Week 4
Sat 8 Jan 05
Another lazy day. I found a photo processing shop to put my photos on CD and spent a lot of time at the internet cafe posting my blog.
At least I won't need to worry about security from tomorrow as I'll have 2 big strong men to look after me - Roger and Martin arrive at 3.40pm...
Sun 9 Jan 05
I have a few torn-out pages of the Lonely Planet Guidebook for Nanning and decided to go to a tourist spot it mentions - Yang Mei. It is described as "a beautifully preserved 17th Century traditional town 26km from Nanning". I took a taxi and found that it was actually 40km away.
But the real reason for going was to check out the gradient and condition of the road and a possible hotel to see if it would be a good first day for Martin and Roger. I decided it was -the road was quiet and undulating (ie small ups and downs but no real hills), paved and pretty smooth with busy fields being planted and harvested alongside. My chatty female taxi driver was also very nice and agreed to being our luggage the next day too.
I met Roger and Martin at the airport about 4pm. Martin was only wearing a t-shirt on his upper body - which the waiting Chinese people around me found amusing as it is about 14 degrees centigrade here. However, Martin said he wasn't cold and indeed spent the next few days wearing far fewer clothes than me and Roger (and everyone else we passed) and didn't seem to mind. I wish I could be like that. I'm still wrapped up with all the warm clothes I have - and I'm still sleeping like that most nights too.
I gave Roger and Martin a quick tour of Nanning - or rather a visit to a busy shopping area with small shops each with its own generator noisily working away outside because of the constant power cuts.
Mon 10 Jan 05
Roger helped me change to shorter cranks (125mm) today which make it harder to mount the unicycle (like I was any good at mounting with 150mm cranks anyway...) but allows me to ride faster. With the longer cranks my cruising speed was about 14km per hour but with these I can cruise about 17km per hour which is great and allows me to keep up with Roger a little better (but not really - when I'm cycling as hard as I can, he can still overtake me like I'm standing still if he wants to).
The ride today was great - good weather and great scenery. We stopped a lot for photos and to rest and arrived in Yang Mei about 4pm. The town is Chinese tourist kitch - except for the fact that people really do live there which makes it seem a little odd. Very few people stay the night though. The hotel registry's previous guest was 2 months ago - although possibly he only registers foreign guests - but even so, it was hardly a busy place.
The taxi with our luggage arrived at the scheduled time - the first time I've transported luggage this way as I've always had someone on a bicycle to help carry my luggage before. Let's hope this system is always this smooth.
The "hotel" was freezing cold but eventually we managed to get enough blankets to survive the night - all three of us in one room. Martin woke us early the next morning with some very strange comment which turned out to be a continuation of his dream. I tried replying before I realized he wasn't really awake. It turns out that he does this quite often - although he says that (as far as he knows) he has never actually said anything incriminating - which is rather a pity - I was hoping for some interesting gossip...
Tue 11 Jan 05
It was raining when we looked out of the window today. We hoped that it might clear up and waited around a bit in our cold hotel (no heating, and most of the time, power cuts mean no electicity for lighting either). Eventually we decided that the weather wasn't going to let up and decided to take a bus to the next town we had planned to stay the night.
We choose locations to stay in based on their distance away and, due to the lack of any other information, - the size of the font the town is shown on the maps - which should be linked to their size. Normally this system works well. But today the bus dropped us at a tiny hamlet of houses (Fu Shu) which didn't have any form of hotel. (The bus driver and the other passengers had been surprised that we were even going there - but that is normal so I didn't pay much attention.) So we checked the maps again and asked some locals who told us that the town (of the same font size on the maps) of Gu Liang(?) 10km away would have a small hotel.
After another bus ride we found the town and the hotel. The proprietor was surprised to see us (his hotel seemed about as busy as the one last night - ie "Not"). He asked if we wanted to see his 'normal standard'(in Chinese "Pu Tong de") rooms and I asked if he had any better rooms - He said, no, his hotel only had 'normal standard' rooms. Ok, I said, we'll see one of those then. He apologized again at the top of the stairs that he only had normal standard rooms. So I asked him if there was any other hotel around with better rooms - No, he said, his was the only hotel in town. OK then... I have no problem with normal standard rooms...
Looking at the photos afterward, the rooms did look a little like we were incarcerated in a third world prison cell but at the time - we were really happy, after a day of sitting on buses in the pouring rain, to have found any accommodation at all. And the power cut only lasted until 7pm in this town so we had light after that too. No showers though, hot or otherwise so we are probably starting to smell a bit like prisoners as well...
The view from the door and windows was great though - hills similar to Guilin all around.
Wed 12 Jan 05
Unfortunately, it was still raining today. We found ourselves 'beautiful' waterproof ponchos (mine is bright pink) to wear but it was still a bit wet to be attempting a long ride.
We tried waiting out the rain a bit but in the end caught another bus to the much bigger town (well, bigger font on the map...but this time it was realistic) of Da Xin. The bus journey showed a great new road (this road is not shown on most of my maps so I knew that it would be fairly new) going past more Guilin style mountains - fantastic scenery. So we plan to cycle back this way again tomorrow - weather permitting.
We arrived mid-afternoon and asked for the best hotel in town. We need showers and a bit of heating would go down well too! We found a pretty good hotel (The Da Xin Hotel) which managed to provide both of those (well -the heating is good - the showers are a bit luke warm but hey who cares after 3 days without taking my clothes off - I sleep wearing all the clothes I have if the room isn't heated and it was 3 degrees Centigrade overnight last night.
I did some laundry as we plan to be here for a couple of days. The receptionist explained the luke warm water as "Yes, we do have 24 hour hot water, it is just that it is hotter after 5pm which is when most Chinese tourists want to take their showers" - Doesn't sound like 24hr hot water to me!
We went out (in the rain) to try out our ponchos and because we were bored of not riding. I'm a bit of a wimp though when it comes to riding in the rain so we were only out for about an hour.
Thu 13 Jan 05
No rain today! Hurray! We even got some blue sky later in the day.
We headed back the way the bus came from yesterday as we wanted to see some of that scenery again. Martin has changed to 125km cranks now as well - because the longer cranks got bent one time when he fell off. He took a while to get used to them so we took it pretty slowly to begin with. Also the road was pretty hilly today - which gave us some great views but it was hard work - I think I'm starting to build some strong leg muscles now.
Roger swapped unicycles with me for a couple of km so I could try out his 110mm cranks. Really cool - I clocked some really fast speeds on them - don't know if I could go up many hills using them though - and even more difficult to mount the unicycle (I haven't yet mastered mounting on my 125mm - but there again I never did really master mounting on the 150mm either - maybe this is a pattern...)
A great day for views and although it was only 40km, it was tiring. We came back on the bus to the same hotel as last night. And we discovered that this town has broadband internet so I get to write up some of my blog and answer a few e-mails.
Fri 14 Jan 05
My longest day yet - 69km, and the most beautiful. If anyone wants to do a one day cycle trip in China and wants the one with the best scenery, Da Xin to De Tian would be my recommendation.
The day begun with a fairly flat road on the plains twisting between the Karst formations. Then eventually rose up to look down into the valleys between the karst through some wonderful panoramas.
Roger started racing trucks up the mountains. The trucks were generally overloaded adn strained up the hills with steaming radiators and overheated brakes. Roger won a few races. Martin and I were content to just make it to the top of the hills without having to get off and push - we won a few and lost a few more.
Martin can now free-mount better than me - which is annoying considering I had 3 weeks head-start on him - not that I'm competitive or anything(!) - but if I don't learn to free-mount soon, Roger's shoulders are going to get pretty sore.
The scenery started well and just got better. Martin commented that it would be kind of nice to come round a corner or through a tunnel and see a boring housing estate instead of 'another bloody vista'
We all took lots of photos which we will no doubt try to bore our friends with when we get back to civilization - Photos are never quite the same as being there.
Our hotel from last night arranged to move our luggage to a good hotel in DeTian, near the big waterfall so we knew where we were going. It was Martin's last day of riding and he wanted to make the most of it - so instead of taking the bus late afternoon when we hadn't made it to our destination, we kept going. We didn't quite make it before dark and walked the last 2.5km on the very quiet roads in the pitch black - although I had a head-torch and Roger had a back red light so we could see and be seen OK. We arrived about 7.30pm.
We've been given the best rooms (at 240 yuan per night per room - the most expensive yet too - and that was with the 50% discount) in the best hotel in town - and apparently we have views of the waterfall from our rooms so I'm looking forward to waking up tomorrow...