemed to be little bits of ice on maximum. If only there was an Engineer in the house to sort it out...



It was Paul's birthday the following day and we were woken by very heavy rain indeed during the night. Then followed some very early bongs and boings from the monkery next door that prompted a chorus of barking from all the dogs in the district followed by more bongs and boings. Who was feeding who? And then the cockerels started. So it wasn't that difficult getting up that morning.

The day's ride was even wetter and more boring than the day before. 370km of it. Apparently back packers take an overnight sleeper bus from the Cambodian border to Vientiane, but we have the Harley. Though some buses do seem to have scooters on the roof.  However we cannot imagine us getting the Harley up there and anyway it is going very well at present.

 

We found ourselves a very nice boutique hotel and as we are a little ahead of schedule we stayed an extra day and visited the Vat Phu remains, a Lao Angkor Wat, note Wat and Vat, and just lounged around. We could probably have done it for another day too as we were very comfortable indeed. The hotel even reconciled us with some of the possibilities of Lao cuisine. Delicious food, impeccable service! But the road and the Cambodian border beckons...



To find the hotel we came 40km further than we originally intended which was the good news but on the wrong side of the Mekong, which is the quite not so good news. There are no bridges for the next 100km, so we will just catch the ferry we thought. Then we went to look at it. We would have loved to but we chickened out! Just getting to the pontoon was going to be very difficult. And then the timber pontoon itself and then the ramp... And then the ferries of which there were a choice of two types. The small ones which seemed to take a scooter and its rider and which you just hired and the man seemed to be assuring us that it could take three scooters. Quick maths, how does an overloaded two-up Electraglide compare with three scooters? We saw a family with four children but without associated metal ware sail away, but the margins seemed too fine for us even if we could get to the floating device. Ferry seemed a bit too strong a noun. There was a bigger type but they only sailed twice a day and only when they were full. But you could commandeer one, full or not, for $20 apparently if there was one there. But the problem of getting to it still remained. So it looks like the extra km to backtrack will be the call of the day! We don't even know how it would be on the other side - but we will still have a second think about it on the way out.



Goodbye to beautiful, laid-back Laos and onwards to Cambodia.

Paul & Francoise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sticky Buns

The border crossing to PDR Lao with or without the 's' was very quiet and ordered and zero hassle. This included us getting visas and we hope that this doesn't mean we are going to have to pay for things sometime at a future border crossing...

It is so quiet here! They don't blow their horns and there aren't that many of them. Six millions people altogether. What a difference! Our first stop in Luang Nam Tha was very close to the border and suffered from frontier town-itis, see a previous blog. Apparently bag packers go there to chill out (including our two older sons in the past). Deep frozen perhaps. Except it is very very hot and humid. VERY! Sticky all sorts of things when sat on a motorbike.

Having said goodbye to China we also said goodbye to our eight travelling biker buddies. We are now on our own. No more booked hotels in advance, no more back-up assistance...the real adventure begins; not sure we are that ready for it! We had planned to stay in Luang Nam Tha for a couple of days but even a couple of hours was a bit excessive, so we set off the next day for Luang Prabang.  In the old days when Laos had a king, pre communism, Luang Prabang  used to be the capital. They don't anymore and it isn't now either.

 

We had the customary 85km of road works on twisty roads of which half of it was not a known European road service. But we took our time and with so much less traffic, it wasn't quite as stressful as China. The villages seem an awful lot quieter than in China , a lot poorer too and almost sleepy. Most villages seem to be only equipped with a standing water pipe and road construction, or the dust and dirt created by it. It doesn't do them any aesthetic favours. Lots of people sitting around seemingly waiting for something... Lots of pigs roaming freely, lots of dogs too and quite larger than the ones in China. Clearly they have an appetite for different things here. Lots of very large butterflies and the skinniest chickens imaginable. Also lots of babies and plenty of small children who hang around by and on the edge of the road, but don't dart out onto it. A very peaceful, sedated atmosphere.

Our accommodation in Luang Prabang was basic but quite satisfactory. And a short walk from the town's Night Market. Luang Prabang is a really vibrant place full to the brim with back packers. We can understand why a lot of the world's youth want to hang out here with a BeerLao in their hands. We can also suspect why a number of single men of a certain age are also hanging out here. Every good side seems to have a flip side. Having spent a day less than anticipated in Nam Tha, we decided to spend a day extra in Prabang. We could have spent more.



On our extra day we went elephant riding. What a fantastic experience! Francoise wanted to 'drive' for a change and it was the only thing we could think of that was bigger and more unwieldy than a Harley. But it seemed more attune to off-road conditions!



 

We also visited one of the many Buddhist temples. We were lucky enough to have Ken as a guide. He had spent all his teenage years as a monk. It is quite common for the elder son of the family to become a monk and quite an honour too. Firstly Buddhism was a way of life and not a religion. Adherents were supposed to follow five basic rules that increased to 100 for Buddhist teachers and 227 for monks. The five basic ones were not to lie, use drugs, steal, be adulterous and kill animals. Not all Buddhists are vegetarian so the last one can cause problems in a Buddhist country where you then need a few friendly non- Buddhists to work in the abattoirs or import slaughtered meat. But apart from that, doesn't it all sound very similar? Some of the other 'rules' were also things that our parents tried to teach us; don't slouch at table, stand up straight etc.

We reluctantly left Luang Prabang and had to evict a lizard that had found one of our bags a comfortable place to stay whilst in our room. We headed South, always South for the moment, towards the capital Vientiane. We were attracted by an alternative route suggested by Mr. Garmin which promised 60km less and a quicker time. We had 75km of absolutely lovely road with stunning scenery and we climbed to nearly 2000m altitude in the Laos highlands. We were actually in the clouds and mist. And then the road disappeared. Literally! It just stopped and became a steeply inclined mud slide with no visibility. It was too much for us to contemplate. Laos isn't like the UK in a number of ways, but one of the ways it is not the same is with regards to options on routes. if the M1 is problematic you take the A1. Well here if you can't get by on the road you just have to turn around and go back and start again in a different direction. Even if that means retracing your steps 75km or 150km overall or @ 4 hours of riding. Ah well!

The alternative road which is the main road linking Vientiane with Luang Prabang, current to ex-capital, didn't have one bit of straight road longer than 50m for over 200km. Look it up on Google maps or something but make sure you zoom in. And whilst there, ask Mr Google about what happened to Laos during the Viet Nam war - its quite shocking and we were not aware of it. The scenery was absolutely magnificent - the best mountain scenery we have seen anywhere in the world. We had a wonderful late lunch in a mountain top cafe - what must be the best biker's caff in the world; they even served tea in a mug and sausages. This was THE as opposed to 'a' mountain top cafe as we have not come across others. Perhaps they even had Carlsberg...We also bought seven bananas from a road side stall for 1p each, OK they were little but nonetheless...

ou

We are not the fastest riders. But cows have priority on the roads here and they really get in the way and slow you down. Its there fault that our average speed is so low. We could not see any marks of ownership on them so, like the pigs and the chickens how do they get back to wherever? Maybe the same applies to the small children too, a real community spirit...



Despite the extra 150km and the intended @ 380km normal itinerary that day, we decided to press on for Vientiane nonetheless. We passed through a lively town called Vang Vieng and considered stopping. We decided to press on and boy, That was a mistake! At seven o'clock at night the sun goes down and it's not gradual. There are no street lights in the rain forest and houses in villages don't have many houselights. Pot-holes are not sign posted and lit.

It got scary and we stopped 85km short of Vientiane at a sign indicating Pele 2 Guesthouse under a yellow BeerLao sign and next to a rough looking cafe. We had a room for the night for £3.10. There was electricity and a fan and a tap and an empty ten gallon paint container to wash in and a hole in the floor. And a lizard and some ants. DO NOT LEAVE ANYTHING ON THE FLOOR. We dined on a BeerLao and a packet of crisps each at the roadside cafe. Following advice from our sons we do travel with silk sleeping bag liners and pillow cases as well as mosquito repellants.  We availed ourselves of them. We actually slept and quite well at that. The photo, like those of roadworks, doesn't do justice to our sentiments at the time. No 13 also looks a bit better in the daylight than in the pitch black - and you can't see the inside...

Next morning we did however leave quite early - there was little point in discussing what sort of fruit juice for breakfast was included in the price. We covered the remaining 85km in little time and were booked into a slightly more expensive hotel in Vientiane by 10.00am and we treated ourselves to a bath and a coffee/croissant in what was the hub of France's colonial Indochine. So far it's been a pretty boring place but maybe that is because it is a Sunday and they are all sleeping off a different sort of Saturday night adventure to us. Nonetheless it is a bit strange to look across the river, the Mekong, knowing it is Thailand on the other side and that Viet Nam is just 125 miles to the North East.

Paul & Francoise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rules of the Road

We have now left China and entered Lao, or Laos, we aren't sure of which. We left Jiang Shui for Pu'Er which is China's tea capital and then went on to Mengla so we could reach the border early in the morning.
 
The road from Jiang Shui was dreadful. Including a rest and 10km of good roads, we covered 130km in 7hours. It was the usual state of affairs. We even had a landslide blocking the route. We were also very, very close to falling when a lorry would not change its course towards us. Paul locked up on some mud. It was possibly the ABS that saved us though the front brake has otherwise been a bit juddery. After the lorry incident Francoise hitched for 60km as we just didn't feel safe; John, our Chinese guide, came in very handy. In the end we managed it and we have certainly done an extra 60km here and there to make up for it. Scenery and anything else became irrelevant. We had 400km to cover that day and having got nowhere near far enough by then, we crashed the expressway for the remaining 200 plus km. There were a number of attempts to stop us, but they were not going to succeed.
 

 At Pu'Er we explored a bit and rode through their picturesque National Park to discover banana trees, rubber trees too we think, bamboo forests, tea plantations and colourful bougainvilleas. The road was stunning and we pottered along de-stresssing ourselves from our previous experiences. We drove past a wild elephant centre which was clearly attracting a lot of Chinese tourists.
 
 

We are now also getting quite heavy, hot rain to very heavy, hot rain.  It never lasts very long though. This area is very tropical with Jurassic Park type vistas everywhere with misty clouds hung on very pointy hills and mountains.
 
Now China is ending for us, we can also reflect a bit more. The China we have seen is changing so rapidly that it will not be there in five years time. The internet and modern communications will ensure that. The infrastructure is being built to facilitate the change. The next challenge will be to somehow together bring all the small holding agricultural work into something bigger and more efficient. Shu, seen in the picture with a rather grubby Eddy the Teddy (Eddy is a celebrity in Francoise's primary school) will expect big things for himself, his family and his country.
 
As we have been driving in China for a month and for over 7,000 km, we have been able to decipher the rules of the road. There is a hierarchy involved and this is what we have worked out.
 
1. Pedestrians.
 
Pedestrians are allowed to use the roads for anything they wish, be it as a toilet or for conducting their own business. This is the People's Republic of China and the roads belong equally to all citizens. Pedestrians are allowed to use the outside lane, as the opposite would not reflect the underlying principles of the state. Pedestrians are allowed to cross the road when and how they like as it is their right and other users should respect their right. Pedestrians need not respect directionality. There is no hierarchy to road usage. Pedestrians can also stand and marvel at the pretty light patterns created by traffic lights and wonder as to what they would look like in blue or purple or if they could be combined with fountains and music somehow?
 
2. Cycles - ditto as for Pedestrians.
 
3. Electric Scooters - ditto as for Cycles.
 
4. Motorcycles - ditto as for Electric Scooters but Motorcycles cannot fill up with petrol at petrol pumps and are not allowed on Motorways or in the centres of large cities.
 
5. Three wheeled motorised vehicles - rules yet to be written as far too many sub-classes.
 
6. Single cylinder engined trucks. Don't go anywhere near the exposed flywheel.
 
7. Cars - excluding German models with darkened windows - as for Pedestrians but usually pretty safe.
 
8. German model cars with darkened windows. Rules don't apply. Stay away. Potentially dangerous.
 
9. Large lorries. Just remember they are all overloaded and can't stop and the trail of water on the road is from the water tanks they have above the wheels to cool the brakes.
 
10. Mini-buses and coaches. As for Pedestrians, but they are allowed the loudest horns.
 
11. Street cleaning vehicles. As for Pedestrians, but don't be lulled into a false sense of security by the ice cream van jingles, thats TFE they are spraying.
 
12. Animals. As for Pedestrians, but just remember the Chinese eat almost anything that grows or lives.
 
Finally if we were to choose one adjective only to describe this fascinating country, we would opt for the word "industrious"  whether we talk about the cities or the countryside.  Unemployment is not a concept that exists in the China we have seen.

Time for a final goodbye to John, our guide, and Mr He, his driver.  And now 'en route' for Laos (or Lao?)...
 

 
Paul and Francoise

Safety in Numbers

We have travelled down from Chengdu to Jiang Shui via Kunming. Four days of hard work. We are having a day off though to relax a bit, catch up on things and check the bike over before our last couple of days in China as we then, hopefully, move on into Laos.
 
The days have been long not only because we are far from the quickest on a bike, but also because the roads have been slow and difficult. The road surface has been not existent in places. Luckily we have the Electraglide 'Enduro' model with its more resistant paint specification and optional sound system with improved balance, which has made all the difference...

 
We have passed tea plantations, paddy fields, fruit trees of all kinds (mangos, pomegranates in paper bags- literally! bananas, grapefruit and of course watermelons which you find by the thousand), water buffaloes, Yi people, rape seed being dried on roadside mats, stone forests, cherry trees protected from the birds by being covered with plastic sheets and that's what we can remember in a couple of minutes. Some of the scenery has been truly magnificent. We have again been the source of amusement to local people not used to seeing non-Chinese as well as construction workers who don't seem to understand that it is actually quite difficult to drive the Electraglide in Chinese conditions. 

Our GPS, Mr. Garmin, has struggled with the rapid evolution of the Chinese road network. New roads are being built everywhere often to empty towns, and old roads being closed down sometimes with brick walls. But where there's a will there's a way and Paul has always wanted to walk through a brick wall! 

One of the things that slows us down is the right handed hairpin bends where Paul is still a long way from being at ease. When on the bike it is non-stop concentration as the road surface might disintegrate round the corner, there might be large, ie very large potholes, slow lorries, mopeds and scooters darting in from the side. And really large rocks too! It really is quite challenging and although we have seen a number of accidents, there have not been that many considering what actually happens here every minute. The flip side is that motorcycles are - or at least it seems to be that way - allowed to break the rules in full view of policemen. Except they really don't like you going on the expressway.
 
One of the unexpected hazards on the roads is that caused by learner drivers. They go out to learn en masse, a line of seven or eight of them all travelling even slower that the most agricultural and heavily laden of trucks and three wheelers. It must all be down to safety in numbers, their safety.
 
Just as China is changing so are the vehicles. In a few years all these contraptions will have been scrapped. Now is the time for someone to be collecting them and making them ready for a Transport Museum to show the humble tools that will have made China great.

One day we climbed to over 2,500m where it started getting quite cold again. We have done this on roads that would simply be condemned as not fit for usage in the UK. Our hardest day was undoubtedly this day which in the afternoon was followed by 1 .5km of mud and gravel, where Francoise had to dismount as it was just too difficult. Unfortunately photographs just cannot convey the difficulty or stress levels! Francoise was however not overtaken by any of the lorries following her! After the mud we were still 30km from the hotel and we hit the Tunnel of Death. No lights, shared tunnel, single lane in each direction and more pot holes, the whole width of the tunnel and we hit them. Whether we had a dipped beam headlight or not was irrelevant. Maybe Paul should have taken off his Aviators though.

   

 
Nobody respects a lumbering Electraglide struggling to get by and no road works take into account the existing road user. Yes, they could just dig up one side of the road and let traffic pass as if normal on the other side, but they don't. Yes they could do complete sections of road, but it is more fun just to resurface the straight bits and have enormous muddy, gravelly pot-holed ramps at the corners, where they will build it up later. It's just a different logic. 

The following day we found out en-route that the road works were even worse and quite difficult for a 30km stretch with areas off at least 20cm of water. All covering the hidden pot holes and the wheel ruts. When the water wasn't there, it was just mud. We had already done 250km that day when we found out this was ahead of us; the previous day had been a twelve hour ride and with this we were looking at substantially more, two of us stood up on the footboards or... We crashed the expressway. We sneaked up behind a truck packed with pigs. When the policeman saw us and started running towards us, we accelerated past a coach just as the barrier was lifting avoiding the lady who was running out of the toll booth too. We had  47km of perfect road unless we were stopped. Our exit junction was to be the third one, so we hid behind a lorry at the first junction but there was no one there. We followed the same strategy at the second which meant that the police man saw us far too late and we just opened the bike up 140km/h as they were standing in the middle of the carriageway frantically waving their arms. The next junction was ours, we hid in the queue until we could make a dart for it as the barriers opened.
 
Jian Shui is a great little town. We visited the beautiful Zhu gardens as well as the Confucius Temple where they had gone for overkill on the water lilies. We ate on a balcony in a timber two storey building overlooking the shopping street. No tower blocks in sight - what a welcomed change! Francoise even dared to visit a hairdresser (£2.10 a haircut, rather good value!). This is what we imagined China to be like. But we have travelled a month through China to find it. It's sometimes hard remembering where we were the day before and what we were doing. Writing things down like this will be our memory jog in the future along with the photos.
 
 

Other bits and bobs... The chrome lady costs slightly more on petrol per day (£15) that on food and drink for the two of us. And as far as logic is concerned we have tea and coffee with our meals and both are warm drinks. So why should we expect water or beer served with meals to be served chilled or cold? Or breakfast fruit juice to be served chilled? Or it even to be fruit juice and not just powdered cordial with boiling water?
 
Thought for the day: 'Warm tip, carefully slide'. And this was nothing to do with riding a motorcycle.

 
Paul and Francoise