China

Back onto proper roads today which made for better progress. We had covered about 60km by lunchtime so it was pretty easy to knock off the rest of the distance to Wuhan, another big capital city. The last 10km was a completely screwed up road churned to rubble and mud by the trucks, then typical crazy Chinese traffic once we reached the city. Time for a bit of a rest.

A rainy day riding along the dyke again. Two ferries required for river crossings which spiced things up a little, though one Chinese restaurant owner lied to us about one of the ferries being out of operation. He’ll be getting a negative review on Eatability.

Today’s ride was a little eventful, starting off with an extended 90 minute breakfast. In china an open shop door doesn’t actually mean that the restaurant is open. It just means that someone is awake. Breakfast was good though. Braised ribs and assorted stir fried oily veggies.

Smatterings of rain early in the morning as we left town didn’t last long and precipitated the usual jacket on, jacket off nonsense. I managed to withdraw money from an ATM without my card being swallowed, then we ended up on a road that was under construction. An entertaining diversion before we reached a toll road that forbid bicycles. Bob was under the impression that a ferry was in operation, but of course the new toll bridge had put the ferry out of service. But this being china, someone had spotted us riding down toward the disused ferry and alerted the local ute owner who showed up magically and offered to drive us across the bridge.

Our next riding stage was along a dyke that Bob claims was built 1000 years before the Dutch thought of such things. I beg to differ, and having seen the year 1999 written on a building today I now believe that all things currently standing in china that look old we’re built in that year.

30km of monotonous dyke riding later we found ourselves in Honghu, home to an albino hairdresser lady and the Missky Hotel, which is nice.

Bob and I rode from Miluo to Yueyang today. Not much to say really. Miluo is a smallish Chinese city, Yueyang is bigger. The road between them was well formed and a lot of bus drivers honked their air horns in my ear. Lunch in Yueyang was fish and I choked on a bone so hard that vomit came out my nose. Life is good.

China is full of surprises. Firstly, there is an incredible number of wealthy people here, at least that’s the impression you get looking at all the Audis, Porsche Cayennes and BMW X5s driving around. Secondly, the police are all shaven headed thugs, driving around in their cars smoking and intimidating people. Thirdly, be careful ordering blindly from a Chinese menu because you may end up eating pig intestines which smell very similar to a piggery and don’t taste much better.

A day in Hong Kong then onto Changsha the capital of Hunan province. Our flight was late so by the time we arrived at Changsha we didn’t have the energy to traipse into the city and find a hotel so just stayed at the airport hotel which was both expensive and exceedingly crappy, being a remnant of the old airport there. By 8pm the restaurant was closed so the receptionist suggested that we go back to the airport and eat KFC, which I did after eating the most overpriced Chinese buffet food available in all of Hunan province.

My air conditioner sounded like a motorbike had become trapped in the wall of hotel room so I instead chose to open the window and let in the dulcet sounds and smells of Changsha international airport to drift in the window and lull me to sleep.

We parked our bikes in the lobby while checking out which made the under utilised security person rather anxious. He didn’t want to wait for me to buy some water from the hotel shop and wanted the bikes out of the lobby pronto. We feared that this may foretell future interactions between hotel security personnel and our bicycles. This turned out to be correct as arriving in Changsha proper after 25km of dodging Chinese provisional drivers (they all appear to be) found us being chased off the forecourt of any hotel that had a doorman or security.

We settled on the Home Inn for tonight which is painted in a homely yellow as well as offering a reasonable room for 200 yuan. The rest of the day was spent on administrative chores such as SIM card acquisition and eating. Some minor touristic wandering rounded the day off.

Off to Miluo tomorrow, about 80km to the north.