Mike and Jen Cycle Asia

A long-overdue post on our trip home: California to Montreal

2010-05-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

Our apologies for not writing for so long - it's been a busy and we've gotten lazy, now that we've got more to do than bike and eat and sleep. Anyway, here goes.

After the last post at Morro Bay in CA, we continued up the coast for some more amazing cycling and camping.

Some typical views from the saddle.... coastline all the way.

Lots of quirky towns along the way, though this one probably had the quirkiest claim to fame...

Though the scenery was beautiful, it was starting to get a bit chilly as we made our way further north...

And just one last pitch for the hiker/biker campsites that dot the coast - they rock! No reservations required, comparatively cheap, well spaced (we usually had the choice of a couple over the course of 1 day biking,) and very well organized. Definitely makes the trip much simpler logistically and easy on the budget.

As we headed into San Fransisco we saw our first clues of the bike culture that's so predominant throughout the city.

The hills were tough (you might notice by the angle of my tire that I'm actually weaving diagonally up the road, trying to reduce the grade a little.)

Eventually though, we made it!

We didn't bike around much, as we were actually headed to the other side of the bridge for the night, where we stayed with a fellow cyclist we'd met about a week before who invited us to stay at his amazing home in Tiburon, just a short ferry-ride away from downtown San Fransisco.

The next morning we hopped the ferry to check out the sights.

The ferry ride gave us some great views of the downtown skyline and seafront.

Passing by Alcatraz on the way in...

After a day of wandering about the city, just before we were about to hop on the ferry to go back to Tiburon for the night, we stumbled across a huge bike rally, complete with three dudes who decided to join the rally in the nude. (We didn't know why, exactly, but it definitely did attract even more attention to the rally!)

Heading "home" to Tiburon for the night.

After hitting San Fran, we realized that it was going to be too cold and we were going to run out of time to do the whole pacific coast, so unfortunately Oregon and the rest of Northern California got the boot. Instead, we did a loop thru the wine country north of San Fransisco and the coast back down before hopping in a rental car to Seattle.

First we had to say bye to Carl and Candy. Thanks guys, we had an awesome stay and really appreciated the hospitality!

The quick loop thru the nearby wine & farm country and the coast north of SF was beautiful, with some particularly awesome camping in the huge redwood forests.

The view from the floor of our campsite.

And then we were off! After some time in SF laundromats and vietnamese restaurants, we hopped into a rental car in an attempt to drive the 1350km to Seattle in one day. Unfortunately, since I had somehow lost Mike's driver's licence on the highway about a week ago (don't ask!) my punishment was having to drive the whole way myself! It turned out to be an extremely easy drive between the huge quiet highway and our still strong backlog of good audiobooks to listen to, and we made it safe and sound that night to Seattle.

Seattle turned out to be kind of dead the next morning in terms of sightseeing, so we checked out the Museum of Flight which was pretty great, helped out alot by alot of cool history and artifacts from Boeing, its neighbour just down the road.

Mike disembarking from the Concorde...

We also caught a glimpse of the 787 taxiing around after it had just landed nearby. (It is huge!)

From Seattle, our plan was to bike through some of the San Juan islands, make our way back inland a little farther north and then bike up to visit Janelle and Geoff (my sister & her boyfriend) in Abbotsford, BC.

The islands were great, made even more so by the very cool CouchSurfing experiences we had along the way. It was our first time using the site and we didn't know what to expect - we stayed at four CouchSurfers' homes at four different spots on the islands and were super excited about them all. Everyone was super hospitable and it made for a great way to get some socializing in between the long stretches of lonely highway. (Though the scenery is great, we are finding the highways in North America to be comparatively quite lonely - we do miss the crowds of kids and farmers drying their produce and fruit stands and shops that lined the highways of Asia!)

Us with Jon, owner of the first Couch we surfed and Mike's new beer-brewing mentor.

You can't tell here, but the wind was actually so strong that it did at one point topple me right over into the ditch! First real fall since Mongolia, I've just finally now (about a month later) lost the last of the bruises!

A bridge on Anacortes island that gets 14,000 - 16,000 cars passing over it per year!

The trip around the islands involved alot of ferries, which were often fun breaks from the chilly weather.

At one point it actually snowed, further confusing our bewildered sense of season, which to this day is still convinced that winter's right around the corner.

The rest of our island tour was a mix of great scenery, alpacas and roadside junk piles. (We don't know why the last one was quite so common as it was !?!?)

We're convinced these guys used to work as understudies in Star Wars.

One of the many island "freepiles"...

Finally, on Easter morning, we headed for the Canadian border, hoping to get to Janelle & Geoff's in time for Easter supper!

Crossing the border that night, we were pretty pumped to be back on Canadian soil!

Not quite as heavily guarded as some of the borders we've crossed this year!! (In both these photos the road on the left is in Canada with a limit of 50Km/h, and the road on the right is in the U.S. with a limit of 35MPH!!)

The rest of our time in BC was spent relaxing and having a blast catching up with friends and family. It was great after so long being away from home to have so much time to visit. Thanks to Janelle & Geoff, Heidi, and Rose & Mo & the gang for letting us crash as we bummed around BC!

Mike and I hanging out with our niece Julia and getting to know our new nephew, Oliver.

While in Comox, we did take a trip up the mountain for our first and only visit of Winter that we'll have all year!

And lots and lots of visiting - thanks again to everyone!

Back in Saskatoon, we got to work resurrecting ourselves from oblivion. Turns out there's alot of paperwork to do to get back on the grid after so long, but it was a small price to pay for the luxury of getting OFF the grid, I suppose!

We also had lots of time to visit friends and fam at home, though unfortunately without taking any photos! There is something about being home that does make the camera come out alot less, but we hope to get over that hurdle now that we're back home and appreciating all the pics we've got of the past year! So on that note, here's a bit of us getting our new place in Montreal set up.

Mike setting up our new desk.

Unpacking - oh, so much unpacking to do!

Sitting down in all the clutter for our first meal in front of our new TV. (Yes, we finally bought one and will not continue watching on our 10-inch computer monitor all year!)

We're very happy to be home, to HAVE a home and all the nicities that come with (not packing and unpacking every day, cooking for ourselves, grocery shopping for SEVERAL days at a time, etc.) Mike's already back at school and getting into the swing of things, and I'm back at work on Monday!

We'll sit down and write more on our thoughts about this past year a little later - for now, this post is long enough and I've got the very last bits of unpacking to do. We're not sure what we'll do about this blog now that we're home - so you'll have to stay tuned to find out!

Back in North America - L.A. to Morro Bay

2010-03-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

Our last day in Singapore, after packing up our boxes, we decided to take a tour of Singapore's last big museum that we hadn't seen, the Asian Cultures Museum. One of the first exhibits we saw had an old Chinese saying that struck a chord.

This was well timed as the next day we were to leave Asia on a plane bound for LA, and slowly make our way home with the bikes up the Pacific coast. Though we're sad to leave Asia, it's time to at least start moving towards home.

That night our hosts Barry and Laura did a kick ass job of helping us fit in a bunch more crazy asian food before we left. It was sort of a "fear factor" meal as we chowed down on Frog Porridge, Turtle Soup, BBQ'd Stingray and other delicacies.

We made it through the trans pacific flight and amazingly our "hobo luggage" managed to make it intact as well.

After arriving into L.A. we set out to re-assembling our bikes and getting equipped. We had our camping gear (which we did not need for the last few months) and a bunch of bike repair supplies shipped to the local UPS store. Unfortunately when we got there the UPS store had rejected the shipments because they were addressed: Mike Scherman, C/O The UPS Store. Apparently they felt that the "care of" placed too much legal responsibility on them, so could not accept it unless it was re-addressed without the "care of". Ahhhhhhhhh! Feels good to be back! Although I now hate "The UPS Store", I still love UPS. I sorted it out with them instead and intercepted the driver and got our packages the next day and we set out on a beautiful ride out of L.A.

Below is a picture of Jen on the phone regarding a job for when she gets back to Montreal. Although it was kind of sad to think about going back to the real world, it was a pretty spot to take a call!

The weather here is amazing for cycling, and still nice enough for camping. The camp sites all the way up the coast are great! Here is Jen cooking up our supper at one of our camp sites.

An offshore oil rig visible from our camp site.

Jen at sunset.

Riding along happy to be back on the bike...

Scenery so far is great filled with beaches, wineries, strawberry farms, and fun little towns.

Jen riding up a pass...

Well that is all we've got for now. From here on we will be riding north to Vancouver for the next 25 days or so through California, Oregon and Washington states. We'll try to make the next post more interesting. Lots of fun stuff to take pics of here, but we've been kind of lazy with the pictures so far! Hope all is well and now that we are on our way back to Canada hopefully we will see some of you soon!

March 1 - 10: Exploring Bali

2010-03-10T22:27:00.001-08:00

After two weeks of a less nomadic lifestyle than we've had most of the past year, we were excited to get back on the road. This time it wasn't on our bikes - we decided Bali might be best seen by car, due to both the crazy traffic and the visit of our buddy Arun who came in from Toronto for the last ten days of our stay.

Our itinerary was pretty busy, but with all the beaches packed in, busy-ness isn't too hard to handle. The island was amazing - there are so many great things to see, almost all within a short drive from each other.

Our first day we rented the car and Mike (the only one of us with an International Driver's Licence) learned how to drive on the left side of the road without hitting either the pedestrians who seemed to love walking three across on one side of the road, or the large trucks who sped head-on towards us on our side of the line (where it existed).

Our first stop was at Semarapura to visit the palace of the last Balinese kingdom to surrender to the Dutch.

For the night, we made our way to the beach town of Padang Bai and relaxed as we watched the sun set over a bay of Balinese "spider boats" (don't know if that's the actual name...) and ate fresh shark, barracuda and fresh fruit juices.

Day two was one of our most eventful. In the morning, we spent an hour snorkelling all by ourselves at the beautiful Blue Lagoon Beach in Padang Bai. We saw lots of cool coral, pretty big fish and even saw a sting ray.

Just for kicks, I'll post the picture off the internet that most resembled the stingray we saw.

That afternoon, we made our way inland to the rice paddy town of Tirta Gangga and went on an awesome hike through the rice paddies, forests and local villages. The scenery was amazing and it was fun to get off the beaten tourist track.

Our guide, Komang Gede, did an amazing job of explaining the local flora and fauna, and explain cultural points of interest we came across.

There was a huge variety of bugs and fruit trees in only a small patch of forest near the mountain tops.

A spider Komang called "not very big" and offered to let crawl up his arms when he saw how squeamish we were. (We declined)

The Balinese version of a cricket.

The forest was full of cool fruits... There were pineapples, lychee, mangosteens, coconuts, bananas, vanilla, cocoa, coffee, avocados and lots more...

Ever the coffee fan, Mike bought some beans grown and roasted right on the mountain.

The same family was also in the midst of preparing some cocoa beans.

At the top of the mountain, we visited a shared Hindu/Buddhist temple.

We asked Komang some questions about Bali's religions, and he passed on a touching anecdote from his grandfather. To quote him, "Your religion and your symbols are just your path. There's lots of paths, but we're all climbing the same mountain." (He got the point across even more clearly with the help of an impromptu chalk diagram.)

Finally, the end of the hike we slowly wandered down the hill through a couple tiny villages.

The highlight of the whole hike might have been when Komang mentioned there was a cock fight going on, and asked if we wanted to see it. We had no huge desire to see two chickens fight one another to the death, but we were curious to see the whole village gather around and watch. It turned out to be pretty cool - judging by the number of gaping stares we got, tourists likely don't venture through here too often.

Some type of roulette game with a ball and Twister-like mat.

One of the cock owners showing off his bird.

The crowd watches the fight.

Finally, we ended the day with a walk through the local water palace, the feature attraction of the town, and unfortunately our worst meal while in Bali. (That's not saying much, the food here's great, we just picked the wrong restaurant.)

After all that hiking, we needed a lower-key day, so the next morning we took off for the coast.

Our first adventure was a scuba lesson for the boys (I decided to snorkel) and some time scuba diving & snorkelling off the coast of Tulumben where an American cargo ship sunk many years ago and is now overgrown with coral and home to lots of beautiful fish.

That morning, the town seemed to be having their local track and field meet, so we got to watch some school kids race down the main stretch of highway through town.

The rest of the day we spent watching the waves from our beachside balcony at nearby Amed. This was our favorite beach town in Bali - super relaxed, beautiful scenery and one of our best meals there... over a supper of freshly-caught baraccuda, fantastic guacamole and mango shakes, we watched the sun set, watched the kids use the fishing boats on the beach as jungle gyms and listened to our hotel owners groove on their guitar and bongo drums. Truly paradise...

Catching our supper...

The next morning we waded out about 5 feet off the beach and started snorkeling. Didn't take very far to start seeing some cool stuff. Right when we got in we swam into a Finding Nemo-like school of 200+ thin silver fish, not at all bothered by our presence there.

We also saw something Mike and I had seen in an Imax film once - there was a big purply-blue fish that had his mouth open making a big "O", letting a little fish come in and clean it out. Though the fish weren't quite as big as the ones at the wreck, this was probably our coolest snorkelling spot yet.

Later we took off on a rarely used, super narrow road that climbed up the nearest mountain/volcano towards the east with cliffs on every side that dropped into the ocean. The views were amazing (though unphotographable) and Arun and I were very grateful to Mike, who had to work hard to get us up and down the hill without falling off a cliff or running head on into oncoming trucks full of fish.

Along with the ocean/cliff panoramas, the road provided great views of daily life in the local villages, with all the boat-carving, fish-drying and such that went on at the side of the road.

The dizzying driving continued as Mike weaved inland towards Gunung Batur, a volcano in the middle of the island we planned to hike up the next day. The volcano is a double caldera, which means at one point it collapsed in on itself and the volcano is now smaller and surrounded by a donut-shaped valley full of of lava, lakes and villages that would have previously been right inside the old volcano. Eventually we arrived and tried to snap a quick shot from the outside rim, but instead turned back to the car to avoid being attacked by some very aggressive touts wanting to sell us everything from fruit to knives to t-shirts.

The night only got weirder from there. The village, normally quite touristy in the dry season, was absolutely deserted. To top it off, our guidebook warned us of a KGB-like association that has a monopoly on guided tours up the volcano. We noticed their presence right away, it almost felt like there were informants all over town making sure that if we hiked, it was with them. As a result, the tour prices were outrageous compared to activities on the rest of the island, but well worth the security of knowing that the local mob was with you, not against you! Luckily, the guy who actually guided us up the mountain was great, and the hike was amazing.

After two hours of hiking in the dark, we watched the sun rise over the rim of the outside crater and surrounding mountains, perched in the middle at the top of the new volcano.

Sunrise was followed by a breakfast of bread, eggs and bananas, the latter two cooked in a steamhole on the volcano.

The rest of the morning we spent exploring the various peaks of the volcano, some active as recently as the early 2000s. (Those ones we could only peer at from far above.)

After the volcano Mike drove our tired selves back to the beach, this time at Lovina. It was on this drive that he really came into his own, with swerves around pedestrians and both-side-of-the-road driving that rivalled any Balinese. We got a few looks of surprise every now and then when people saw it was a tourist driving.

At Lovina we spent the rest of the day chilling in the pool, invented "Bali-ball" which is sure to make it to the Olympics some year soon, and savoured the variety of great food and massage options. The next morning we headed out at sunrise on a spider-boat and eventually caught sight of some of Lovina's famous dolphins.

It was a bit of an early wake up, for the second day in a row.

The dolphins made the boys quite happy they didn't get up early for no reason.

After the successful dolphin viewing we loaded back up in the car. First we made a quick stop and Munduk to visit one of their many waterfalls...

... then a lunch stop an a tiny but awesome roadside Warung...

... and finally we arrived in Ubud, the final stop on our tour of Bali. We stayed here two nights, and enjoyed the great shopping, fantastic restaurants and nice ambiance. The whole town (and island) was getting ready for two days of Hindu festivities the next week, so there were all these cool huge puppets being constructed all over town.

We were also excited to meet up with Hera, our cycling buddy from Holland that joined us for a week or so in Thailand. We'd missed her once we split up before Malaysia, so it was great to catch up on the adventures she'd had since then. The four of us lounged the rest of our time in Ubud away with great meals, lots of swimming and shopping, and some of the best massages any of us have ever had.

Though it doesn't look like it here, our two buds got along just great and made the time in Ubud a blast... :)

We finally left Ubud on the afternoon of the 9th to drive Arun back in time for his flight that night. We were sad to see him go, and spent the next day moping a little, chilling out in Kuta waiting for our own flight. Though we were pretty sick of Kuta and glad to go when we did, the week that preceded it was more than worth it. Thanks for your company Arun, it made a great week of adventures in Bali even more fun!

Feb 28: Singapore & Bali: Re-learning the art of conversation

2010-02-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

Though Justin & Chelsea provided a great day and a half of warm-up, the next two weeks in Singapore and Bali definitely helped us re-learn the art of having a good, long, english conversation with someone other than the two of us. Being on the bikes so much, often all by ourselves, has definitely impacted our conversational skills.... the fact that Mike and I have had identical experiences, reading and listening material all year long has led to alot of laughing at 3-word jokes, finishing of each others' sentences and general laziness when it comes to expressing our thoughts and ideas.

Anyway, much thanks to Laura and Barry who were forced to see us over the bulk of the learning curve that was our re-integration into society. Other than that we weren't very productive - we barely managed to go for a run and get either one errand OR one sightseeing activity done each day, but we definitely enjoyed the slower rhythm.

One of our most annoying errands was scavenging bike boxes from the local bike shops and (somewhat sweatily) dragging them through the local subways, locals and security people staring at us the whole way...

We loved the Singapore Zoo... the "cages" seemed almost nonexistent for many animals and we got up close and personal with many of the less dangerous ones - orangutans, lemurs, bats and birds.

The plight of the polar bears in this hot country was a little dismal, though.

Nerds that we are, we also loved the Science Centre... though the plethora of pushy schoolkids kinda annoyed Mike. Judging by the height of most of the displays, but we guessed they might actually be the target audience and didn't complain. :P

In the evenings, we enjoyed quite a few great meals at home and around Singapore with Laura and Barry. We profited from their wealth of experience they have with Singaporean cuisine and tasted some of the best (and only) bone marrow and chili crab either of us have ever had!

Chili crab by the sea...

Bone marrow at the hawkers' stalls...

After a week with Barry & Laura, we were ready to practice our newly-refreshed social skills on a bigger crowd. We jumped on a plane and headed to Bali for Matt's wedding (an old friend from Saskatoon), where we got to hang out with him, other friends from back home, his new wife Lilian and a bunch of their friends from Taiwan.

The wedding was beautiful, and provided a great excuse for a week of relaxation and fun. We spent days by the pool, ate delicious food and had a blast partying in beautiful Balinese villas, pubs and clubs.

The beautiful couple...

Us in the best dress clothes we could rummage up in Bali's shops...

The happy couple with Matt's buddies on the beach.

For a day trip after the wedding, Mike, Andrew (another friend from home) and I went to a nearby temple on a cliff, famous for its aggressive, thieving monkeys. Luckily, we came home with all our stuff intact.

Mike stares a monkey down...

One fellow visitor and his car were not so lucky...

It was a great first week in Bali, with lots of fun in the sun (but even more in the shade!) Big thanks to Matt and Lilian for hosting us at their beautiful villas and fantastic wedding ceremony, and all the good friends (both new and old) that we partied with all week. Thanks guys for all the fun!

February 14, 2010 - We arrive in Singapore and bask in the glory that is drinking tap water!

2010-02-13T19:03:00.000-08:00

We last posted in the Cameron Highlands and since then we have continued our bike down the Malaysian peninsula arriving yesterday into Singapore. The ride down the west coast of the country was really enjoyable and below are some pictures from the ride.

Leaving the highlands we knew we had to descend 2000m, so it was a good time to replace our brake pads which were on their last millimeter of wear.

The two hour descent was mostly through a rain forest. We quickly found out that it wasn't called a rain forest for nothing.

Palm plantations constantly lined both sides of the highway and we would regularly pass palm oil refineries (I have no idea if that is actually what they are called) which we could smell long before we could see. Mmmmmm, oil!

After a couple days biking we arrived into Klang, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur and took the next day to explore the capital. This picture is of me upon arriving at our hotel. The heat was really zapping my energy, so I was more than happy to take the next day off.

A fun group of buildings I saw that grabbed my eye: buildings of all color living in harmony.

An obligatory photo of the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, now the world's fourth tallest buildings. They were OK but seemed really bitter about not being the tallest any longer. In an attempt to still sound important they kept on saying they were still the world's tallest "twin towers", but that just made them sound desperate.

Jen eating what became our standard fare: a self serve plate of all you can eat Indian food with fresh squeezed orange juice (about $2.50 a meal). Lucky thing we bike a lot because it is anything but low calorie.

A local mosque in Klang. I think mosques are by far my favorite type of buildings on the trip. They just look so cool. I can't believe the Swiss banned minirets (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8384835.stm). Might as well just ban awesomeness.

The next two photos take some explaining. I saw and heard this apartment above me while Jen was checking us into our hotel with dozens of birds flying into and out of it and had no idea why anyone would let a nice building go to hell like that. We later found out that it is what is called a "Bird Hotel" for Swiflets. This type of birds make their nests out of their own saliva which Chinese people eat for their supposed health benefits and are sold fo $2,000-$10,000 a kilogram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird's_nest_soup). So it turns out that if birds come a knocking, you evict your tenants and even go so far as making the building as "cave like as possible" with high tech humidity control.

Once we knew what sounds the birds make (they use echo location) we started finding these bird hotels everywhere. This one was a luxury type place, custom made and guarded with high fences and video surveillance. Apparently they cost a huge amount and sometimes the birds just don't come, but this one was full!!

Not all rides are beautiful! But ugly landscapes need love too right?

We stopped for lunch one day next to a car wash, so dropped off our bikes to be washed while we ate. They cleaned them by hand for 40 minutes and charged us 60 cents a bike. Today in Singapore I passed a sign advertising a car wash for a special price of $45 so I am glad we did it before crossing over!! The crew at the wash wanted to take our photo before we left, so we took the opportunity to grab one as well. They were really nice and we spent a while talking to them.

Our last real destination in Malaysia was Malacca and it was a really fun town. It had more museums than any city I have seen of that size, an awesome historical district, and as seen in the photo below Chinatown was all decorated for the holidays.

The tourist mode of transportation of choice in Malacca was the tri-shaw, and to attract tourists the drivers pimped their rides with flowers, stereos, fans, etc. This was one of the more elaborate that we saw.

Upon arriving in Singapore we moved into Barry and Laura's place (more on them later as they are out of town right now, stay tuned) and met up with Justin and Chelsea. It seems kind of crazy, but the four of us have been friends since we were about 6 years old!!

This photo is of Chelsea, Justin and Jen in the subway on the way to the New Years fireworks.

The crew at the Lunar New Years show. The fireworks were great, the crowds were orderly, there were more porta-potties than people, loads of free seating, and we didn't wait in a single line for food, the subway or the sidewalk. Only in Singapore. I don't exactly miss the chaos of the rest of Asia, but it does feel odd.

Well that's all I have for photos right now. Jen and I are hanging out in Singapore for the next week or so while we explore the city and take care of a few tasks: job applications, school prep stuff, bike packing, and planning out the next leg of the trip, etc.

Next week we fly to Bali for another long time friend's wedding (no biking there), and then we grab a flight to L.A. to begin the North American edition of our honeymoon ride!

Enjoy the Olympics. Go Canada!

Loving Malaysia: Langkawi to Cameron Highlands

2010-02-06T00:32:00.000-08:00

For some reason, each time we've entered a new country, it seems to be the best one yet, without fail. Maybe we're just easily excited - I'm sure in retrospect we'll have our favorite places in a number of different countries, not just be in love with wherever we happen to find ourselves. Either way, Malaysia fits the pattern and we're already thrilled with what we've seen so far.

We spent our last day in Langkawi a little hermit-like, chilling out in our hotel room, in restaurants and in internet cafes cuz we were so zonked. As a result, no pictures of Langkawi, cuz they'd have been pretty lame.

By the time we got to Georgetown, we were refreshed and ready to be tourists again. Good thing, because it's a pretty cool city.

Georgetown has alot of British colonial architecture, one of the best examples being their City Hall...

There's also a very interesting mix of Malaysia's three main cultures of Malay, Chinese and Indian, though in Georgetown the Chinese influence does seem to be the strongest. Either way, it makes for an amazing array of street food. So far the Indian food is our favorite, but it's all pretty delish.

The Langkawi and Penang islands were both pretty touristy, so we were anxious to see what mainland Malaysia would be like crossing over the next morning into Butterworth. Our first impressions were that it was the cleanest, wealthiest place we'd been so far with by far the best infrastructure.

Crossing the bridge from Georgetown to Butterworth at daybreak...

That day we made it to Kuala Kangsar which, to our surprise, is a royal capital (I think there's one in every province, each with their own sultan). A few minutes touring the city were enough to convince us that our guidebook probably wasn't lying when it told us it was the most impressive royal city in Malaysia.

Our favorite building we've seen on this trip so far, the Ubidiah Mosque built by the sultan in the early 1900s.

The royal palace was also amazing, but so gigantic and surrounded by equally amazing trees that it simply wasn't possible to capture it in a photo.

After that pleasant surprise of a destination, we headed to Ipoh for a short day. The day after Ipoh would see us gain 1550m elevation over 90km of almost straight climbing, so we took advantage of our short cycling day to see the sights of Ipoh and rest up a little.

On the way into town we stopped at a Buddhist temple built into a limestone cave. It was pretty cool in itself, and we also got a kick out of the fact that we had visited a Catholic church in Georgetown, a Muslim mosque the next day and a Buddhist temple the day after.

We also had the chance to notice some more modern cultural quirks... Like back home, Malaysians also seem to like the drive-thru too, as evidenced by these McD's drivethru stickers seen on a large number of cars.

A strangely familiar sight, though for a very different reason than we're used to. When we saw a parking lot filled with cars like this, we hypothesized that it must be to avoid melting the rubber to the windshield throughout the 40C afternoons, rather than getting the wipers buried by the daytime snowfall.

Ipoh also had its fair share of colonial architecture, as evidenced by the local train station...

The town was surrounded by limestone hills, which made for a nice view in pretty much any direction.

The next morning we headed up the jungle-y hills, towards the famous Cameron Highlands.

It was a long slog, and having long abandoned the practice of stocking up on food (since there have been food stalls pretty much everywhere for the last many months), we almost had to start eating dry instant oatmeal packs for lack of other source of food. Needless to say, we were very happy to reach the top and its plethora of restaurants, food stalls and hotels.

The Highlands is a region of high fertility, with temperatures that stay between 10C and about 20C all year long, lots of humidity and as a result, LOTS of greenhouses.

Today, we took a rest day to explore the area's sights. There are many to choose from, with Tea Plantations, Bee Farms, Butterfly Farms, Strawberry Farms, Orchid and Rose Plantation, etc etc etc. We rented a motorbike and decided to hit the Tea Plantation, Butterfly Farm and Bee Farm, the Bee Farm being the only unimpressive one of the three.

The Boh Tea Plantation was very interesting, and made for great debates between Mike (the coffee lover) and myself (a huge tea fan).

The fantastic scenery around the plantation...

Mike samples some of the local brew...

We also got a free tour of the factory where the tea is processed, often with the same machines used over 75 years ago.

The Butterfly Farm was probably Mike's favorite, and made for some awesome photo-taking opportunities.

The farm also had some cool bugs, including our two favorites, which seem born to be examples in a Biology textbook. Both were almost impossible to find at first glance, even though there were about 10 of them in each small cage.

The stick bug...

... and our favorite, the tree leaf bug.

So far, that's it! Tomorrow we head back down the hill, hoping to get to Klang in two days so that we have time for another rest day to explore Kuala Lumpur, after which we should have another 4-5 cycling days to get to Singapore.

But for now, we're off to enjoy more local fresh strawberries and a Chinese hot pot.

Goodbye Thailand, Hello Malaysia! (Hat Bang Ben to Langkawi, Malaysia)

2010-01-30T23:09:00.000-08:00

Time is getting hard to keep track of, so let's say it's been about a week that we've been biking beach to beach along the western coast of Thailand. Somehow, the mornings of hot but lovely cycling, afternoons of lounging by the ocean and evenings of delicious fresh seafood have all melted together a bit (and I literally mean they've melted.... we spend about half our biking hours and much of our restful afternoons in about 38C - 42C heat!)

After our rest day in Hat Bang Ben, we cycled down the coast of the Krabi, Trang and Satun provinces, catching highlights such as the watery national park of Phang Nga, with its many limestone caves and islands, including one nicknamed after a James Bond film shot there.

Some drawings on a wall of one of the limestone caves, said to be some thousands of years old...

A fishing village on the edge of one of the islands, built almost entirely over the water...

Mike still managed to find some bikes lying around the village, though their use in such a village must have been severely limited...

Cycling here is very easy, logistically and otherwise, especially compared with some of our earlier destinations. Roads are perfectly paved with large shoulders. Between sunrise and early afternoon we can easily cover a hundred or so km with as many roadside drink and noodle stops as we can possibly handle. The odd ferry we have to take is also very easy, with none of the hassle we had before arriving in SE Asia about bringing bikes on public transportation - they get LOTS of bikes here, those battles were fought long ago.

Afternoons, evenings and the rare rest days (we've only needed two since Bangkok, as the early starts leave lots of time in the afternoons for lazing around) are almost exclusively spent in shady hammocks, beachside huts and other such wonderful places.

The only thing we feel we've missed out a little on this route is some access to "real" Thai culture. It's a little too much "falang" (foreigner) culture we've been exposed to on this stretch, though we certainly expected it, hopping from one beach resort to another. We were ready for a break - the most special glimpses into real-life local culture seem to come at a price of muddy roads clogged with haze and construction, lack of accomodation, communication barriers and such... We've taken many a break to re-energize our legs, but after almost seven straight months, we were ready for a chance to re-energize our "cultural" endurance as well. If/when we come back to Thailand, we'd love to visit the many areas north of Bangkok where so much of the local activity isn't dedicated to catering to tourists.

As we left the beach-happy province of Krabi, headed south through Trang and Satun, the falang-stops did get fewer and farther between, and the towns got progressively more Muslim as we approached Malaysia.

A bunch of girls on their way to school that we shared a ferry back from Ko Lanta with...

On our second-last day in Thailand, we were sad to say goodbye to Hera in Trang, where she left us to go to Chiaya on the east coast of Thailand for a 10-day meditation retreat. Luckily it was only a temporary goodbye, as we plan to meet back up with her in Bali in a month or so. That said, we had such a blast cycling and beach bumming through Thailand with her, so we couldn't part ways without a tinge of sadness as we left in the opposite direction.... :(

Our last day in Thailand turned out to be a bit of gong-show. We had planned for about 115km to the ferry at Satun, where we would take a ferry to the Malaysian island of Langkawi and do a quick bike to a beach resort on the island to stay that night. It ended up to be a bit longer, hotter and windier of a day than we expected, but we showed up at the pier in good form with plenty of time to spare before the ferry took off.

Unfortunately, by the time we arrived in Langkawi we had lost our gameface a little, and set off without bike clothes, supper, good directions or hotel reservations towards the beach town we planned to stay at. By the time we arrived the light had just disappeared, and our sweaty, hungry, tired hotel-search left us empty-handed. Turns out reservations are required on a Saturday night at the most touristy-spot in the country!?! Not the best news after what turned out to be not only one of the hottest, but also our longest and farthest biking day yet, at a total of 147km from sunrise to sunset.

We managed to snag two beds in the sketchiest hostel dorm we have ever been in, packed in a barn-like structure with about 20 other people, right next to the spitting and wheezing fellow who had what seemed like the Ebola virus, wistfully thinking of our beautiful Thai beach huts as we fell asleep to the buzzy horror-film-like flicker of the bathroom's defective fluorescent lights. Not a great start to Malaysia, but that must mean it only goes up from here!

(Note to reader: we now post this from the comfort of our equally comfy Malaysian bungalow, so last night's horror can safely be blamed on the authors, not the new country in which they find themselves.)

January 22, 2010 - Riding down the Thai coast...

2010-01-22T03:30:00.000-08:00

Well the last post that I made (Mike here again, Jen is in our hotel room nursing a bit of a sunburn) I was complaining about us being sick, but after a few days in Vientiane we were feeling better and jumped on our bikes and cycled across the border into Thailand. We then caught a train to Bangkok as we do not have enough time to cycle all the way to Singapore, and north-eastern Thailand got voted as the place to skip over (sorry north-eastern Thailand, but the internet made you sound boring and I believe everything the internet says!)

As I am in an internet cafe right now with no fan or A/C and it is about 40 degrees in here, I am going to jump straight to the photos...

This is Jen riding over the "Friendship Bridge" from Laos into Thailand. After starting our trip in former Soviet countries, we got the impression that crossing any border was a massive P.I.T.A, but South-East Asian countries have proved us wrong. The crossing was quick and painless!

Finally back in the land of 7-11! We have been dreaming of Slurpy breaks during our riding for about 8 months now, and as Thailand has something like 4,000 7-11s, we can finally achieve this dream!

Jen having a beer in Bangkok. We stayed for three nights, and were happy to leave. Big cities aren't really our thing these days, and Bangkok was my least preferred city that we have been to so far.

A sign on the Bangkok subway. We were thankful that we didn't see any Monks as our legs were tired after a day of walking around the city.

Any space that could be carved out of the city had people living in it. The train tracks were full little communities coming within inches of passing trains.

After nearly 8 months of cycling, we finally get our first sight of an ocean! We first cycled down the Pacific coast and later crossed over the peninsula and are now riding down the Indian coast. This is a picture of Jen and Hera. We met Hera, a dutch cyclist riding for 6 months in S.E. Asia, on the train a week or so ago and have cycling together since then (you can read her blog here). After 8 months with only me to talk to, I think Jen was starting to get a little tired of me, so I think she really appreciates having Hera around!

I have no idea what would make a tree grow at such an odd angle?

Jen and Hera...

We are just now starting to enter the rubber plantations. Here is some of the rubber drying.

Boats. I don't really have any more to add to this photo. The blue and orange one looks nice....

While Thailand is amazing. It does have a downside. The temperature gets to about 35 degrees by 9:30 and has gotten as high as 41!!

In an effort to avoiod the 41 degree highs, we have been setting off at first light. This means we are usually done our cycling by noon, but also some dark mornings!

Jen and Hera. I wanted to get a nice panning photo taken, but after one try I decided it was too hot to try again so this is as good as it gets for now!

At Laem Son National Park we took a break day and did a boat tour of the islands. Not a bad way to kill some time, but resulted in the aforementioned sun burn on Jen.

Jen and I on the beach. A much different trip from what we had while in Mongolia!

A Mangrove tree in the ocean. With 40 degree temperatures most days it makes sense that he decided to move to the sea.

As we go farther south, we are seeing more and more Muslims villages along the coast. This was a really neat Muslim fishing village on a tiny island.

Well that is all for now. I put alot of photos in this post, but if you still want to see more you can click here. Take care!

January 10, 2010 - Struggling through Laos...

2010-01-10T01:38:00.000-08:00

Mike here this time posting from the Lao capital of Vientiane.

I am sure I will complain about too much in this post as Jen and I are feeling a little under the weather this week. Because of this I apologize if this post ends up being 'bitchy'. (Note: I added the quotation marks to make it more classy and less profane in case any kids are reading...yes quotation marks do work like that. Tell your friends.)

We left Vinh in Vietnam a week or so ago and made our way toward the Lao border which was a day and a half ride away. Along the way we saw this boat in a field. It seemed out of place. The locals though seemed to think that the giant white man biking along the road next to it was the real thing that didn't belong, so who am I to judge.

This is a photo of Jen approaching the border to Laos. We got across the border without any problems and the only downside was that Canadians have the highest fee for an entry visa into Laos of any nation. Maybe they are unaware of how nice we are?

The funniest part of the crossing was when I handed the guy at the gate our passports. He opened one, looked at the photo, looked at me, nodded in approval and closed the passport. He then opened the second passport, looked at the photo, looked at Jen, and then looked back at me with a confused look on his face. He thought that both passport photos were of me!! Even though I clearly have a beard and short blond hair in both the photo and in person, and Jen has long black hair in both her photo and in person.

Jen and I argued for a bit as to which of us should feel more insulted, but then just decided that its not really a big deal because really, all white people look the same.....

The moment we crossed the border (which was atop a mountain range) the temperature jumped 10 degrees and the scenery became stunning....

It was quickly visible that Laos is a little poorer than Vietnam. Most of the homes were either straw or mud and the amount of new construction had dropped a lot.

The ride out of the mountains was really nice, but did have some insanely steep climbs that we had to suffer through.

A shot of Jen passing through a small town. I'd imagine this area (rte 8) would have some amazing rock climbing.

Another pretty picture. Well as pretty a picture as I can take.

Me glowing as I push up a climb. The sign said 10% grade, but I doubt they were being honest!

Jen and I relaxing at the top of a climb.

We found this spectacular view at the the top of one of the climbs.

Before coming on this trip, I kind of felt that there weren't that many people living in straw and mud huts other than two out of the three little piggies. I was way off on this. The huge number of homes we have seen have been mud, straw, bamboo, etc. They seem to do the job just fine, but as a kid growing up in Canada it never really seemed like a possibility. An ice castle sure...but straw, come on!

School kids everywhere in Laos! I read today that the median age in Laos is 19 (for reference it is about 40 in Canada) and you could really see this coming through the country. Its like Lord of the Flies out there! Thankfully the kids were very nice and respectful. No slingshots to my back in Laos!

Three days before our planned arrival in Vientiane, Jen and I started getting sick. We were not sure if it was heat stroke (it was 36C during the day), a flu, malaria (it wasn't malaria), a cold, or something creepy and tropical that we haven't even heard of. Either way it made the last few days of riding 'goddamn' awful.

Once we were 140km out of the capital, we tried to make a run for it, but after 90km in the pouring rain our bodies couldn't push through our mystery illness anymore, so we grabbed a room at some hotel (see photo below) on the highway to take a break from our problems and hope they would just disappear by the time we started again (I believe Steve-o would call this "proroguing our bike trip"). By morning we were still feeling like dirt, but loaded up, put on our music and rode the last 60km in Vientiane.

Me in my sleeping bag trying to pass the time at our tiny hotel.

Here is Jen riding into Vientiane. We were pumped to have finally made it!

After a few days in town we are now feeling much better. Whatever bug we had has started to pass and we have started exploring town. Vientiane is an amazing city. It is only about 230,000 people, but the restaurants, stores and sights feel more like a huge western city. There is a huge selection of great restaurants so we have been feasting a lot and resting up! Although Vientiane may not be the cheapest city we have been to, it is probably the best value so far.

So that's all for now. After a couple more days here we are going to take a train to Bangkok, and then get back on our bikes going down Thailand and Malaysia.

Cheers!

Happy New Year! (Dien Ben Phu to Vinh)

2009-12-31T18:04:00.000-08:00

So, after much deliberations we ended up continuing our planned route through Northwest Vietnam, instead of crossing over early into Laos as we were considering in our previous post. No real reason to speak of - it's hard picking between places to bike here... everything's often quite beautiful, friendly, cheap and interesting, and we've never been to any of them so picking routes is a little like tossing a coin.

Anyway, we decided on the Vietnam route and chilled out in Dien Ben Phu for a rest day before setting off, checking out the local war museum describing the Vietnamese victory over the French back in 1954.

The Vietnamese (red lights) close in on the French (green lights).
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Mike at a bomb crater at A1 hill in downtown Dien Ben Phu.

Setting back out on the bikes on Christmas Eve morning, we got an early Christmas gift from Vietnam. Up until now, the weather in Vietnam had been foggy and chilly, often as low as 5C and rarely above a damp 15C or so. After our first small pass out of Dien Ben Phu, all of a sudden we left the fog and descended into a lush jungle-y valley that we didn't leave for days. The next two days of Christmas Eve and Christmas biking were our best yet in Vietnam with gorgeous scenery dotted by limestone karsts, 15C - 30C temperatures with constant sunshine, banana trees and poinsetta bushes all around, villages teeming with the friendliest people we had met yet... we were showered with "hellos," huge smiles and hi-fives by traditionally-dressed old grandmas, tiny kids riding their water buffaloes through roadside rice paddies, and everyone else in between.

We also managed to land our best stay yet of all the trip on Christmas Eve... in the tiny town of Tuan Giao, we stayed a the Hong Ky Hotel, operated by a very friendly family out of their home. As a result, we spent Christmas Eve and morning dining on delicious food and mango shakes in their garden and just generally relaxing in the most hospitable and tropical-feeling place we've been so far. We even bumped into the local Santa Claus that night as he came by to deliver a gift to the hotel owner's granddaughter!

Our Christmas tree this year was a little unconventional...

The scenery and over-the-top friendliness of the people tapered off a little as we got back into more populated areas (probably a good thing as our voices were getting a little hoarse and our waving hands quite sore), but there were still plenty of interesting sights to keep our minds entertained...

In the small town of Moc Chau we stumbled across an amazing bakery with the best pastries, donuts and bread we've had for many many months. We also treated ourself to some fresh yogurt (Moc Chau is famous for it's dairy products) which was fantastic...

But, for me at least, one of the most gratifying moments came the next day in Mai Chau. Since we're both on the same level language-wise here, Mike's been taking over the ordering of food and reserving of hotels here in Vietnam, giving me a break from the last six months of it when it made most sense for me to do it. Throughout those six months, it's been a heavy burden always being responsible for the single most important aspect of the trip - the food. I must admit, there have been times when a daunting menu full of too many unfamiliar characters, a misunderstood explanation, or simply a moment of unilateral culinary adventurousness has led us to some interesting meals that haven't always put a smile on my dear (hungry & tired) husband's face... see the incident of the Chicken Head or ask about the case of the still unidentified animal's intestines for more details....

Anyway, Mike finally understood my pain (or I understood his?) one supper in Mai Chau as the restaurant owner brought out a big fat pig's nose, stewed in mushrooms and beans, for our main dish.

He must have seen the looks on our faces or the very tentative way we poked our chopsticks at it to verify that it truly was a huge pig's snout (the whiskers sealed the deal for us). We were tempted not to touch it at all, but the very friendly restauranteur came by and patiently cut it into pieces, pointed at the meat inside and looked on quite intently as he left us to it. Turns out the meat inside a pig's snout tastes almost exactly like the dark meat on a turkey, and we must have done with it what we're supposed to, because as we left the friendly fellow looked very relieved and shook our hands very gladly, almost as if he had been expecting us to storm out and leave his night's work wasted and untouched. (The stew was quite delicious, actually...)

The last few days of biking were quite uneventful... one day of biking was absolutely gorgeous, while the others were just alright. As we left the hills, we left the interesting hill tribes and got into quite flat agricultural territory with an increasing number of pesky children. Mike got a pebble in the back from one kid's slingshot and two young kids with knives decided to chase us on their bikes up a hill. (It was in an area where everyone from 5 to 85 seemed to be either carrying a knife, or using it to wave at us, slice down bamboo shoots or butcher chickens on the side of the road... the kids themselves seemed quite harmless but we didn't wait to find out... instead we just sped up and left them lagging far behind.)

And some collages of the bikes of Vietnam, brought to you by Mike...

Today we're spending New Year's day resting here in Vinh, and will take off tomorrow for Laos... it should take us one day to get to the border, and after that you'll likely hear from us next in about 5 days or so from Vientiane. Until then, Happy New Year!

December 23, 2009 - Lao Cai to Dien Ben Phu (Vietnam)

2009-12-22T18:35:00.000-08:00

We have loved the last 5 days cycling through north west Vietnam, so we thought we would post some photos as we may be crossing into Laos tomorrow (we're debating the route options

over mango shakes and green tea right now.)

For those of you that are interested in the route we just took, we finally got our tracker back up and working. If you click on the link on the left of this page, it will take you to a real time map with our tracks (email us for a password).

Jen leaving China and entering Vietnam.

The last five days we cycled through north western Vietnam which is home to numerous hill tribes including the H'mong, Dzao, and the Thai (according to our Lonely Planet). The women were always in very fun and colorful traditional dress which changed depending on the group and area... sometimes even very young girls were wearing the full get-up, big earrings, headdress, skirts and all. Here is a small selection of some of the people.

Though their dress is quite traditional, these ladies are often quite well connected, often speaking great English or being almost glued to their cell phones, as this woman was.

This very friendly family lived in one of the poorer villages we passed through, and helped us out with some directions to the next town.

The kids were by far the best part of this leg. The cycling was very rough and hilly, but at the end of the day our arms were just as tired from waving back to all the kids as our legs were from cycling. Kids (and all the adults for that matter) were always running out of their homes screaming hello and waving to us making the days incredibly fun.... we couldn't get over the sometimes invisible hellos coming from kids and construction workers in the fields and from high up half-built buildings and roads, so far away we could barely even see them, though we could sure hear them!

I made a little collage of these three kids waving at us as we rode by them. This was the only time I really manged to get this caught well on film, but this exact thing occurred literally hundreds of times each day.

Two boys doing their chores around the home.

The first three days were in the mountains and the weather was very cool, rainy and foggy. In spite of the dense fog we would still hear many a distant "helloooo" coming through the fog.

The valley we rode through was soon to be flooded by a large dam project, and the construction on the road to raise it above the new water level kept us in constant mud.

Jen interrupts two pigs in their mid afternoon mud bath on the "highway".

Because of the raising of the road, there was often road construction going on above us, which made some section a little sketchy. Road construction is way more open in this part of the world than in the west. They would simply stop traffic quickly, blow out part of the mountain, run a bulldozer over the road to clear most of the fallen rock, and then let traffic pass again. We were a little wary of falling rock in the recently (aka 2 minutes earlier) blown areas.

Jen following a dump truck.

The scenery was amazing throughout the ride (after the fog lifted, at least).

The homes were made of a varied collection of materials including tarps, wood, scrap metal, straw, mud, or pretty much anything.

Our hotel in Muong Lay was little behind on maintenance and the walls were paper thin (made of cardboard in some places). This hotel was up river of the dam being built and will be under water in a year or so, so they can be forgiven for not staying on top of things, but it did allow for something to sneak in overnight and snack on our banana. Unfortunately our tooth brushes were right next to it, so we have visions of the monkey/mouse/rat/"ugly thing we haven't even heard of" sucking on them like lolly pops. (Note from Jen: Interestingly enough, Mike's first comment upon seeing this banana in the morning was... "Jen, what the hell did you do to this banana?!?!")

We ran into Ross and Christine in Dien Bien Phu (where we are right now) who are doing a 4 week cycle tour through S.E. asia with their new baby Tallin (a very cute 7 months!) who they pull him behind their bikes in the Chariot carrier. Their blog called "SE Asia with a baby" is at http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/6241

Ross and Christine told us stories about how everyone in Vietnam wants to hold and kiss their baby. They would go to a market and people will just pick him out of the stroller and sort of walk away with him, all meaning well of course, but definitely a little different from what they're used to... During the supper we had with them sure enough this is exactly what happened. Kind of funny for us, but I am sure that Tallin missed his personal space!

That's all from us for now. We are now trying to decide between crossing into Laos tomorrow or continuing through Vietnam, so I am not sure where our next post will be from. Until then though Merry Christmas from both of us from a land where Christmas decorations are scarce, but the wild Poinsettias and warm weather are helping to make up for it!

December 17, 2009 - Merry Christmas and Goodbye China!

2009-12-16T21:40:00.000-08:00

First of all, Merry Christmas everyone! We've had lots of time on our hands here in Kunming, not to mention significantly more purchasing power than back at home, so we wound up taking some crazy photos one day downtown....

So from our castle to yours, all the best this holiday season!

It's a little early for Christmas, but we leave tonight for the fairly remote northwest of Vietnam, and we're not sure how much internet access we'll have. (PS... turns out our internet conked out in Kunming so this is being posted from Dien Ben Phu, Vietnam anyway!)

This will also mark the end of our longest stay in any one country, and we leave with mixed feelings. We've really enjoyed these last few months in China and leave many things with a heavy heart - the incredibly welcoming people, beautiful scenery, fantastic food and facilities and a very interesting, vibrant and fast-changing culture to observe from our comfy saddles. It will also be the first time we venture into territories not knowing one of their major recent past or present languages, which leaves us both a bit apprehensive and me quite sad.

That said, we are also very excited - the next two months will bring many kilometers of beautiful scenery, hopefully speedy biking (we've lightened up alot, sending home our tent and cooking stuff) and wonderful new cultures to discover. Not to mention loads of beaches and sunshine. After a beautiful two months of biking through Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia we'll join friends for a break first in Singapore and then in Bali, finally ending our year of "lifecation" with a great bike up the west coast of California, Oregon and Washington to BC... with all of that ahead of us, it's a little tough to feel too sorry for oneself.

So farewell China, where we've both laughed and cried, and loved every minute of it. Here we come, Southeast Asia!

December 15, 2009 - Mom & Dad are Leaving on a Jet Plane....

2009-12-15T01:10:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd write a bit more about mom and dad's stay now that they are on a plane back over the pond and we've had a chance to sort through the rest of our pics. It was a fantastic two weeks, Mike and I were super glad they came and had an awesome time both chilling out in Kunming and hitting the tourist track. Since Mom and Dad aren't much for blogging, I thought I'd post a few more pictures and paraphrase some of their observations from while they were here.

First of all, they definitely seemed to enjoy themselves. Of course our company was stellar, as per usual.... but China didn't disappoint, either :)

So here goes, a "Top 10" and "Bottom 5" with mom & dad's favourites as

well as some of their least favourite parts while they were here in Yunnan, China....

TOP 10...

10) Lijiang and Dali's Scarves

Apparently Mom could just not get enough of these... sorry to spoil the surprise for all those at home who might end up with some of the spoils, but it just had to be mentioned, as I believe she may have very well cleaned the scarf shops out for the season... :)

(Yes, this girl is hand-weaving a scarf on a loom of some kind in traditional dress while texting on her iPhone-like device :)

9) Funny signs

Like us, the funny translations also amused mom & dad quite a bit...

8) KTV

A.k.a. Chinese Karaeoke. A night out at the local KTV was our birthday/christmas present for mom and dad, and it was a neat experience, which they also seemed to like. No crowds like karaeoke at home, but there's tonnes of it and it feels a little like a huge movie theatre with a bunch of rooms to party in... complete with popcorn and beer...

7) No Tipping

This surprised them alot... not only is tipping not really a thing here, but anyone they tried to tip very adamantly refused. Very different from travelling in other more heavily-touristed countries where there are automatic "tips" and charges added just for being tourists, the fact that people would run down the street to give them their 2 kuai of change (about 35 cents) really threw mom and dad for a loop.

6) Tea

Mom's birthday/christmas present was a tea tasting and some of China's best tea to take home. The experience was enlightening for the both of us, and we ended up learning how to brew our tea much more skillfully, and realizing how much better tea here tastes. As a result, mom is bringing home enough tea to last at least three years, including both local specialties like Pu'er and San Qi Hua, as well as about every other kind of tea people drink here in China...

5) Traffic

You'd think this might be a part of the "Bottom 5," but judging by the enjoyment they got from watching and taking pictures of it from the taxi or our balcony, I'm pretty sure it was a source of entertainment more than anything else!

4) Prices

At first it's hard to get used to, but once you realize that it's hard to pay more than $4/meal for food at most restaurants in town, that 2 hrs of massage is $15 at the most expensive spots, etc... well, it's a fun novelty, that's forsure. We're a little worried we got them a little TOO used to it. They actually flew directly from here to Las Vegas and Arizona for the holidays, so we're still worried that the culture shock might overwhelm them and they might end up bartering with the hotel staff for cheaper food, rooms, etc....

3) Lijiang

Normally a very over-crowded tourist trap, turns out that early December is a fantastic time to visit. The weather was sunny and spring-like, there were definitely enough tourists but certainly no crowds, and the city was just beautiful... they were quite impressed.

2) Food

Okay, Mike and I have just loved the food here, we've mentioned it alot. That said, we've been here 3 months and have a month in relatively rural southeast asian territory coming up, so this past week or so we've been craving a little bit of the delicious western food here in Kunming while we can still get it. No such luck... Mom and Dad loved the chinese stir fries, hot pots and noodle soups so much that they wouldn't let us eat practically anywhere else until they left.

1) People

One of the biggest differences between Canada and China is the large number of people - everywhere. With Mom being a tad bit clausterphobic and Dad not a fan of crowds, you'd have thought this would have been a problem. It wasn't. They seemed to get used to it almost immediately - their favorite pastime was soon just wandering the streets people watching.... people in the parks, people in the train stations, people counting us as they saw us coming "1, 2, 3,.... 4 waiguoren!" or people playing mah-jong on the street corners. They found the atmosphere almost festive, and loved how friendly almost everyone was to us. Like us, for them the people definitely made the trip!

Bottom 5...

Okay, so their dislikes weren't many, which is why I couldn't come up with more than 5.

5) Mala

"Mala" is the chinese word for the classic sichuan flavour of numbing spice. They loved the spicy but like us, couldn't get used to the numbing of the tongue that followed in some dishes. I tried asking for "la" (spicy) without the "ma" (numb) to no avail.

4) Lack of heating

Normally, the weather here is great so the lack of insulation in the houses and resulting lack of heating isn't a problem. The first few days were a little chilly here so mornings were a little tough. That said, calling back home to Saskatoon where it was -45C helped us all deal with it a little more easily.

3) Air

Even though Kunming is by far the best city for smog we've seen so far, they still noticed it. I actually hate complaining so much about the smoggy air here, for good reasons that Mike is planning on explaining in an upcoming post... That said, it's hard not to notice and the pinch in the throat did also catch up with mom and dad, too.

2) Spitting

This one particularly bugged Dad. We all found that Chinese people are extremely polite in some ways that seem a little over the top to us.... On the other hand, they spit a lot in public. For them, we've learned it's a matter of health. There was even an article in the paper about a guy who caused a traffic accident while spitting out the window, but the spitting was "necessary, of course, because he had a fever.." I have heard before that it really is a matter of health for them. Anyway, it's just one of those cultural differences that they couldn't really get used to...

1) Flights here and home

The flight here was a tough one - long, crowded and noisy. That said, we'd like to think that one of the worst parts of their trip was having to get back on the plane again. They seemed to really enjoy themselves here, and I am happy to say that the part they seemed to enjoy the least was leaving both us and China.

Thanks for visiting guys, we loved it!!

December 11, 2009 - Touring Dali and Lijang...

2009-12-11T00:55:00.001-08:00

The last week or so the four of us (Jen, Suzanne, Jim & Mike) took to seeing the sights of western Yunnan by plane, train and automobile. We started with an overnight train to Dali, then took a bus to Lijiang and finally returned to Kunming with a quick flight to avoid a 12 hour bus ride. The two towns we visited are popular tourist towns so there was lots to see so I will let the pictures do the talking...

In an effort to get back into cycling shape before getting back onto the bikes in hilly Vietnam next week, Jen and I have been doing some cycling in the hills near Kunming. Jen hadn't done a ton of cycling before we started our trip nearly 6 months ago, but now doing a few bikes without all our bags it is clear that she is a mean cyclist now!

A lady buying produce at a market outside Dali. It was pretty cool that most of the people in the area (the "Naxi" ethnicity mostly) wore traditional clothing like she is wearing in this picture and the one below it.

Jen, Jim and Suzanne in the old town of Dali.

A couple of old bikes we found resting against a wall in Dali while their owners were working nearby. This is one of my favorite photos from our trip so far. I am not sure why.

The view of the ancient city of Lijiang from our hotel window.

Another view of Lijiang..

Lijiang was a very touristy city and there were tourist stalls everywhere, but this bag was a souvenir that we found really funny. It is a bag embroidered with "Venezia, Italia" on it, but someone in Lijiang had obviously found a lot of them on the cheap, because the Chinese characters for Lijiang were stiched on top of it!! Flawless, right?

Naxi dancers in Lijiang. I suspect this dance was not as spontaneous as they made it seem, and had probably been staged by the city to promote tourism, but it was neat none the less.

Jim, Jen and Suzanne in front of a temple in Lijiang. I would say which temple it was, but honestly they all kind of look the same at this point. Let's say it was originally built in 1411, destroyed in the cultural revolution (or an earthquake, or fire, or an invading army, etc), and rebuilt in 1996 because the government realized that they could make a killing selling admission to tourists. My guess is the only thing that I am wrong on is the date it was originally built.

Jim hanging out with the Buddhas. The sign next to them said "do not touch", but they really didn't seem to mind.

Photos of Jim's new friends...

Three Little Piggies in the alley... (the third one was around the corner, I swear)

Construction in China; building a house one brick at a time. You can see the brick in the air as they throw them up one by one.

Mike and Jen in front of a lake just outside Lijiang. The mountain in the background was amazing and shows up a bit better in the photo below.

That's all for now. Jim and Suzanne are only here for four more days so we are going spend that time in town seeing the sights after which Jen and I head to Vietnam and get back on the bike. Lata!

December 7, 2009 - Around Kunming with Jim and Suzanne

2009-12-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

Alright, so after a few weeks of chilling out in Kunming Jen's parents arrived in Kunming for a two week visit. Without any further ado here are some photos from the last few days...

Jen showing her excited look at the airport waiting for her parents...

Jim, Jen and Suzanne at the airport...

Since we have been in China, we have bought alot of DVDs because they're so cheap (5-10RMB which works out to about $0.90-$1.60CDN) and then today we ran across this chart in The Economist which we thought was interesting. Even though DVDs cost about $1 here, and about $14 in the USA, on average it takes a person in either country about the same amount of time at work (~4o minutes) to earn enough to buy one! Those poor Mexicans have it rough though!!

While out shopping one day, Jim got asked to play an impromptu game of badminton on the street with the guy's bike serving as the net.

On a walk through a park, Jen buys a tasty radish-like treat from a vendor...mmmm!

Jen, Jim and Suzanne walking along a path dug into a cliff in a local temple.

There isn't a lot of green space in the city, and so wedding photos abound in any park. There were more brides around but I could only manage to get 4 into a single photo. If I had a wide angle lens I am sure I could have gotten another few.

Jen and Jim in a sea of tourists. Jim and Suzanne are starting to get used to being stared at, pointed at and talked about everywhere they go. It didn't take long for them to learn the chinese words "waiguoren" and "laowai" which mean foreigner. This is what most people say as they point us out to their friends. Why exactly we're worthy of being pointed out, we're still not quite sure...

November 27, 2009 - Killing time in Kunming..

2009-11-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

We have been in Kunming now for about two weeks now and are really enjoying staying in the same place for more than one night. During our downtime we have planned the rest of our trip, arranged for our visas, booked flights, re-planned our gear (we realized that we would not in fact need the same stuff in Thailand that we needed in Mongolia), and started going to a gym again. DVDs can be bought on every street corner for $1, so movies and popcorn have become a nightly affair. Jen stated last night that "I can't think of a single thing in this world that I love more than popcorn". Although this is a worrisome statement for a wife to make to her husband on their honeymoon, I will let it go as it has been quite a while since we have had popcorn. Mostly though we 've spent time enjoying living in a large Chinese city. Here are some photos from our time so far in Kunming.

This is a picture of a park just outside of town that we bike around often. Although I would never swim in the lake, it is nice to be able to bike/walk around the lake front which was impossible in some of the other larger Chinese cities such as Beijing or Chengdu where public green space was non existent.

This is another photo from the same park as above (although in this part there was a small entrance fee of about $1). These parks are always full of police (more like security guards actually) and these two groups had gotten bored and started playing bumper cars on their patrol bikes.

A view of all the people on a pier watching and feeding the sea gulls.

These two girls came up to us to talk on the pier (This happens to us often. Sometimes it seems they just want to practice their English, but more often they are curious about where you come from and what you think of China) and mentioned how beautiful the sea gulls were. I am not sure if they were just weird or if this is just a cultural thing, because Jen and I just finished talking about how ugly and annoying they were.

Hot peppers drying in a restaurant. Mmmm! We have finally gotten used to the spicy food and no longer have to ask for "yidianr la" (just a little spicy).

A pig up for sale at a stall. I have no idea why he is so flat. Maybe flat pork is better.

All the luxuries of home....

Kunming feels like a very rich city, but even here you get funny mixes of old and new. Just a few blocks from the above Wal-Mart and KFC, we can run into a horse and cart selling produce.

This was another odd sight for us. In some of the more rural areas dog meat was very popular and we would often ride by men skinning a dog, or restaurants advertising dog meat, but generally in the larger cities we hadn't seen this yet. As well in Kunming pet dogs seem to be more popular than anywhere else we have been, so running across this dog meat for sale in Wal-Mart was interesting.

Below are a couple shots of our home for the month. Nice furnished apartments were hard to find and we were lucky to get such a good deal on this one.

Like most large Chinese cities, Kunming clean, well cared for, and has impressive infrastructure. The more time I spend in China the more impressed I am with the infrastructure they have built up.

The view from the roof of our building. Notice the solar panels on the roof of every building which heat water for each apartment. These are great and give us super hot water for free most of the time, and we have a gas backup if you want a shower at 2am when the sun is down. I have no idea why these haven't caught on in North America. My guess is just due to individual laziness, but that is kind of boring so lets say it is a conspiracy by big oil. Tell your friends.

We have seen bikes which do almost everything here: make cotton candy, polish shoes, roast nuts, bake potatoes, sew clothes, BBQ skewers, carry livestock, act as taxi and haul water. This bike though convinced me that a bike can be made to do almost anything; he was driving around the city with his aquarium bike selling gold fish.

On that note I thought I would post this photo that someone emailed me. Maybe a project once we get home. It looks pretty sweet, but would be a bitch up the hills.

And finally a view of a road near our apartment that we have been cycling to keep in shape...

November 19, 2009 - Resting in Kunming, China!

2009-11-19T03:21:00.000-08:00

Hi All -Since our last post we have switched gears quite a bit. After almost five months of cycling we arrived at our long awaited month long break in Kunming. Although our time on the road is fun we are excited to have all the comforts of a home for the next month (a fridge with food in it, not having to find a new hotel every night and not having to worry about where in that hotel you can store your bike, etc). Since moving into an apartment though, we have also noticed that the downside to not changing hotel every night is that your mess follows you from day to day! We are slowly starting to accept the fact that whatever mess we make will no longer disappear at 11:00am the following day.

For the month we have a number of things on our "to do list" such as planning out the route for the rest of our trip (more on that in a future post), studying Chinese (Jen), prepping a law essay (Mike), finally sorting out our Chinese visa situation (it also was stolen in Kangding), and applying for other visas for the rest of our trip! As well Jen's parents are coming to visit us for a couple weeks which we are really looking forward to.

Over the course of the next month we hope to post some random thoughts on various topics. Although we do have more than enough free time to get this done, the old adage that the time required to complete a task expands to fill the time allotted has held true and it seems that simply waking up, feeding ourselves and going to bed are filling the day quite nicely, so this may not happen.

Our time in Kunming so far has been relatively mundane so we don't have any new photos to post, so I thought I would post a couple older videos. We have not been able to post videos to our blog yet due to either slow internet (Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia) or because the video sites are blocked (China). As I have now have more spare time I was able to figure how to circumvent the blocking of video sites here, so thought I would post a couple videos. The videos below are all old (from Russia and Mongolia), because unfortunately all our new videos were in one of the bags taken when we got robbed.

Here is a video of Jen riding through the Altai province in Russia.

One of our first days riding through Mongolia...

Stopping for a water break in Mongolia...

And finally, men from a ger that we were passing by pulled us in for tea and cake during a good bye party they were having for a young boy...

October 28-November 9: Zigong to Anshun

2009-11-08T20:17:00.001-08:00

It's been almost two weeks since we last posted due to a combination of lack of internet in our hotel rooms and being really tired at the end of any night we did have internet, but we are back now (in a really nice hotel with internet this time!) so here we go with a summary of the last two weeks.

Over the last two weeks we worked our way from Zigong in Sichuan province to Anshun which is in Guizhou province (you can see a map of our route by clicking here). The route was quite hilly (we climbed over 3,000m one day) and had a number of sites we wanted to see along the way, both of which slowed us down and tired us out enough that we are coming down with a bit of a cold (hence the rest day today).

Rather than tell a story about this leg of our trip, I will let the pictures help do the talking.

As we started to leave Sichuan province and got into Guizhou province, it got noticeably poorer (Guizhou is one of China's poorest provinces according to our Lonely Planet). The photo below was taken in a small city we passed through. The entire city was a large garbage sorting operation. Each house had a large stack of various kind of sorted garbage in front of it: certain colors of glass, bottles of very specific sizes, bike tires, oil bottles, etc. As we rode through the city large trucks with unsorted garbage continued to come into the city. It was really quite amazing. I wanted to take more photos but I was too embarrassed to stand in front of a group sorting through the refuse and take a photo of them with my expensive camera.

This is a sight we have seen everywhere but is even more common in Guizhou. It is shocking to pass large groups of people working their crops entirely by hand, and 50km farther down the road be in a large city with a McDonalds and huge "Kappa" clothing stores (which is amazingly popular here). I am really appreciating the amazing veggies they sell here more after seeing how hard the farmers work to produce their crops.

The pollution in this part of our trip was quite bad. Although there are a number of large plants and factories that contribute to the problems, my guess (and I have no way to verify this) is that in this area many every day sources add alot as well: household waste is generally placed into a cement garbage can and burnt when it is full, most trucks have huge black clouds coming out of their tail pipes and often appear to have two stroke engines, and most households heat their homes and cook by burning coal directly. The thick pollution in the air left us wheezing and coughing by the end of each day and really makes us dream of cleaner air. Most of the photos we post here I actually clean up first in photoshop to remove the ever present haze.

In each city and along the road garbage is being burnt which gives off an unfortunate odor.

Jen's arm at the end of one day. You can see the outline of her watch caused by the grit and grime from a day on the road. Showers at the end of a day are no longer optional!

Alright enough bitching about the air, now onto the fun stuff. The people as always were nice, helpful and super curious. This mom kept on trying to get her son to come close to us, but he was quite scared at the sight of us.

Jen asking a farmer on the road for directions. Since our GPS was stolen, we spend alot of time doing this.

These two little kids were helping their grandma by transporting leaves up the hill up to their house.

The first site we visited was a national park called the "Bamboo Sea" which is exactly as it sounds: a huge bamboo forest. That bamboo on either side of the waterfall.

Jen riding through the bamboo forest.

Mike posing atop the bamboo forest. The entrance fee to the park was about $15CDN each, which is quite expensive to see a bunch of bamboo, but regardless it was a nice area.

Another site we visited was the "Xingwen Stone Forest". The highlight of this site was a big cave.

The cave was lite by multi-colored flood lights which made it a little hokey, but still a nice excuse to get off the bikes for a bit.

Some scenery as we biked along the road.

In the cities there are often large groups of people in groups (generally in the town square) beating drums, dancing or doing other fun stuff. We have no idea why these guys were walking along the road one morning, dressed alike and beating drums, but thought it was worth a photo regardless. If you don't like this explanation feel free to make up something interesting that is more to your liking.

The ride was really hilly most of the time due to the karsts (I think they were karsts, but I am not sure?). Although this made the cycling slow, it was quite beautiful.

Farming, farming, everywhere.

A photo taken out of our hotel window in Zhijin of the karsts in the background.

The last tourist site we visited was the Zhijin Cave. This is the largest cave in China and the entrance fee included a two hour mandatory tour of which we could not understand a word. Because of this we do not know much about the cave other than that it was: 1) again lit with multi colored flood lights, 2) indeed quite big and pretty, and 3) included many stairs which our tired legs did not appreciate.

One of the many rock formations in the cave.

A sign in the cave which I sympathized with.

There were signs throughout the cave which pointed out rocks which supposedly looked like dragons, butterflies, turtles, etc; none of which even remotely resembled the actual animal. While they always pointed out the most minor resemblance of any rock to an animal, however minute, they failed to point out much more obvious representations... (sorry for this one, but after a two hour tour in chinese you get kind of bored)

Another nice view of the karsts as we ride into Anshun.

You can see here how much farming land they have squeezed into the hills. There was often a farmer tilling the land with a large bull like animal and I have no idea how he managed to coax the animal up the steep cliff onto the narrow terrace.

So that's all for now. We are now about a week's ride from Kunming where we are going to rent an apartment for the month, take a break from the bikes and Jen's parents are visiting for a couple weeks.

--Mike

Missing things like this sucks!!

2009-10-31T07:22:00.000-07:00

Jen and I are happy to post that our new nephew, Oliver Joseph, was born on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 4:35 p.m! Congrats to Mo, Steph and Julia as well as the four happy grandparents.

Although officially I am very excited about this new addition to the family, off the record I am dissapointed in the parents. I presented a very strong argument to have the baby named Mike Jr. and was led to believe that this would be the case. As punishment for their deceit I have decided to refer to him as "O.J." for the first 8 years of his life and would appreciate if others would join me in solidarity.

Welcome to the family O.J.!

October 28: A great day (Rongxian to Zigong)

2009-10-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

We set out in the morning from Rongxian planning to do our usual 90 km from there to the next town, Neijiang. The morning ride was nice, lots of rolling hills, and everywhere full of people with their picturesque plots of agriculture. When we stopped for our fruit break in the morning, a sweet old man carrying a basket full of freshly-picked food wandered up to us and after we said "Ni hao" and came about 1 foot from Jen's face and asked in an astonished voice "Nimen shi waiguoren ma?!?" (Are you foreigners?!?) We had a nice little discussion while we finished up our snack, facilitated by the old man's buddy who came by on a motorcycle halfway through and helped translate (his "translation" consisting of repeating pretty much exactly what we said, just yelling it louder and with a much thicker accent.)

As we approached Zigong where we planned to eat lunch, a fellow cyclist joined up with us. He was a pretty serious cyclist and had been many of the coolest places to cycle in China (Tibet, Xinjiang, the whole south from Chengdu to Guilin, etc.) He worked as a cycle tourist guide, pretty much the most kick-ass job ever, we'd imagine. We chatted for awhile as we rode into town, and he said he wanted to take us to a bike shop in town to meet his friends before lunch. We did and were quite the center of attention for a bit, using the opportunity to get a few lingering annoyances fixed on our bikes.

Working on Mike's squeaky pedal...

Us with the bike shop guy and Feng You, the cyclist who we met up with out on the road...

Afterwards we went for lunch with Feng You, our cycle guide friend, who asked whether we didn't want to stay the night in Zigong so we could bike around the area with him and his friends in town. We decided to go for it, and were very glad we did! The rest of the afternoon continued to amaze us. We went back to the bike store where one of his friends who worked there called her cycling buddy at a local hotel and got us a very nice room for the cheapest price we've paid yet, which she lead us to so we could dump off our stuff. By the time we got back to the bike store, at 3:00 on a Wednesday afternoon, there was already a crowd of about 10 people ready and waiting to go for a bike with us, along with a local newspaper reporter who wanted to interview us!

Jen explaining our story to the local newspaper journalist...

After a quick interview, we set out on our bikes, with a guy from the bike store driving the newspaper reporter along with us so she could take some pictures. Mike has been on many 'a group ride, but it was pretty cool to see what the Chinese version was like. Turns out much the same as at home, a bunch of friends find the hilliest place around town and try to punish each other, and follow it up with drinks and bbq afterward. We biked through banana trees and rice paddies up a series of hills to a picturesque peak. After a quick descent, we all went our own ways to clean up and met back up at a Korean grill downtown, where we got a taste of Chinese nightlife with the locals. Pretty cool...

The whole crew, followed by bike shop car with the repair guy and journalist inside... the whole procession got alot of attention as we were leaving town.

Mike at the top with a view of the rice paddies below...

Later that night, Mike gets covered up in the required garb at the Korean Grill...

Grilling the squid and Feng You grabbing a pic of me taking a pic.... never a lack of cameras anywhere here!

The whole group enjoying a great meal!

As we left, everyone posed for a goodbye photo. Thanks guys for a great day!

October 20-27: After lots of "Mafan," back on the road again (Kangding to Rongxian)

2009-10-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

After the craziness in Kangding, we stayed an extra couple days hoping the police might recover some more of our stuff. We were a little dissapointed when we went back for some more paperwork and found out they hadn't either caught the guy or got any of our stuff. We figured with the pictures of their home, motorcycle and family it couldn't be that tough, but I guess these things take time...

We left Kangding on Thursday morning by bus for Chengdu. We had decided not to bike out, for a few reasons... we had already done the bike before, we wanted to get to our consulate quick to apply for our passports, and we really yearned to be a little more anonymous and soon. Kangding was a small but touristy town, so we wouldn't have felt like we stuck out too much except for the fact that strangers on the street did point at us a few times, recognizing us from the hot pursuit a few days back, or even come up to us and say good job. This attention probably wouldn't normally have bothered us, but we were still suffering from a little extra paranoia so were quite anxious to get back to the anonymity of the big city.

We called our consulate from Kangding and found out they would be closed on Friday afternoon, so instead of getting to Chengdu and chilling out after the 7 hr bus ride from Kangding, we dumped our stuff off at a hostel, had supper and got back on the overnite train to Chongqing for a short 4-hr sleep. We got there long before the Consulate opened so just chilled out drinking coffee at the downtown McDonald's until the sun rose. The passport application went without major problem - lots of forms to fill and, because we had to fill out one extra form saying our passports were stolen and another saying we needed a guarantor (not being in Canada), so the whole process costed double the normal $100/person it does to get a new passport. All in all it was a bunch of "mafan" (chinese euphemism for pain in the ass) and we were a little grouchy to start with given our short night's sleep, so after an hour or two at the passport office we got right back on the train back to Chengdu, eager to get into a bed that didn't move back at the hostel.

After a good night's sleep, we then spent a day in Chengdu getting ready to be back on the bike. We had some small bike tune-ups to do, we bought a couple new bags to replace those that were stolen (though much smaller as they no longer had to house all the stolen stuff), bought two new MP3 players (opted to go for the cheaper, non-iPod option this time, and got our camera repaired (it was damaged when the dudes threw it out in the big chase through Kangding.... from here on out our post gets more interesting, having the benefit of photos again!) We also planned out a route to Kunming that would get us there in time to receive our new passports and apply for our new Chinese visas.

The next morning we set out back on the bike. The first day was a quick and easy 90 km through Chengdu outskirts to a town called Meishan. As ever we were hugely impressed by everything that's going on here.... huge new roads everywhere (with beautiful cycle lanes), scores of new, large, trendy apartment buildings, and internet connections everywhere you go. Instead of asking if hotels have internet or not, the options now are for a room with or without computer, but always with internet. The infrastructure here is just amazing, and feels like it's just ready and waiting for more economic booming... just a couple lay-cyclists' observations, but observing rural China we would definitely bet their growth isn't over any time soon.

Rolling into Meishan's luxuriously wide roads...These super wide roads are common throughout China, the road infrastructure they have built is incredible.

At the end of the day in Meishan, we met up with two Chinese cyclists who were doing two days of cycling before school starts, so the next day we travelled with them to Leshan. We had lots of fun just chatting along the way, all got plenty of chance to practice our Chinese/English and ask some of the more taboo questions you can't just ask strangers on the street, and they acquainted us with some excellent new dishes that we have incorporated into our repertoire. (It's still impossible for us to read the entirety of any menus, so we either alternate between the dishes we know how to recognize or ask directly for what we want. The nice thing is, it's all fresh and made-to-order when you get there, so many a cook has let us come back to the kitchen and pick exactly the cuts of meat we want, with exactly what veggies, without MSG or whatever else you do/don't want, etc. And this is just the cheap roadside "fast food".... certainly no McDonald's!)

Jen and our new cycling buddies, two students at the tourism college in Chengdu...

The four of us as we said goodbye in downtown Leshan...

In Leshan, we tucked into a hotel and split up with our friends, who had to take a bus back to Chengdu for classes the next day. We then visited Leshan's famous Giant Buddha and spent some time touring around the park.

In our usual irreverent spirit, Mike picks the Buddha's nose...

Boatloads of tourists were brought by the front of the Giant Buddha for some great photo opps...

The scenery in the surrounding park was also quite beautiful...

That evening we were a little dismayed when we were actually kicked out of our hotel after coming back from the Buddha park. The hotel lady started to explain that we could do her a favour and move to another hotel right close where they could serve us better, as here they were a small hotel and couldn't speak any English, so it would be better for us at the other hotel. We politely explained that that was no problem for us... we didn't need to hear any English, as all we were going to do was go to sleep and then leave early in the morning. She laughed a little at that, smiled sheepishly, and then we got to the crux of the matter. Each time we go to a new hotel, we always ask whether or not foreigners can stay there... it is an uncomfortable question for many hotelliers, as they always act like "of course!," but in fact it's often the case that we can't, as they don't have the proper forms, photocopying capability and haven't been registered with the government. For some reason they often beat around the bush and tell us either "of course" as if we're crazy for asking, or say that they don't have any rooms available, which is often code for "we can't register foreigners." We suspected this might be the problem in this case and asked multiple times... near the beginning of the discussion when we were still confused at what she was saying, we asked "Can foreigners stay here?" to which she answered "they can...." Then asked "Can we stay here...." to which she answered "you can...." This led to an extremely frustrating line of conversation, because the point in the end was that in fact we couldn't stay there... but finally at the end of the conversation we found the source of our confusion. "Yes foreigners are allowed to stay here, it's just that today we can't have you, as we would have to register with the government...." Kind of the hotel-equivalent of "it's not you, it's me...." but these subtle euphemisms are a little annoying given the communication barrier and the fact that you're finally realizing at 8:00 at night that you have to move all your bags and bikes to a new hotel, when you tried to prevent this problem right from the beginning. Anyway, it was still alot of "mafan" for nothing as it could have been easily avoided from the beginning, but the new hotel was close and the room was even nicer, so we were back relaxing in our hotel room again soon.

The third day cycling went great... the scenery finally got more interesting, as we rolled through hills and rice patties with ducks gliding through them and lots of little charming small towns. We've really gotten to like the rhythm of these days. Cycle along through beautiful countryside as we listen to books and podcasts and music galore, stop for an almost always delicious fresh stir fry at a shop on the side of the road, and spend a sleepy afternoon listening to more stories on the bike until we roll into a town with interesting alleyways full of food and fruit vendors and always cheap, clean and well-equipped hotels. It's actually quite luxurious in a way that is both sustainable for our budget (so long as we don't get robbed again!) and our attention spans.

Some typical rice-paddy scenery...

We slept in Rongxian last night, a fairly big town but more remote than most we've been in since Chengdu. You can tell how many tourists they get by their reactions. In cities we're hardly noticed, in outskirt towns we're kind of gawked and giggled at and often hustled in a way we find a little rude and annoying, but here we're straight-out stared at in a way that is only delightful for everyone involved. As we rolled into town, two young girls just burst out in a surprised and curious laughter that was almost contagious. Small kids stop, stare and point at us on the street, and instead of explaining that we're foreigners and telling them not to point, the parents turn and can't help staring a little themselves. And everyone's always waving and yelling "hello" to us all the time, from children to construction crews to motorcycles alongside us on the road. It's all so innocent and well-intentioned that we can't help loving these little interactions ourselves. Gotta love these small towns!

This morning we head off east towards the big city of Chongqing, but will turn south before we get there, staying in small-town China until we hit Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou in a couple weeks. It's been a little "mafan" here and there, but all in all we're loving being back on the bikes...

October 17 - 19: Can't accuse us of a boring honeymoon (Kangding to Xinduqiao and back)

2009-10-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

You'll have to excuse us, but the are will be only one picture in this very long post for reasons that will soon become clear. As well we are going to skip the few days that came before October 17th. But don't worry, even without photos we think it is worth a read!

On the 17th, Saturday morning, we headed out of the charming mountain town of Kangding on our way west towards Litang. It is a nice town nestled in the mountains, and called the unofficial border between Sichuan and Tibet. Though the Tibetan Autonomous Region doesn't start for another 600 km or so west of here, you can feel the landscape changing. We left early in the morning since we had about 75 kilometers to cover and the first 36 km were a continuous climb of almost 2000m up to a peak at 4300km. The climb was pretty tough, made even more so by the fact that there was some construction along the way that forced us to push our bikes uphill through a stream for about 1 kilometer. Mike also had a tough time, as the yoghurt we had for breakfast took a toll on his stomach and he didn't seem to get as much out of the calories we ate all day as he should have. Finally, we arrived at the beautiful, chilly, thin-air peak a mere 8 hours after starting the day. The views of snow-capped peaks were gorgeous, but it was getting late and we still had 40 km to go (albeit all downhill) so we hurried up and started to descend the hill.

The descent is what we would call the real border with Tibet. As soon as we started to descend, the valley opened up into beautiful yellow, olive and rust-coloured grasslands with gorgeous, large Tibetan houses and buildings on either side, often sitting beside very picturesque streams. We also felt the friendliness of rural life return again, with kids running out to yell "Hello" to us and everyone waving at us from their yards and cars and motorcycles. The downhill treated us well and we realized we would make it to town well before sunset, but we were still incredibly tired. We had just decided we were almost ready for bed when we approached a motorcycle by the side of the road, with two guys standing around it looking like they had difficulties. As we approached, they stood on the road in our way and made motions as if they needed our help with a broken bike. Once we were close enough and slow enough, they then made a motion rubbing their fingers and soon after yelled "mun-ayy" at us. Mike yelled "Jen, go!" but right away they pulled some pretty mean-looking knifes from their belts. We stopped immediately and with their knives waving around they ransacked our bags. They grabbed Mike's front handlebar bag off, and used their knives to cut his back red rack pack off which was tied onto the bike. After failing to pull off Jen's front handlebar bag, they rummaged through it and took out a wallet and an iPod. Worried about travelling in China without passports, which we've needed each day so far, we begged them in Chinese for our passports and said we'd find them more money, but they ignored us and took off quickly on their motorcycle, with almost everything of significant value that we had with us. (This was unfortunately alot of stuff, as we travel with alot of toys...perhaps too many in retrospect)

After this, we biked to the busy intersection two kilometers later and asked around for help. There, a very apologetic Tibetan fellow (who was disgusted to hear what had happened to us) told us to go to the police station 9 kilometers later, in the town we had planned to sleep at. He led us the whole way there. Once there, we were a little apprehensive having spent much of our time so far in countries with less-than-legit police forces. That said, we had no alternative, with no passports, no Chinese money and only half our credit and debit cards, which were useless as there were no ATMs in town where our cards would work. We needn't have hesitated - so far our experiences with police in China have been fantastic, and this was no exception. They took down our story, took us back to the scene of the crime and took pictures, and fed us an amazing supper. They called in to their superiors all over the province, assured us that "the highest level of authority will be taking care of our case," fed us supper and, once it was all taken care of, drove us the 70+ km back to Kangding at night, so that we could stay at the hostel we had just left, since we wanted a safe-feeling place to stay where we wouldn't need to show our passport again. That was another huge help - when we tried calling the embassy and our credit cards from the police station and couldn't get through, we were fortunate to find a card from the hostel in our pocket. We called Chris, the manager of the hostel we had stayed at in Kangding, who very helpfully said he'd make room for us again that night, no matter how late we got back, and looked up a local number that connected to a 24-hour emergency hotline that went straight to Ottawa where they could help us with our passport and credit cards.

We slept surprisingly soundly that night, though we couldn't help going over the incident so many times. Strangely, we weren't as scared or shook up as we thought we'd be, we just felt so stupid for all the things we thought we could have done to avoid it or make the losses a little less devastating. We were mostly just happy that nothing truly serious happened, though pissed off at how relaxed we had become. We were so paranoid and careful when we started the trip four months ago in Kazakhstan, but we've been lulled into a little bit of complacency, especially here in China where we've felt so safe the whole time. It's not certain that we could have avoided it altogether - our very foreign-looking, helmet-clad, baggage-laden selves get alot of attention and we think that they probably saw us earlier in the day and then went ahead to wait for us on the side of the road. We know of many many foreign cyclists who have done the exact same route without problem, and are assured by many locals that they've never heard of this happening before. It was bad luck and we were just glad to leave feeling only poorer, but still safe and sound.

The next day we spent many hours describing the event at the larger police station at Kangding. After describing the event, giving a description of the muggers (which was partial as best, since they had scarves covering their head and mouths, as many people here do to avoid the dust) and a list of all they had taken. Again the police were very sorry to hear what had happened, and assured us that they would do everything they could to find the perpetrators. We were lucky enough to have the attention of at least 10 different officers for many hours on a Sunday. After a long set of interviews and thumbs dyed red with ink from all the thumbprints we gave to certify about a zillion statements and other official papers, we ended the day with consolatory fried jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), wine (we bought a few bottles in an attempt to find the best bottle of wine under 10 Yuan, approximately $1.30CDN, which FYI are all bad), movies and Monopoly.

The next morning we had to visit a different police station, this time to get a bilingual document certifying the loss of our passport which would enable us to temporarily travel within China until we can get a new passport at the Canadian embassy 700km away (you normally need a passport to do anything in China: ride a train, check into a hotel, go to an internet cafe, pass check points, etc). After only about an hour there and yet another heartbreaking listing of all the items that were stolen, we left with yet more paperwork and red thumbs and decided to go to the town square and check out the "18-county dance competition" that we had heard was going on today. On our way there, we bemoaned our lack of ability to take any pictures or videos, but figured we'd enjoy it anyway.

Just as we were entering the square, two young guys in fairly flashy jackets caught our eye. Though their clothes weren't familiar, there was something about their eyes that were, and we both ended up staring at them for awhile. Jen locked eyes with one of them for a good five seconds and thought she recognized him. He didn't recognize her but did notice her staring, and before we could say anything to each other, the stranger looked at Mike and got a startled look on his face, clearly having recognized him. We had just crossed paths with them, about a meter from them the closest, and when we snapped our heads back to look at them again they bolted, running down the street in the middle of town. We did the only thing we could think of: we ran after them. As we both ran after them, Mike following as close as possible while still keeping a safe enough distance behind and Jen following behind but not being able to keep up with their pace, yelling like a crazy person through the streets in broken chinese that "we need help..." and "call the police..." As the train of the four of us weaved through streets and alleys, many people crowded around, no one joined in the chase but several people picked up their phones or helped us by pointing where the robbers went. They finally approached the main street again, crossed a bridge and went down a new road where Mike saw them split up (likely when they finally figured out that they could not lose us on foot...running is kind of Mike's specialty!) One got into a cab, as Mike yelled to the cab not to go, that he was a robber, while the other took off on foot. As Jen approached the corner, Mike yelled to Jen that one of them was in the cab and took off to look for the one on foot as Jen took down the licence plate of the taxi driver and told it to a bystander that had already dialed the police. By then, they had both gotten away and the police had arrived. They took us to the nearby police station, where Jen had to clarify that nothing had just happened to us, but we were the "Xinduqiao" people (the location of the original mugging) and had seen the guys who had taken our stuff. They then told us we had to go to their main police station, and we were starting to get a little pissed as it seemed like they were letting them get away. However, before we even got there, one of them opened a purse containing our camera and videocamera - they had picked it up after the guys ditched in in the street during the chase! By the time we got to the second station, we saw one of the muggers already captured in the other office, kneeling on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back! It turns out Mike's yells and gestures to the taxi worked - right after having dropped off the guy at his destination, he went directly to a police on the road and told them where the mugger went.

So now, after yet another full day at the police station, we sit here writing this with extremely red thumbs, but this time even a little more at ease. We know those guys will not find us along whatever road we choose to travel next (for at least 3-5 years, from what the police told us). We have back our camera, our video camera and about a third of the cash that they took. And, believe it or not, our complaints were in vain - though we didn't get to videotape the dancing competition ourselves, the very thoughtful muggers videotaped it for us on our videocamera, and took a large number of pictures of themselves, their family and their house for some extra viewing pleasure. We couldn't help adding our favorite picture below, taken with our camera of one of the muggers (and his mother?) keeping warm in our down jackets, playing with our videocamera!

The police seemed to think that they should be able to get back even more of our stuff tomorrow, and with the extra evidence they gave us (photos of their house, family, etc) this seems promising. Fingers crossed!! We'll post more over the next day or two as to how this ends up...

Like we said, no one will ever accuse us of having a boring honeymoon, I guess...

October 10-14 - Dujiangyan to Luding

2009-10-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

So after being prevented from going further by a landslide just before Wolong, we settled on a new route and got back on our bikes. We have now cycled four days and are in Luding, a small town about 50km west of Kanding...which is yet another small town (significant land marks are sometimes hard to come by!).

For the last four days we cycled through lush agricultural lands before entering the mountains resulting in a nice mix of scenery. After tomorrow we leave behind the relatively flat lands behind (we have been between 1000m and 2000m with about 1000m of total climbing a day) and enter the real mountains (where we will get as high as 4800m/16,000ft) so I thought this would be a good time post a few photos. No real story to tell, just a bunch of photos with my random thoughts...so here we go!

The first day or so of this leg was through a lush agricultural area and the Chinese do not mess around when it comes to farming. They cram it in EVERYWHERE. I tried to capture in the two photos below just how much they grow in a given area...there are crops on hillsides, mountainsides, ditches, sidewalks, in the middle of the road and on their roofs. This is likely a major factor in the amazing and cheap food here (more on that later).

Yes that is a garden in the median of a busy highway!

We have been very surprised so far at how much wealth there seems to be in all of the cities we have passed through. I always knew the major cities in China were quite rich, but did not expect so many of the more minor cities feel so modern and wealthy.

This is a farmer bringing some of his crop across the river to the road. There were lots of foot bridges over this river in the mountains that I would not have enjoyed walking over and was happy to stay on the main road.

Foreign manufacturers are always complaining on the news about the Chinese policy of keeping the Yuan weak. I have no idea if the complaint is valid, but this practice is treating us very well right now. Here are some examples of our daily expenses:

Hotel room (nice room with TV and internet connection in room, see picture below) - 100 Yuan/$15CDN

Large and delicious meal - 6-20 Yuan/$1-$3CDN per person

One hour massage - 20 Yuan/$3CDN per person (a nice treat after a day on the bike)

The last two days we have been following this river making for spectacular scenery.

Although the sights have been mostly amazing, a few such as this one were kind of worrying. In a few places falling rocks had clearly broken through the side rail guard.

Every day we have passed through at least a few tunnels through the mountains, yet another example of the amazing infrastructure in China. As a fellow cyclist mentioned to us in an email "the chinese really know how to make roads that allow you to focus on your audio book". The one down side to the tunnels is that they are often un-lit, and although we are well equipped with lights it can still get quite lonely in there (the one in this picture was 4km long).

We ended off today by walking a chain link bridge built in 1701. The bridge is most famous as it was the site of a major conflict during the Long March (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luding_Bridge) but what we found more interesting was the manner in which they did quality control during its constructing. Each link has the name of the blacksmith that created it imprinted directly on it (as shown below) so that if any link were to break, it could be traced back to the person that made it. I have no idea how they punished people in 1701, but I would guess that it would have been bad enough to force everyone to work carefully.

(P.S. Thanks to our friend Zhang Lequn, the construction management professor from Chengdu, for that anecdote! It was not to be found in our guidebooks...)

So that's all for now. As we often have internet in our rooms now we have been downloading the most recent episodes of "The Office" and I can't contain my curiosity about Pam and Jim any longer!

--Mike

Oct 8 - 10: A beautiful there-and-back (Chengdu to Gengda)

2009-10-10T02:52:00.001-07:00

First of all, we are again having some problems posting photos from China, so if you can't see the photos in the post below you should be able to see them at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43083052@N07/sets/72157622553601190. If you can see them below, don't worry about it as they are the same photos! With that out of the way, here we go....

After a few days in Chengdu we were glad to get back on the road again. Matter of fact, it had been a good, long while since we'd had a long stretch on the bikes, having taken a train from Ulaanbaatar to Datong, China followed by about 6 days of cycling before Mike's derailer broke, followed by a long stay in Beijing, a two-day train to Chengdu and a few days hanging out in Chengdu. The day before we left Chengdu we met up with an Italian and an Argentinian in an outdoor goods store, who were also heading out to cycle Sichuan and Yunnan. At some point in our chat, we said we were really excited to get back on the road, and so sick of loading the bike up in trains and vans, etc... so, we were really going to try NOT to travel any way other than on our bikes for the rest of our time. Having been on the road a little longer than us, they chuckled knowingly and said..."Yeah, we say that all the time too. But shit always seems to happen, ya know?" Little did we know we'd learn our lesson, and soon.

But first we delayed our stay to do some route planning we had neglected and see the famous Chengdu pandas. It was a little panda-crazy and an uber-touristy type of activity, but they were super cute and we enjoyed ourselves.

That night we had our final meal in Chengdu, going to a restauant recommended to us by a man from Chengdu we rode the train with on our trip from Beijing. We tried a little bit of about 20 different Sichuan dishes.... yummm

The next day we made our way out of town. After about 10km of craziness and another 20km of smoggy Chengdu suburbs bursting with construction, we were finally on a beautiful, wide, fairly quiet highway. That night we stayed in a town 62km from Chengdu called Dujiangyan. The main feature of the town was an irrigation project built in 256 B.C., chiefly responsible for the tremendous fertility of Sichuan - it is China's fresh produce basket and as a result has always been one of the most prosperous provinces in China. Our friend and construction management professor from Chengdu (that we met on the train) said he thought this project was a much more impressive feat of engineering than the Great Wall. This made us laugh, as the whole time we visited the Great Wall Mike couldn't help mentioning (about 1000 times) that it's impressive and all, but would it really have stopped anyone from invading?? (More than the equally high mountains surrounding it, at least?) We concluded it was likely just fantastic foresight at the tourism revenues the wall could generate that were the key driver of the project. Anyway, given that the dyke is still very successful at diverting water to irrigation channels across the province, and the fact that it was built so many years ago without the benefit of dynamite (they apparently heated the rock up with fire and then cracked it with cold water instead), I think we agreed with the professor's assessment.

Below is Mike in one of the rivers created in 256B.C. by breaking the rocks with fire and cold water.

This is the water break at the start of the system which pushes 60% of the water into the irrigation system.

The town of Dujiangyan turned out to be very lovely and seemed quite rich. There was a fantastic little alley of restaurants along the river where you could see your meal squawk or swim or grow in front of you (whatever the case may be) and a charming little downtown that, besides the red lanterns hanging in the trees, had a very Parisian feel with the open air cafes and high-end clothing shops.

They had every type of live food you could want...rabbits, game bird, chickes and seafood galore..

This small city felt kind of European at times...

The next day we set out for what we knew would be a more rugged destination. We planned to visit Yingxiu, the epicenter of last year's big earthquake (read more here) for a late lunch and stay overnite in neighbouring Gengda, where we knew there was a hotel. We slept in quite late and got a late start at 11am, but seeing as we only had 70 km to travel we didn't think we'd have any problem finishing up in the daylight.

The morning's ride was slow, due to significant amounts of construction as well as a few tunnels where we had to stop and mount our lights, but it was absolutely beautiful. We started in a bit of a drizzle which turned into just a heavy mist as we rode on, which gave everything an even more mysterious air to it.

Below are a bunch of photos of the views as we cycled to Yingxiu.

This should maybe have tipped us off as to what was to come...

Below are two rivers joining, one from down the mountain and the other passed by a plant of some type (cement I think?)...

We arrived in Yingxiu as planned for a late lunch, and paid a whopping 6 Yuan each ($1CDN) for a huge bowl of the best spicy noodle soup we've had so far in China. The town was quite a sight. It is absolutely amazing and sad to see what a devastating effect mother nature can have... they've left a torn-up highway and broken-down middle school as memorials, while the rest of town is still under heavy construction.

Below is a picture of Jen beside a fallen piece of highway from the earthquake last year (a 5.13!) and reconstruction from this was still VERY much underway. It was actually amazing how many people in the area were still living there even though the area was very hard to get to with the lack roads and infrastructure.

We set off for the remaining 25km to Gengda after lunch, quite certain we could make it there before dark, despite the fact it was all uphill. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that it was all uphill AND under the heaviest construction we'd seen so far AND ridiculously muddy and wet. We had a hard enough time just staying upright for the first 3 km or so and the math didn't look very good for getting to Gengda before dark, so we hitched a ride with a couple half-empty vans travelling to Gengda together.

The road into Ganda.

Thank goodness we did. The road got much worse after that and stayed that way all the way to Gengda, so we would have otherwise been stuck pitching our tent at a construction site on the side of the very rock-crowded road... not our favorite option.

This is a collapsed tunnel that was part of the highway before it was destroyed. There were at least 4 that we passed that had collapsed and some were in the process of being rebuilt.

This dam had obviously broke in the earthquake and had contributed to some of the destruction we saw. Also it made reconstruction more difficult and the make-shift road was often level with the raging river.

This house that we cycled by was one of many casualties of the broken dam and earthquake.

But the intrigue wasn't over. The whole way there, I chatted with the folks we were travelling with, trying to get an idea of how the road was after Gengda. It was very clear that the road was back to the great, smooth pavement we were used to in China after Wolong, a city about 25 km after Gengda, but I couldn't figure out what they were saying about the road to Wolong. I told Mike, "It seems like they're saying the first 10 km are good, but then it's bad... so bad that cars can't go, not even bikes... and then something about our backs? But that CAN'T be right...I must be understanding something wrong here..." We just couldn't imagine anything that wouldn't be passable with a car, but that they would think we should still cross? Luckily one of the very helpful van drivers let us unload our stuff into the hotel and then drove us off along the road towards Wolong to take a look.

Turns out we understood exactly right... never woulda thought! Smack dab halfway on the road to Wolong was a huge landslide, rocks still falling and all, barring the only highway between the two towns. Right beside it over the white-water rapids was a bridge (or a single log, I should say) that would allow for people to walk very carefully, one at a time, followed by a 4 km path 1000m up a cliff before reaching the highway on the other side. This was the only path to Wolong, which some helpful young Chinese dudes also stranded by the landslide offered to help us cross by foot with all our gear (2 bikes and 10 bags) for about $300. Though oh so slightly tempted, we decided firmly against it... after seeing the devastation along the road that we drove through, it didn't feel like the best idea to venture into the unstable and unknown rocky wilderness. So we were at a dead end...

I took this picture standing on the road we were cycling on. The road should have continued into the background of the picture just above the river, but as you can see it is completely covered by a rock-slide which occurred about a month earlier. Even as we were standing there rocks continued to fall down the mountain and into the river.

You can see a small bridge spanning the river (it is really more of a log than a bridge). We were told that the only route to Danba was to cross this "bridge", climb the cliff on the other side and hike through the forest for 4km to get back on the road on the other side of the slide

The combination of the road construction crews clearing boulders off the make-shift road, and the falling rocks themselves did not make a return trip on the road seem very fun or safe, so we got the driver to take us back to Dujingyan the next morning where we could plan an alternate route.

One of the many road crews working hard to clear the road as they slowly rebuild it.

Another crew securing the side of the mountain from rock slides.

So here we are, back in Dujiangyan, having checked in to our hotel only 24 hours and 20 minutes after we checked out the day before. We're doing some research on the alternate routes: one which is significantly longer but would end us up at the same destination we had planned for the end of our first week cycling, and the other along a more travelled stretch with more tourist sights but more cars. Either way, they both look beautiful and landslide-free, which is a plus. Stay tuned!

September 26-October 2 - Bumming around Beijing

2009-10-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

Originally we had not planned to come into Beijing but once we heard about the huge parade and celebrations that we going on this week here for China's 60th Anniversary we decided to make a detour and include it in our trip. We had heard that the government had a huge party planned for October 1st: some 40,000 potted plants to line the street, a massive parade including their largest military parade ever, and a big fireworks display that night. Once we got here we quickly realized that we would not be able to witness any of the festivities. In fact the entire parade route from start to finish was closed down to the public and only party members invited by the government could attend. As we (along with most everyone else in Beijing) were excluded from seeing anything regarding the nation's anniversary, we booked tickets on the next train to Chengdu (where we will be continuing cycling away from the pollution of Beijing) on October 3rd, and set out to take in the many sights of Beijing.

Below is a picture of the many flowers that lined the streets of Beijing leading up to October 1st.

Leading up to October 1st, the only thing that outnumbered the many flowers on the street were the number of SWAT police (such as the group below) which were stationed on every corner. I did like though how they managed to combine the flowers with the SWAT police. Very metro-sexual.

While hanging out in Beijing we went to a few of the typical tourist sights including the great wall (which was indeed great), the forbidden city (which is in fact not forbidden), the and the summer palace (which was really more of a lake with a path around it). We decided not to do too many of these sites because for me (this is Mike here) most popular and busy tourist sights are like a really big stack of pancakes. It is great for the first little bit, but you quickly get really freaking sick of it. The rest of the time in the city we spent reading, practicing chinese, and just generally wandering around the city.

Jen and I in Tiananmen square. This was two days before the parade and everyone already had to pass through security just to enter the square.

The great wall. We did a really nice 10km hike along the wall with Francois-Xavier and Maggie (two other french tourists we met at our hotel).

The only downside to the hike along the wall (as in much of China so far) was the pollution. This view out the window was typical and even at noon the sun in the sky was barely visible through the smog.

Mike jumping on the great wall because jumping is fun and there was still alot of pancakes to eat before the day was done.

The section of the wall that we hiked was really beautiful but hilly. When Jen made it to to the top of this hill it was time for a jump.

And one last jump to end the day! (that is Francis-Xavier on the left)

Jen and I with a Vinney, Hugo, Morgan (the cyclists that we rode into Beijing with) and Francois-Xaier and Maggie (as seen in the Great Wall photos) at the summer palace. Although we did not actually get into the palaces, the walk around the lake was beautiful.

Me attacking Jen at the summer palace.

Sept 24-25: China Bites Back (Dabu to Donghuayuan)

2009-10-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

Our next two days on the road were a little more eventful. Our first day was ridiculously smoggy. The morning started out well, winding through mountains with beautiful red vines climbing down them and very picturesque cornfields squeezed in the valleys and every tiny little crevice in the hills where there was at least a couple square meters of flat space with soil.

But before lunch, we started reaching more populated vineyards getting closer to Beijing.... the scenery would have still been beautiful except that we couldn't see the backdrop of mountains through the smog. It was worse than we had seen yet so far.

The afternoon got complicated again when we looked for a hotel. We had lunch at a city with lots of big ones that definitely would have taken foreigners, but decided to continue on upon the locals' advice that the next town had lots that would also take us in. This wasn't exactly true. So after an hour of going aroud town asking each hotel with a helpful local motorcyclist that showed us around, we ended up chilling out at a local restaurant whose staff kept bringing us local grapes while we waited for someone they called to help us. Turned out it was the police, who ended up escorting us about half the way to the next hotel that took in foreigners 15km away, making sure that we were clear on the directions to get there before they left. They were also very friendly and almost shy when they talked to us, telling us "You are wonderful people" in slightly broken but very enthusiastic English, blushing when we complimented them on it, checking our passports more out of curiosity than anything (they later asked me in Chinese where we were from, so it became obvious that the passport check was less than thorough...:)

Our escort out of town...

When we pulled up to the one hotel in the region that accepted foreigners we were a little dismayed - it turned out it was a huge resort with hot springs a little beyond our budget. After awhile explaining that we were just looking for any old hotel that we were allowed to stay at, they let us stay in the hotel/living quarters that seemed more for the staff than the tourists, which was back in our price range. We did get to enjoy some of the amenities of the resort though, including the onsite bowling alley.

The only local hotel where foreigners could stay.

The next day we got out of the densely populated vineyards and into a more secluded area around a dam-made lake with only a few huge resort/mansion type places around the lake and quite a bit of new road construction. The lake could have been beautiful, but you could hardly tell the difference between it and the polluted air!

We also biked on our first dirt roads in China. This proved very unfortunate, as Mike somehow got a rock or something stuck in his chain which caused the rear derailer to bend 180 degrees and get caught in the spokes... it happened so fast but was a fairly major problem. Mike managed to clean it up and reduce his bike to one gear, but it made for a slow ride as the chain kept jumping and ceasing and we didn't want to waste a new chain just to get a better one-gear ride going.

After a couple slow kilometers, we decided to flag down a little truck that drove us in to the nearest decent-sized town while our French buddies raced us in on their bikes. Coincidentally, Morgan's axle actually broke about a kilometer later, so it was perfect timing when we pulled up behind him and added him and his bike to the truck, too!

Once we got to town, we started looking for someone who could repair the bikes. This fellow managed to repair Morgan's axle but couldn't do anything that Mike hadn't already done for his own bike.

This led to an interesting cultural learning.... once he had finished working on Mike's bike I made the mistake of directly translating the English phrase "Well, thanks for trying!" As soon as it was out of my mouth, he cringed and a couple of the girls watching the whole ordeal suppressed a giggle. I really should have said a very common Chinese phrase that translates to "Well, there's no solution!" which kind of implies less of a personal failure on his part, I guess. I think it kind of grated on him that he couldn't fix the problem, cuz he proceeded to call all his buddies in Yanqing, a much bigger town about 30 km away, to see if they had the part Mike needed. As a result, we spent the next morning driving into Yanqing on the taxi he had arranged, going to several bike shops that he called ahead to, making sure they had the parts we needed....

Turns out they didn't have good enough parts to fix it either... all of the rear derailers out in the country seem quite primitive, probably because all the bikes around here are single speed. This time, when we returned with the broken bike still in tow, I knew better to say "Thanks for all your help, but there's no solution, I guess!"

The taxi then took us the last 70 km into Beijing where, lo and behold, the very first bike shop we see has every part we need, both to fix Mike's bike and to do a bit of a tune-up, replacing our chains and cassettes. Our bikes were good as new within 3 hours of arriving in Beijing. Just the first of many examples of the dramatic difference between the countryside and the big city!

Us, our bikes and the taxi driver's wife on the way to Beijing... (He picked her up for the trip to the big city, once we realized we needed to go!)

This fellow replaced all the parts we needed and fixed up Mike's bent spokes, and we were rolling again that night.

Sept 21 - 23: We love China! (Datong to Dabu)

2009-10-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

Leaving Datong we were in for a beautiful ride . We knew the scenery would be great, at least until the Hanging Monastery, but after a month and a half in traffic-less rural Mongolia we were anticipating some problems with Chinese traffic. Turns out we had nothing to worry about - the first day gave us our first glimpse of the amazing infrastructure in China. Except for one small section of dirt road on the edge of town, all the roads we were on were beautiful asphalt, most of the time with huge shoulders lined with trees and people selling fruit by the side of the road. Every truck or car that passed seemed to slow down and move half the way across the wide road for us, even when we were many meters away from them on the shoulder.

The day's scenery was also amazing, but really emphasized how different this new country was from the Mongolia we had become so familiar with. Mongolia is so beautiful because of it's wide open unspoiled raw and natural beauty. This area of China is very beautiful, but you definitely couldn't call it raw and unspoiled. Its beauty is a man-made kind, or at least a man-nature joint venture. It's the terraced mountains and the gorges with mud-brick houses carved out of the walls. This makes perfect sense given the fact that China is one of the world's most densely populated countries (at least in this area of it) while Mongolia is one of the least, but it still is quite remarkable how well manicured all of nature here seems to be.

It was also fun after two months biking just the two of us to have some company.... with the five of us (us + Vianney, Morgan and Hugo) we looked alot more like a biking team than just a couple of honeymooners on bikes

The destination of our first day was the Hanging Monastery outside of Huanying. Because of being denied access to the Caves in Datong, this was our first experience of the (relative) expensiveness of Chinese tourist sights. Compared to food, which is averaging about $3/meal for BOTH Mike and I to eat until we're very full, and the max $15/night we are paying for what would be $80 hotels in Canada, paying a minimum $10 each time you see a cave or building or garden is pretty steep. Given that it's the only thing locals don't have to also buy for themselves, it makes sense... That said, the four hungry men I was travelling with at the time could still not help comparing the total 240 Yuan we paid for our 20 minute round-about to the 30+ large bowls of spicy noodle soup it could have bought...

The monastery itself was quite impressive, perched way up the mountain (word is that they kept on moving it up to keep it above the floods, but we think it was just done so the monks could get onto "MTV Cribs"). It is also quite tiny, we wondered how many monks actually lived there in its heyday, as it is only as deep as the buildings itself, there is no additional space carved out of the mountain at all...

This is how it was held up, looks like mud maybe?

Jen doing her best scary statue impression...

The next day was another great ride into the city of Guanling. Other than the great roads and scenery, I have to finally mention something else that continued into our second day biking. As noted in the previous post, we got a bit of gawking at Datong.... more than in Mongolia, but nothing totally outrageous. After one day in rural China, we learned what it felt like to be international superstars or something... The previous day when we stopped for lunch, a crowd gathered and our meal was followed by 15 minutes of picture taking - me with the women, Mike with the men, both of us with all of them, the French guys with the Chinese guys pointing to their beards and a variety of other combinations.

This guys really wanted to have his picture taken with Mike.

The crowd that had gathered outside the restaurant to watch us eat.

This did not turn out to be specific to one town. The next day when we stopped for lunch on our way to Guanling, we were absolutely crowded by what seemed like half the small town. They watched us order, watched us eat, talked with me and giggled at my mispronunciations, and of course, took pictures.... The food was amazing, this time we knew to make sure there were no chicken heads or feet in anything, and all five of us ate until we were stuffed for 43 yuan (about $7 CAD). When we tried to pay 50 yuan, the owner wouldn't let us - matter of fact, she only let us pay 40 yuan, even less than the already very cheap full price. After lunch, we had another photography and bike inspection before taking off, only to be followed by a couple of helpful fellows on motorcycles who wanted to escort us through the tunnel just outside of town, in case we didn't have lights of our own.

Us checking into a hotel and attracting a crowd..

Yet another crowd as we head into lunch...

The pic below is the one the restaurant owner wanted us to mail to her.

The third day of cycling was a little less scenic. The rolling terraced hills and mountains were replaced by some corn and sunflower fields, but mostly coal fields. Though we felt a little burn in the lungs the days before, it was inescapable by the third day. From the little time that we have spent in China so far, it is clear that they use alot of coal. We see more coal trucks on the road than any other type of vehicle, and the piles of coal such as the one below are in every field, home and business.

The lack of any empty natural space also made the prospect of camping less than interesting, so we were determined to find a hotel. Unfortunately, each town we passed said there was no place to stay, but that there were in the next village. So we kept continuing on, even though the places to stay in the next village were always not allowed to have foreigners stay with them, either. In China, especially the rural areas even right outside Beijing, there are alot of hotels for locals only. This became more and more of a problem as the sun started to set.... By the time we reached a house/store the edge of a small town called Dabu we were all tired and getting sick of being turned away so many times (albeit in a very friendly and sympathetic way), that I resorted to shameless begging. The nice thing about begging in another language is that the clumsy questions and requests definitely come off a little cuter - you could see they were amused. The downside is, it's still begging. But the family took it very well and, after first suggesting we camp out front of their house literally on the side of the highway, they warmed up and let us stay in the big dining room in the younger couple's house out back, complete with a locked-up courtyard to leave our bikes.

Us in our "hotel room" for the night. Although it may not look luxurious, we were really happy to have it!

Once they realized we weren't crazies they were super kind and welcoming, just like everyone else we'd met so far. They cooked supper for us and the young couple that slept in the bedroom right next to our dining room campsite gave us gifts of homemade good luck ornaments, an old Chinese coin and medallion they had, along with a picture of the two of them. We left the next morning having hid a thank-you note with some cash out back to avoid the standard argument over not letting us pay.... We felt a little sheepish at the cash instead of something a little less tacky, but we don't carry much extra with us on our bikes and we hoped that the note we left explained that well enough.

The group posing with the gifts they gave us.

All in all, our first impressions of biking in rural China are awesome - we love almost all of it. The pollution is the only downside, and considering it should be much better where we're biking next in the southwest of China, the short one- or two-week dose of it is more than made up for by the incredibly friendly people so far.

Sept 19 - 20: Goodbye Mongolia, Hello China! (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Datong,China)

2009-10-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

First of all a note about our blog. We are in China right now and all non-chinese blogging sites are blocked by the government, so we can't access our site to post which is why we are behind. We think we may have figured out how to post via email, but we cannot check to make sure it formats correctly. So if the formatting below is off drop us an email to let us know. As long as this posts properly we will continue to post over the next few days and get caught up!

So picking up where we left off...

Although we loved our time in Mongolia, 10 days in Ulaanbaatar was definitely enough time to make sure we were excited to get going. We had plenty of time to see some sights, visit many many excellent restaurants and then slowly get a bit antsy to get back out of the cities and on our bikes. So we were more than ready to go by the time Saturday rolled around and it was time for our train to China.

This time getting our bikes on the train was even more painful than usual, but it was our own fault. Each time we've taken a train or bus, we've asked ahead if bikes are allowed and how to go about it. This time, we weren't going to but our hotel manager suggested we should, so we did.... after much unnecessary hassle and no results whatsoever, we learned our lesson, yet again, and next time we will definitely just show up with our bags and our bikes and argue until they let us on.

Anyway, as we were getting on the train it started to snow. Turns out we timed our Sept 19th exit perfectly and left Mongolia just before winter hit! (This was a surprise, as the day before it was about 20C, but apparently that's how it always is...)

As we arrived in China that night just before midnight, we noticed some changes immediately. All of a sudden looking out the window there were more neon lights, more large apartment complexes and none of them were empty. We hung out at the border town Erlian for awhile, as the train cars were lifted onto new wheels to fit the Chinese rails (the width of the tracks are different in China than in Mongolia, we were told this was to slow advancing armies, but this could be a myth?, either way the pic below is of the massive lifts which lifted the cars while we were inside).

As this switch took place, the very friendly Chinese customs officials came around, inspected our bags and took our paperwork. (Their English was fantastic, better than any border officials we've met so far.) They did a couple stereotypically Chinese things, including asking about the subject of some books some passengers next to us brought in... I guess maybe to check if it was anything politically subversive? Of course, they never asked about the 320GB hard drive we were bringing in, nor the book reader including one electronic book that is fairly critical about the last 60 years or so of China's history.... Anyway, the second interesting tidbit we learned later is that one unfortunate traveller developed a bit of a temperature after eating at the on-board restaurant. We all filled out forms regarding our health and contact with people with flu-like symptoms and had our temperature taken.... apparently his was a little higher than it should have been, so they checked it a couple more times and booted him of the train. :( Glad we were feeling well on the trip, and didn't eat that pinkish chicken at the restaurant!!

Finally, at around 8AM the next morning, we arrived at our final destination of Datong. We decided earlier in the week to stop here instead of Beijing, so we could see the two major attractions of the area - a Buddhist monastery that hangs from the side of a mountain, and a series of over 50 caves that contain the earliest Buddhist carvings in China - and then continue on with some French cyclists we met in Ulaanbaatar and cycle to Beijing instead, all in time for the 60th anniversary of the Communist Party on Oct 1st, which looks like it will be quite the shindig (LINK HERE).

We started our day in Datong by looking for some breakfast. After being turned away by a number of places that still weren't open, we had a delicious but sometimes startling (see pic below) meal of chicken & mushrooms in broth with sides of jiaozi (chinese dumplings).

After this we hopped two buses, walked a bit, argued with some motorcycles trying to pick us up, hired a taxi and walked a little bit more though a construction zone and finally got to the Yungang caves. We tried to buy our tickets, but they said there were "no tickets today"... we thought maybe this meant that it was free today (it was a Sunday.) Once we got to the gate, we realized that it wasn't a free admission day. Turns out that protesters were blocking entry into the caves. Luckily, we were in line beside a Beijing resident who works for BBC (formerly also of the CBC) who explained that they were local peasants who used to live all around the caves, but were relocalized for the construction that was currently underway. This took place some time ago, but they were supposed to be compensated and were now protesting something to do with their compensation agreement, or the fact that it wasn't materializing. He said they were given 5,000 Yuan (less than $600) per square foot for their homes that were demolished, but were relocalized to an area where they had to pay 25,000 Yuan for their new homes. It was a very small protest keeping out a very small crowd, but even though the Caves were supposed to be the local "cultural heavyweight" (according to our guidebook) we thought we had likely experienced something even more representative of the local culture, the modern one at least.

This picture below is of the blockade that the people had made at the entrance to the caves.

These ladies below were two of the most vocal blockaders and did a damn good job keeping anyone out of the caves.

After taking a taxi back into town, Mike and I walked back to the hotel through most of the city's downtown. As we had also experienced earlier in the morning, we continued to get alot of attention. All through the trip we have had our fair share of curious onlookers, especially each time we rolled into a new village on our bikes going through Mongolia. That said, we've found it to be the same if not more so here, and we hadn't even been on our bikes yet! There does seem to be a bit of a difference - until now, it's been curious glances, now it's just plain old all-out gawking. The large majority of it is very friendly... lots of "Hellos" from people on the street and hanging out their windows. Sometimes after a long stare we'll say "Ni hao" and get nothing back but a continued stare, but most of the time I think the gawking is just because they are curious but too shy to talk or think we won't be able to communicate with them. Either way it's quite funny how curious people are about us. It's a great icebreaker, as I have long adopted the philosophy "if you stare at me, then I am going to go ahead and randomly talk to you without feeling the least bit awkward about it..." So far, that philosophy has lead to a very few frowns or shy giggle and run-aways, but almost all of the time gets at least a friendly hello back and often a full-on conversation about what we're doing here and so on.

Only one less-than-friendly anecdote to recount, but an interesting one nonetheless....In Ulaanbaatar we had the interesting experience of visiting their local black market, which even the advertisements warn is full of very skillful pickpockets. (One guy we met had money stolen from his front jacket breastpocket with two buttons, which was unbuttoned, emptied and done back up without him noticing!!) This is probably why when we saw a young guy pulling at a lady's purse, opening it up and trying to get some money out of it, we thought he was her son bugging her to buy something. Turns out it was just a very sloppy attempt to pickpocket her, so we went and told her, with a mix of a clumsy explanation and gestures, that the boy had just opened her purse and grabbed some cash. He didn't run away or anything, just threw the cash on the ground when he was caught and a couple seconds later yelled "F*%$ you America!" at us with a very angry look on his face. If he wants to make a living as a pickpocket, he definitely needs to improve his skills - maybe some tips from the Ulaanbaatar black market folk would help. Judging by how well-dressed he looked, we didn't think he needed to make it his day job, anyway.

The rest of our day was quite uneventful but we went to bed very happy and excited. China, it seemed, just may meet or exceed our expectations. In just one day in a fairly "boring" city, we had already seen so many things that were new and different to us. The people so far all seemed so friendly and helpful. I was on a bit of a high, after having spent so many months practicing Chinese by myself in preparation for this trip finally getting to use it and seeing that it actually worked! (I had strong suspicions that it might all be for naught, some uncrackable code - I'm still quite surprised everytime I use a new word and am understood!) And both Mike and I went to bed with gloriously full bellies and tongues still lingering with tasty spices. The food here, oh the food! Whether it's the fresh fruit stands in the street, the ridiculously cheap and tasty fresh bakery pastries or the amazing soups and stews and dumplings and stir frys, there is just simply too much good food for the amount one can eat in a day. After many weeks of meals consisting only of milk, meat and white flour in rural Mongolia, the freshness and the flavour of the food here is more than we can handle!

-Jen

Chinese Visa: Applying in Ulaanbaatar

2009-09-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

Here are a few notes of our experience applying for a Chinese tourist visa in early September 2009 in UB for anyone who is wishing to do the same thing or looking for info.

--The consulate is only open Monday, Wednesday and Friday and although they do not do next day service, for an extra $20 they do a 2 day service.

--In the consulate they say they require hotel bookings for the stay, return transportation and a statement of finances (bank printout).

--We requested a 90 day tourist visa submitted three items with the application/photo: (1) printouts of hotel reservations (unpaid for, unconfirmed, but made to look as official as possible, from www.sinohotel.com), (2) printouts of air itineraries for flights to and from China that we got from Air Market in UB (unpaid for, unconfirmed) (3) a printout of our bank statement from online.

--We got the full 90 day visa with no problems. We've heard of others being refused double-entry visas due to sketchy reservations and heard people being questioned about the validity of their reservations, but so far no one we've heard from has been flat-out refused, at a minimum they seem to get 30 day single entry....
--We did hear that some people had not printed a bank statement, nor made hotel reservations for the entire stay, but since all of our reservations were free, we figured why not?

Hope this helps!

September 6-15 - Darkhan to UB and around UB

2009-09-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

Mike here, writing this post using our brand new laptop which we bought here in UB (UB=Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia with a population of about 1.3M which is roughly half of Mongolia's population and an even higher percentage of its wealth).

We are very excited about this purchase as we have been seriously roughing it since our computer broke down a month ago in Russia. We can't say that we enjoyed the experience of living without a computer at all. There are many things that we had to endure to bike across Mongolia, but having our computer taken away was absolutely the worst. Biking 10 hours a day in sand and heat is one thing; being forced to do that without new podcasts, audio books and music is quite another! But enough complaining, so getting back to to our ride....

After leaving Darkhan we had two days of riding on pavement to get into Darkhan. It was a relaxing (albeit long) 2 day ride into UB and a great way to finish off biking before our 10 day rest before China.

Below is a picture of a truck moving a ger that we spotted while having lunch one day. You see these on the road very often and generally half the family is sitting on top of the load (the whole family cannot fit in the cab I guess) with a big smile on their faces. Although I have never asked whether the nomadic families enjoy moving their home every few months, the do seem to be very happy and I can imagine that it would be exciting to move your home so often.

...our camp spot in between Darkhan and UB. Although there is a lot more traffic, finding a nice enough camp spot is still no problem.

On the left below is yet another pic yet another meal of tsuivan. Now that we are in UB I have no intention of eating any more for quite some time!

On the right is a group of kids that surrounded us as we entered a small village. Even as we got close to the capital we still caused a stir as we entered each village.

Jen cycling along the rolling hills into UB.

Happy to be in UB finally! Although we were excited to be into the big city, with big cities comes smog. After 2 months in amazingly clean and fresh air, returning to the smog of a big city (which you can see in the background) was no fun.

After arriving in UB on Wednesday, we set ourselves to the task of repairing bikes, and arranging the Chinese portion of the trip (visa, train, etc). After a few days of sorting through paperwork we were able to get a 90 day Chinese visa by the following Monday (for those of you that are interested, we have posted more details in a post which you can read by clicking HERE), but were not able to get a train ticket to Beijing until the Saturday after that, so for the rest of this week we are just relaxing in UB.

Me smiling with our hard earned 3 month visa...China here we come!

To replace our broken luggage racks, we had new ones mailed to us in Ulaanbaatar so we can continue our trip with no delay (thanks to "Old Man Mountain" who immediately sent them to us free of charge when we phoned them to say that our rack had broken )

While in UB we have spent some time looking at local museums. The below photos is from the "Mongolia Natural History Museum". The museum itself was pretty awful, but we entertained ourselves by reading the English signs explaining the exhibits. I am not sure who did the translating but our guess is it was someone who lied on their CV and put "fluent in English" to get the job, and then were in a bit of a bind when the time actually came to deliver! (see picture below for a sample)

For some unknown reason all of the sewer holes are exposed in UB. The covers are always sitting beside the hole, but for some reason they are rarely actually used to cover the hole itself. During the day we have usually been OK, but in evening while walking home from the pub or restaurant there have been a number of very close calls due to the combination of darkness and beer!

In UB we have enjoyed mingling with other travellers. On the left below is a group who are also doing a year in Asia: Francois & Nathalie and Edmond & Elisa (see Francois' blog at http://autourduglobe.e-monsite.com/). Edmond is a aerodynamics design engineer for the F1 Ferrari team so when we all went to a pub to watch the F1 on Sunday night he added interesting commentary to the race (ie: the Ferrari F1 team has their own private wind tunnel and they run a new test every 20 minutes, 24 hours a day!).

The photo on the right is of us with Shin Bai, a Korean cyclist (of the 9 cyclist we have met so far, he is the only one who is not French) whom we enjoyed a great supper at a Korean restaurant the night after a fantastic dinner with our French friends at a French restaurant! Shin Bai has cycled many parts of our planned route through China and hooked us up with amazing GPS maps for all of China. Now that we have turn by turn directions from our GPS for all of China now, maybe we should change our website name?

Below are two photos of cyclists (all from France of course) we have met in UB. On the left is Robert as Jen helps him with his Chinese visa application. The photo on the right is from a lunch we had with a group of travellers, three of whom are cyclists as well. The 6 of us (three from the lunch table, Robert, Jen and I) are all taking the same train to Datong (about 300km west of Beijing) on Saturday, and we are going to cycle together for the week or so ride into Beijing. It should be interesting cycling with such a large group for a while.

The rest of the week here in UB should be quiet for us. We are just killing some time in UB reading, eating ice cream, and preparing for our Chinese leg. For tonight though our download of the movie "I Love You Man" just finished after 2 days (the internet where we are staying is still not so fast!), so we are off to the movies on our new laptop with a huge 10" screen!. Cheers.

--Mike

(PS: I started posting some of the photos a little smaller, but you can get a larger size for any photo by clicking on it)

Sept 3 - 6: Erdenet to Darkhan, "Of Mice, Monks and Misdirection..."

2009-09-06T20:18:00.001-07:00

Mike and I decided to, on our way east towards Ulaanbataar, take a short detour off the pavement to a famous monastery, the 2nd largest in Mongolia (I think?) and likely the most important tourist attraction we've heard of so far, 35km north of the highway, about halfway between Erdenet and Darkhan, the last big city before Ulaanbataar.

We planned to take two days to the monastery from Erdenet, camping somewhere along the way, and two days from the monastery to Darkhan. The trip there went very quickly, benefitting from both the new pavement and our more seasoned biking legs, and once we were off the pavement only 35km away from the monastery with rain clouds gathering overhead and still lots of daylight hours to get there, we decided to push through and sleep someplace warmer and drier than our tent for the night. This ended up being the longest biking day we've done yet, and after about 110 km we rolled into a ger camp, right before it started to pour.

The scenery for much of the trip there on the pavement was pretty boring, but after a bit on the dirth paths it got quite lovely again. This was the last valley we passed through, just teeming with animals on all sides.

We stayed that night at a ger camp that had remarkable facilities - 20 gers, flush toilets, hot showers, etc. - all of which was turned off because we were the only ones there. This turned out to be a common theme of the trip. We've been told at other touristy locations (like Khovsgol, the big lake about two weeks ago) that it's been a slow summer for tourists, but this is SO slow compared to the significant capacity that there is here for tourists (there were two other camps by the monastery, both similar to or even better than ours, and both also empty) that it also must be that the tourist season is winding down. Our host mentioned that he moves back to the city in October for the winter, though the traffic we saw hardly seemed to even justify staying open in September. That said, we definitely didn't mind, and both realized that this will be a totally different experience than what we will see in a month or so touring through the hotspots in China...

We spent the next morning checking out the monastery via self-guided tour ("self-guided" to be interpreted as literally as possible). To start with, we weren't quite sure where even to enter (or if we were allowed to), but just went around trying the various doors and going in the ones that were unlocked.

Jen opening the first unlocked door we found...

It was a lovely place, if slightly abandoned. Throughout the whole day, we saw one group of fellow tourists and four "monks" - one that was about 15 years old that unlocked the door so we could see inside, and three others that were about 10 - 12 years old (we're not sure if that young is technically called "monks" yet.) Apparently there are still about 30 monks that live there and there were 2,000 back in the heyday of the monastery. You could see how so many people could be acommodated there - it was definitely VERY big for 30 people, but there were also alot of run-down buildings that hadn't been restored which would have made it even larger.

For more pictures of the monastery, check out our full album: Monastery Pics

From there we wandered around a bit, looking for somewhere to get some food and eventually found a huge ger camp + sauna + hotel? that opened up their very fancy but very empty restaurant for us, and woke up the cook who was sleeping upstairs to make us and the staff some Tsuivan for lunch...

Mike waiting for his lunch, all alone...

That night, our second night in the ger camp, turned out to be quite an adventure. Earlier that morning, I opened up one of our bags and pulled out a notebook to see a HUGE mouse fly out and scramble away. Luckily, there was nothing valuable (food, etc.) in it for him to eat, though he did do a number on a plastic bag and a pair of my favourite underwear :(

Anyway, after ensuring that there was nothing vulnerable to further attack, we came back the next evening giving ourselves (me mostly) pep talks about the fact that of COURSE there's bound to be mice - we're living in a tent with no real walls (there is about 5 cm of space all along the bottom of the walls where the tent doesn't entirely cover.) I psyched myself up for an evening with earplugs, our beds and baggage safely away from anywhere a mouse could climb up on, but as night fell and the mice started to visit our nice warm ger, I will admit that my resolve faltered a little.

Throughout the entire trip, there have definitely been many moments that have tested the boundaries of my "comfort zone," but I feel like I've managed to work through them quite well. I now talk myself out of panic mode as soon as a dog comes chasing us, as I know that almost all of them will stop and bark a polite hello as they actually get close to us. At night when we are camping in some random field and I imagine the sounds of strangers creeping up to steal our bikes and attack us in the tent, I have realized, with the help of some earplugs and a slightly less active imagination, that it is either a horse or a sheep or a slightly stronger than normal wind, and that between both the scarceness and extreme friendliness of the local population, the odds of it being a malicious person are so low that I would be better to waste my energies worrying about a lightning strike burning down our tent or something....

All that progress and, lo and behold, fearless Jen then finds herself standing on top of her bed in fear of the mice, holding a block of wood that had no chance of ever killing a single one of them, trying to keep Mike awake with questions like "A mouse couldn't ever JUMP it's way onto my bed as it climbs up the wall, could it?" and other ridiculous nonsense.... I will admit, it was pretty yucky, as by the time we went to sleep there were three or four mice nibbling at crumbs on our floor, noisily scampering around showing no fear of us whatsoever, but it is amazing the effect that such tiny little relatively harmless animals can have. All that to say, after a restless night's sleep (me waking up every now and then to worry about the mice, Mike waking up to make sure I wasn't), we were both quite glad to get going the next morning in anticipation of a nice, four-walled, mouse-free hotel room.

We set off nice and early, expecting to make it all the way into Darkhan that evening. We'd realized how fast pavement could be, and were told that the road from here to the pavement (going southeast) was alot less hilly than the road to our southwest was that we had taken going in. We had only gotten about 3 kilometers from the ger camp when we got to a river that the road seemed to cross. Our friend at the ger camp hadn't said anything about a river crossing, so we motioned to the following friendly fellow and asked him whether or not we needed to cross the river to get to Darkhan. "Yes, yes..." he says as him and his family watch us cross the freezing water in 5C weather, laughing a little and helping us out of the other side of the river.

Friendly as we may look in this picture, we are not this guy's biggest fan. He made us come in for tea and cheese after the river crossing and we had barely left his ger when they started to motion that we had to go back to the right. We were confused - the river was back to the right?? So we went a little toward the right and then back over to the left when we were out of earshot of their ger - obviously the road was over there? Over the next couple kilometers our stomachs slowly sank as we realized that, after one hour and barely 5 kilometers of river crossing and bumpy riding, the road was in fact on the OTHER side of the river, that we should never have crossed it in the first place. Maybe our friends had misunderstood, and thought we wanted to cross a freezing cold river with nearly a hundred kilograms of bikes and luggage for tea and cheese? Maybe they thought we wanted to bike over the bumpy valley instead of using the perfectly good dirt tracks? Who knows... either way, it did not put us in a fantastic mood, especially considering that we had now spent an hour and a half travelling only to have very cold toes, no idea where the real road was and had travelled less than 5 kilometers from where we started...

Mike, on his eighth river crossing that morning (he insisted on crossing my bike for me due to the slippery rocks and steep push up out of the river)

Jen pushing through the bumpy valley on the other side of the river, in search of a rideable dirt path...

After a bit of pushing our bikes through the bumpy valley, we finally found a good dirt path and started rolling at slightly quicker clip. After a quick pass and a bit of a rocky descent, however, our next setback hit us. The rack we'd repaired in Erdenet snapped on the opposite side from the tension of the bend and weld on the other side, forcing us to duct tape it together and swap the back and front bags on my bike so that the broken rack (formerly on mike's back, with the heaviest bags we've got) now supported nothing but our sleeping gear, which we could have carried in backpacks if need be.

The next river crossing only about 5 km later (the first and only we SHOULD have had) did not totally delight us, but turned out to be quite quick and painless now that it was warm enough just to cross it in our sandals and keep them on to dry while we rode on.

The rest of the ride to the pavement that day is still something we have not fully managed to piece together even between ourselves. Was the worst part really the swampy mosquito land, or was it the tens of kilometers of sand that forced us to push our bikes after successive falls? Was it twenty or only fifteen kilometers longer than we expected going in? Were the steep rocky passes actually worse than back in Bayan-Olgii (the start of our trip), or was that just our imagination? It was absolutely beautiful scenery, but suffice it to say, we would have been MUCH quicker and more confortable had we just retraced our steps back along the known and relatively benign dirt path back to the highway along the way we came, and accepted a few more kilometers along the pavement.

Some pics from along the way...

By the time I reached the pavement (we had spread out a little to avoid feeding off each others' bad moods and spiralling into a collective depression), Mike was doing "pavement angels" with the kind of happiness in his eyes one usually only sees in a small child experiencing the first snowfall on Christmas morning after a long, cold, dry winter.

Needless to say, after the six hours it took us to travel the 50 kilometers to pavement, we didn't have enough daylight or energy to make it another 60 - 70 km into Darkhan that night, so we stopped in a town about 55 km from Darkhan called Hotol.

From the road, it looked like a miserable little place, between the cement factory puffing smoke and the fact that 100% of the town seemed to be made up of those huge, bland, rectangular soviet monster apartment buildings. That said, as we rode in, we wondered whether it might actually be the happiest place on earth, as teenage boys gave us high fives, what seemed like hundreds children played merrily on the sidewalks and everyone over high-school age toted happy little newborns in their arms... either that or a real-life version of "The Lord of the Flies," with nary an adult to be seen (in which case we decided to get the hell out of dodge early the next morning because we all remember how "Loæd of the Flieds" ends!)... By the next morning we realized it was in fact the former, as the adults that now dominated the streets at about 8 am proved just as happy and friendly as their kids did the night before, asking us loads of questions about the trips, driving by with thumbs up and friendly honks and wishing us all the best in every language they could muster on the rest of our journey. Even in the incredibly friendly Mongolia, this was an exceptionally congenial town.

The next day was a quick bike in from Hotol to Darkhan, where we are now maxin' and relaxin' (enjoying our first english MOVIES in about a month and a half..... our hotel has HBO!!!) and getting ready for the two-day bike into the capital city, Ulaanbataar, which we'll leave for tomorrow morning. This will mark the end of what we'll see of rural Mongolia, which is a bittersweet thought for us both. It's been such an amazing trip with experiences so far from what we are familiar with that we know we will miss it very very soon. That said, after just over a month in the country, we are very excited for China and the complete culture shock it will offer (and, I admit it, the slightly more comfortable biking and sleeping conditions.) It's still a ways off, with a week or more in Ulaanbataar to apply for our visa, fix our broken rack, etc. but as we get closer we are realizing how very much our trip is about to change. We've started thinking of it as a series of about five or so very different trips, since this year is unlikely to feel like one continuous stretch of anything other than being away from any sense of normality or routine.

With that, we're off for lunch! Stay tuned for more from Ulaanbataar!

August 31-September 2 - Repairs in Erdenet

2009-09-02T00:47:00.000-07:00

We left Bulgan on the 31st and did a nice ride into the city of Erdenet. Erdenet is Mongolia's second largest city at about 80,000 people and we were told it is the richest city outside of the capital. The reason for this is the massive copper mine just outside the city which our Lonely Planet guide tells us consumes 50% of the countries electricity and generates 40% of the nations hard currency earnings.

Below is a photo of Jen riding into Erdenet The wealth was evident from the moment we got into the city. We ended up checking into the nicest room in the nicest hotel for about $30 CDN a night. It actually has a shower with hot water 24 hours a day!!! We have been seriously enjoying this novelty.

I found the suburban development below very cute. As in North America all the homes looked the same, except that these homes could not have been more than 500 square feet. They were tiny! Not exactly the McMansions most Canadian suburbs have. Adam (a friend from Montreal) let me know about the "Tiny Home Movement" last year while we were bored in class(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/garden/11tiny.html). I think the concept is really cool and these houses reminded me of it immediately.

Our plan was to spend one day in Erdenet resting and cleaning, but after washing the bikes I noticed that the Mongolian roads had not treated my rear cargo rack well and it was bent and cracked in a very bad way. This could have forced us onto a bus but our hotel owner was able to find a welder from the copper mine who could weld aluminum (which is quite difficult) and he bargained him down to ~$23 to do the repair the following day (delaying our departure for one day).

As well I contacted the manufacturer (Old Man Mountain from California) and they are shipping us a replacement rack, free of charge, which will meet us in Ulaanbataar. So although we were worried at first about how this might delay us, as long as the weld can hold for the next week into Ulaanbataar, it will only end up slowing us down by one day. As well it gave us a good excuse to sample the numerous great restaurants in town (in reality the best are probably about the same quality as your average highway truck stop at best, but right now they taste amazing!).

Below is a picture of the broken rack. The left leg should be straight, which it clearly is not! The long month through Mongolia on sh*t roads has clearly taken its toll.

The owner of our hotel is in the center and the two miners that he found to do the repair on either side. It was really amazing actually. As soon as the owner saw our problem he was on his cell phone to everyone he knew until he found someone in the city who was able to weld aluminum and he then convinced them to bring their equipment to the hotel and do the repair for ~$23. I highly doubt your average "Holiday Inn Express" employee would even look up "welder" for you in his phone book, not to mention calling in personal favors for their random guests.

The welder on the left, and the other hotel owner (wife of the man above) who acted as our translator.

The finished weld job. It is not all that pretty and the rack is still as crooked as Bernie Madoff, but it should hold until Ulaanbataar.

So that's all from us for now. We are off to a wonderful evening of Korean food, a hot shower, a bottle of wine and some BBC World Service (it's been a while since we've had English TV). That may not sound like your favorite night, but for us it is a nice change of pace!

Hope all is well and talk to you soon!

--Mike

August 25-30 - Moron to Bulgan City

2009-08-29T23:34:00.000-07:00

Mike here again! As we are soon going to be entering China, Jen is spending most of her non-biking time buried in Chinese books, so making this blog post falls to me. This suits me fine, as we are growing tired in Mongolia of not being able to communicate with anyone!

We left Moron 6 days ago and arrived in Bulgan City last night, which was the first big town (11,000 people) we had seen since leaving Moron. This meant a hotel and a shower (which was seriously needed) after five days cycling through the country side. We set a goal of doing this leg in five days, and after five long days (about 70-80km each day with 7-8 hours actually pedalling , and 12 hours or so between camp sites) we rolled into Bulgan happy to be able to wash up and eat something different (a.k.a. ice cream!).

For this post I am going to take a bit of a different approach and insert a bunch of photos with a caption before each photo explaining it. So here goes!

Wrestling is the big thing here. We still haven't seen any matches, but in many cities there are statues and stadiums.

The farther east we move, the larger the markers at the top of passes become. Out west they were simply a pile of rocks and now they are often monuments such as this one.

This was one of the only vehicles we saw this day and it moved so slow that we kept pace with it much of the morning. It is a huge semi trailer FULL of wool! Wool is one of the major exports from Mongolia.

The "roads" in this leg were much nicer than the last leg which allowed us to make up to 80km a day rather than the 40-50 we managed in the last section

Mongolian country side is weird. It is so open and wide that at first it feels empty and alone but after a while you realize that it is very busy. There are always a number of gers in sight no matter where you are, and without exception there are herds of sheep, cows, camels and horses everywhere.

The weather was generally not too bad, but there were rainy times each day which forced us to get creative for shelter for lunch.

One of our campsites. Privacy is impossible in Mongolia.

More horses. Livestock here wander where they want and there are never any fences. I am sure all the horses we see have owners, but we rarely see the within sight of the herds.

Typical scenery for the ride.... Mongolia is amazing, like one huge campground with hundreds of double-track mountain bike trails in every direction.

Over this leg of the trip we passed through 3 small villages of about this size that gave us a chance to refill on water and supplies (albeit limited supplies as the shops had little stock)

Every time we set camp, the local people would all wander to us curious as to who we were. This generally resulted in them trying out our bikes and us joining them for tea. (Or in this case, a very weak sweet-tasting vodka made out of goat's milk.)

A note from Jen on the outfit - though it looks very traditional, about half of the male population in the rural areas seems to wear something like this, young and old. We have noticed that lots of teenage guys add their own style to it with a tilted ballcap and wearing the sash alot lower on their waist.... the Mongolian equivalent to baggy jeans, I guess.

Another camp site. Because of the large number of gers inhabiting any area suitable for camping, we were almost always near a family of gers. This was a mixed blessing. Although it is fun to hang out with the Mongolian nomads, we also are used to much more privacy in North America!

A kitty was very interested in our bikes and spent much of the night playing with them.

Mongolia has put our bikes to the test and so far we have had only a few minor problems. This bracket snapped and needed to be replaced. Hopefully the pavement we will soon get to will be easier on them as we only had one spare bracket along!

Sunsets here have been amazing, but not nearly as amazing as the stars at night. The milky way is as bright as I have ever seen it. I would take some photos to try to show this except for (1) I have no idea how to take photos of stars and I threw out my photography book in Russia as it was too heavy, and (2) at night I am always far too sleepy to even consider pulling out the camera.

This is the only real river we passed by. Because of the lack of water the shower in Bulgan was far overdue!!

Everyday the temperature was 10C-15C. This was generally a great temperature to bike in, except for the rain that would come out once or twice a day. It got uncomfortable when the rain came and the temperature fell, Jen was amazing throughout everything. She has this odd ability to not let anything stop her from enjoying herself. I have spent a lot of time in pain/discomfort with people who could ignore it or push though, but Jen actually still manages to enjoy herself. It would be cold, rainy and windy and she would be biking along listening to her music seemingly oblivious to what would make most people miserable.

Again in every little settlement the kids would come out and curiously look us over.

There was one time where there was a big group of about 30 horses on the road and just as we entered the herd they started galloping away from us, and along with us. I was tempted to pull out the camera then but decided to just enjoy the moment as we cycled along inside a pack of galloping horses. Instead this photo which I took later on will have to suffice!

Again setting up camp, and people came out curious and helped us put together our tent. They also hung around and watched us cook supper amazed at our little stove.

He seemed to enjoy my bike and once he got the hang of it took it out for pretty long ride.

I may look really high in this photo, but am not. This was taken after the fourth day, and was starting to come down with a cold making the idea of a hotel the following day even more attractive.

This is the same family as the guy riding the bike above. After the tent set up, they pulled us into their ger and kept of convincing us to drink bowl after bowl of "airag". This is fermented mare's milk and is very popular drink in Mongolia which has about 1-2% alcohol. After many glasses of the stuff we still have not developed a taste for it and makes my stomach turn with every cup but it is very hard to turn down and feels impolite.

Now it is a time for a rant about the food in Mongolia. Coming here we were repeatedly warned about the food and it was all true. In every restaurant you have at most three options and they all have the same "gamy beef/mutton"flavor which essentially reduces them to all the same option. It has gotten to the point where even our clothes smell like the food, meaning even in our sleep we can't escape the monotony. Cooking for yourself is no easier as the stores have less stock than your typical 7-11. While cycling we have generally been on a non stop diet of dry biscuits (no idea why they feel the need to color them bright pink as in the picture below) with jam, chocolate bars, and gummy candies (when we can find them) and in the evenings we stop at a guanz for a dose of "Tsuivan" which is a tasty Mongolian noodle dish, but after a number of weeks of it, is starting to lose its appeal.

When there is no pavement rain means mud and mud means slow going!

After over 20 days in Mongolia we run into our first stretch of pavement. After getting onto the gloriously smooth surface Jen promptly gets of her bike and proceeds to hug the road with what appeared to be more love than any hug she has given me. This turned out to be premature though as after 2-3km the pavement ended and we were back on dirt!

Jen riding on the short lived blacktop!

Bulgan City. This city has noticeably more wood home and fewer gers in the city. Possibly a trend as we continue to move closer to the capital?

I guess if you travel long enough eventually weird things start to occur, but this one still blew us both away. We checked into our tiny 6 bedroom hotel, in the small city of Bulgan, Mongolia with a population of 11,000. This tiny city is about as far away from Saskatchewan as you can get on the earth without starting to come back to it. After picking our room the hotel owner hands us our key with a Saskatchewan key chain! We tried to explain to her this amazing coincidence , but our Mongolian proved insufficient for the task so we have no idea where it came from.

Jen doing the laundry outside our hotel this morning. We hear there are laundromats in Ulaanbaatar which we are excited to use!

And that's all for now as I am going back to our hotel to watch some TV. For the first time on our trip we have an english channel that isn't "Fashion TV" and I am excited to watch the news and make sure the rest of the world hasn't gone to hell in the past two months! If you are especially bored and didn't get enough photos above (which does seem unlikely, I did put quite a few) you can see other photos from this leg of our ride by clicking here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Jennifer.Zwarych/20090830MoronToBulgan?feat=directlink

Tomorrow we continue west towards the capital city. We are very excited because from here on it is almost entirely pavement. As well we will only be 1-2 days between large-ish cities which will make for a luxurious week or so ride into Ulaanbataar. Hope everyone is doing well and drop us an email to let us know how you are doing!

August 14-24 - Moron to Lake Khovsgol and back...

2009-08-23T17:30:00.001-07:00

So normally Jen has been doing most of the blog posts because my posts would generally read something like "we biked, ate, saw a dog, there are a lot of sheep here, and then it was dark". But this time I decided to write the post, so bear with me....

We had decided to take a van from Ulaangom to Moron as we wanted to see the northern part of Mongolia and that was the only way we could manage to get to that area in the time we had left in Mongolia (about a month). We made this decision with no idea how hard this trip would be!. To travel the 700km between the two cities, it took 40 hours (30 hours driving and 10 hours trying to find transport), two different vehicles and an incredible amount of discomfort (in the first 11 passenger van they put 20 people and all their luggage). The amazing thing is that taking two days to cover 700km is the norm here, it is no wonder that fresh vegetables are impossible to find, they would rot before getting anywhere near their destination!

This is first van that we took on the way to Moron. We set out in the 11 passenger van filled with 20 people, and two of the four tires had slow leaks which had to be filled periodically. As well every once and a while they would have to stop, and make some adjustments to the shocks. This all seemed very odd to us that they would set out with so many people and so many mechanical problems, but all the locals said it was business as usual!

Below is a photo of our second ride we took to get to Moron. The driver was nice but not the smartest guy. He tried to drive through this river around sunset and we had to get pulled out by a local truck owner.

After arriving in Moron we took a day to get prepared and then set off on the two day bike north to Lake Khovsgol, a huge freshwater lake and possibly Mongolia's most popular tourist attraction. The 2 day bike up to the lake was great, and once there we checked into a ger camp and arranged a horse tour of the lake which we thought would be a fun way to see the lake.

You can just barely see Jen in the lower right, and a herder with her herd in the foreground. I talked briefly with her as I passed. She was wearing high heels on the horse which I found entertaining. Then again, I think she found the fact that we were biking across Mongolia for no apparent reason equally entertaining.

One of the many dried lake beds we cross. It would be amazing to try to cross this country in a time when all these rivers were running as there are rarely bridges.

Mike at the top of one of the passes. Every pass has a pile of stones/logs and some (not all) Mongolians will stop at them, toss on some rocks, walk around the pile three times and then throw some food onto it. I may have this a little wrong, and do not know the origin of the practise as I have only seen it done, never had it explained.

Our campsite on the way to the lake. The camping is great now that the weather is cooler and the bugs seem to have disappeared.

The river just as it is leaving Lake Khovsgol. You can also see a couple gers in the distance on the river shore. Not a bad place to spend the summer!

Jen just as we are about to enter the national park which surrounds the lake. The entrance fee was about $2.50 per person, a nice change from the fee's they charge at Canadian national parks.

Us in our ger at one of the many tourist camps. The people all said that this summer has been very slow for tourists which seemed to be about 70% Mongolian tourists and 30% foreign tourists. We also stayed in a similar ger the second night, they were very nice with a small wood stove which kept the place nice and warm.

Setting out the next morning on horse back, the horse tour went downhill immediately. From the moment the ride started it was evident that they gave us the most obstinate horses in Mongolia. If those horses end up in the soup at the local guanz (cafe in Mongolian), I have no intention of sending flowers to the funeral. They refused to go more than 200m before stopping to eat and after about 2km we decided we could go faster by getting off and pulling the horses along. The "guide" we had along was no help as he was generally off in the distance doing...well I have no idea what he did as he was off in the distance.

A picture of my horse on the lakeside. He may look pretty but he was a real asshole...then again maybe I would be too if I had to transport tourists on my back all day!

After covering only 15km in the first day we said that was enough of horses and wanted our bikes back! We spent the night at a local tourist camp and hitchhiked back to where we left our bikes happy to have our Independence back!

A happy group of Mongolian tourists drove us back to our original camp but not before running into some local road construction. Road construction is very rare in Mongolia (as proven by the nearly complete lack of roads) so when it does occur is is a rather "kludge" affair. They had blocked the road with boulders, but rather than making a detour they would simply tow the cars over the boulders with the front end loader as the cars appeared.

The front end loader towing our car over the construction.The cable is there but just can't be seen in the photo.

We ran into a group of Russians on quad's at the camp. The moment they found out we were from Canada they were very happy to talk about how great Canada was because we produced their Bombardier quad's (which all five of them had). After they found out Jen worked for Bombardier they all fell in love with her and started feeding her vodka shots as they discussed how great the company was.

After spending the night at the camp, we set out the next morning to get back to Moron to resume our ride to Ulaanbataar. We assumed the ride would take us 2 days, but feeling energetic half way through the day, we opted to push forward and bike the whole way in one day covering the 101km over dirt track in about 12 hours. A new record for us on dirt track!

Below is a sample of the scenery as we ride back to Moron. It is hard to describe how cool it is to ride through these areas as photos really don't do it justice. The rugged terrain with the numerous yurts and livestock dotting the landscape combined with a complete lack of roads, buildings or fences really give it a unique feel.

Another snapshot of the scenery with Jen cycling on the road in front of me in the distance.

Jen descending into Moron.

A young boy who came out to see us as we passed. His mad skills bareback on the horse really made us feel inadequate as we were escaping from our failed attempt at a horse tour.

Jen riding as the sunset. The little dot in the background on the road was a lady who we passed walking along the road with only a large pot (no idea why, although I am sure she had her reasons). She talked to us for a while, but as we don't know any Mongolian all we could do was shake our heads and mention we didn't know Mongolian. None the less she just kept on talking hoping that we would catch on to the language at some point (which we unfortunately did not).

Sunset as we are just about to pull into town. We only had to use our head lights for the last 15-30 minutes of the ride.

We are now back in Moron for the day, and will set off back towards Ulaanbataar tomorrow. It will take us 20 or so days to reach the Mongolian capital where we will then take a train to China. We will get to Bulgan City (the next city with Internet) in 5-7 days (or more, you never know when on dirt tracks how long it may take), and we will likely post again when we get there. For now though we are excited to be back on our bikes and happy not to have any more horses in our future!!

--Mike

(P.S. - In case any of you were wondering, our satellite tracker is not being updated because we are running low on lithium batteries for the unit (the only kind it accepts) and want to save the ones we have in case of an emergency. We will get it turned back on once we are able to find more AA lithium batteries, likely in China.

August 9 - 13: Olgii to Ulaangom

2009-08-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

There are too few words available to describe how dramatically our trip changed upon leaving Olgii. Suffice it to say, biking through the Russian Altai and through Western Mongolia are about as similar as night and day. Paved roads have now virtually disappeared, giving way to gravel washboards, jeep tracks through grass, mud and sand and our favourite, fields of rock through which many "tracks" appear to exist with usually only one or two gems that aren't impassable due to sand, stones or boulders. (I mean it, boulders.) The touristy-region feel and high (relatively) priced food has also disappeared, and we are now waved at by nearly everyone we pass, with large expanses of desert between towns and huge swarms of local children coming to help us push our bikes up the hill or offer us tea when they see us coming. We have often been dissappointed by how many very far away places feel very similar to home- this is not a concern in Mongolia. It definitely lives up to its reputation.

We started out on our first day with excited butterflies in our tummies and our first experience of very washboardy gravel. We took a very pleasant snack break on the bank of a river and literally talked about how much of a cyclists playground Mongolia is – we were sitting in the most picturesque spot ever, our bikes parked at the side of the road, still not having been passed by any cars, without any of the typical traffic worries of biking on the main highway coming out of a provincial capital.

Jen cycling out of Olgii....

The river we followed the first couple days out of Olgii (with Jen cycling in the distance)...

A very typical view, especially for the first few days, trying to decide which of the many jeep tracks would work out best with the bikes...

“Playground” may have been an overstatement, as we suffered through a gruelling next 20 km of some incredibly rocky terrain. After a couple of spills (you will later see my (Jen's) beautifully black and blue legs), some frustrating stints pushing our bikes at very slow speeds up rocky hills and a generally long afternoon, we finally landed at our planned camp spot next to a (quite mosquito-ey) river. We are coming to really love the luxury of camping by a river, getting washed up, washing clothes and getting water so easily is pretty cool, though it won't necessarily happen as often as it did near the end of Russia and beginning of Mongolia.

Day two was quite a short bike and gave us our first true taste of rural nomadic Kazakh culture. The province we started in, Bayan-Olgii, is predominantly Kazakh and has a reputation of being more authentically Kazakh nowadays than Kazakhstan. The key differences we've noticed are obviously the language (which leaves us in a tricky communication position, without a Kazakh phrasebook - 90% of people in Kazakhstan spoke Russian, so we didn't need one there) and the size of the gers, which are typically larger than the Mongolian gers.

Jen pushing through a "traffic jam" bordering the first settlement with the guanz and Kazakh gers...

Right after we had stopped at a guanz (canteen) for lunch, we rode through a cluster of gers, said hi to some kids and were about to keep on rolling when our host ushered him into his ger for tea. We were shocked as we stepped in and saw at least 30 people sitting there for some type of celebration. It took us a while to figure out what they were celebrating (we were there for about an hour before we found out that one of the ladies there spoke Russian) but then found out that they were celebrating the departure of our host's younger brother for Ulaanbataar, where he was leaving to study. Despite the communication barriers, it was an amazing afternoon getting to observe and take part in their celebration, we partook in the many toasts (with several cups of milky tea instead of vodka, given that we still had a few kilometers to cover) and ate as much as we could to be polite, even though we had just stuffed ourselves silly at the guanz.

Leaving the celebration to get back on the bikes, it was quite impossible to make a quiet exit. Everyone in the whole ger came to send us off, as well as all the kids that had been playing outside. The whole departure took about twenty minutes, with pictures all around, several repititions of our "goodbye, thankyou" chorus in both directions and a thorough inspection of our bikes.

The man on the left was the host of this gathering... given the communication barrier, the little card Mike put together has been invaluable for describing our route and what we're after (though we've been corrected a few times on our route through Mongolia already, as we drew it before we actually planned out where we would be going!)

Everyone wanted their pictures taken to see them on the viewfinder - unfortunately, we've only been able to get very few addresses (snail mail or email) that we can send them to afterwards...

That night, we ended our only short and easy day (37km) at Achit Nuur, a beautiful freshwater lake with great sunsets bordering this province and that of Uvs, which we would enter later on.

The third and fourth day were both also short, but certainly not easy. The notes from fellow cyclists we were using warned us about the first day's rocky 20 km stretch, and then alluded to the fact that "the whole way from Olgii to Ulaangom is very rough." These two days definitely confirmed that. Our third day was almost entirely a battle through rocks and sand that were right on the limit between really tough riding and bike-pushing, except for a 15km stretch across a wide-open windy plain at the end. It was a pretty fun in parts and definitely made me (Jen) want to try out real mountain biking at some point - only this time with some shocks and with about 75 lbs less or so loaded on my bike. Anyway, though parts of it were definitely interesting, the constant climbing through jagged rocks, pushing through sand to find paths that weren't quite so soft and the glaring sun beating down on us definitely wore on, and we arrived in the semi-deserted mining town of Khotgar a little tired.

The first stint pushing the bikes up a sandy pass leaving our campsite at Achit Nuur...

Cairn at the top of the first pass...

Mike getting water from a well in a quite decrepid little settlement... (There was only one ger, and a few storage buildings and/or winter homes.)

Mongolia is very beautiful in the rural areas, where little pockets of gers populate beautiful spots by lakes, streams or even at the top of mountains sometimes. That said, any time permanent buildings are put up the look gets alot less picturesque, be it in the windswept often deserted-looking cities or tiny settlements like these.

More pushing, this time a little later in the day and slightly less enthusiastic...

We were pleasantly surprised by the two open guanzes (we heard there weren't any) and the two open stores for supplies AND the first of what would be many young Mongolian boys that decided to help me push my bike up the various hills and passes we would encounter. (Our strategy now is to switch bikes right before the next pass, so that I get the help with the significantly heavier bike when all our little helpers come out of the woodwork!)

The first of many young Mongolians that helped Jen push her bike up the hill, this time up a small one into the town of Khotgor...

That night after a very satisfying supper of yet some more buuz (big mutton dumplings), we got a ways out of town to camp to avoid too many visits (and honks of our bike horns) by the friendly but VERY enthusiastic young boys of town.

A little blurry, but you can see the horses that started grazing right by our tent just as we were going to bed...

The next day (day four) we set out for what we knew would be a tough day, starting with Bairum Davaa pass, a tall, steep, rocky pass we had heard much about from our route guides. First, we passed through this ger settlement. It is amazing to see the difference from one settlement to another - the kids in one will be absolutely fascinated by our cameras, while the next will be quite blase. In this town, unlike Khotgar, kids actually waited in line for some candy we brought out to snack on and share with them.

You can tell some of the richer families from the poorer ones by their gers - this one was very well maintained. Nearly all the gers have solar panels while about a third have a dish for TV reception.

We had budgeted a couple hours to get to the top of this pass, but between finding a decent jeep track to push our bikes up and these helpful young horsemen that helped Jen speed right on up to the top, we actually arrived at the top very quickly, probably after just over an hour of climbing.

The younger boy on the left (in the suitjacket) held on to his friend's horse while the older one helped me push my bike to the top.

At the top of the pass, we could see Ureg Nuur, the lake we would see for the rest of the day's bike and camp near to. The picture, as usual, just doesn't do it justice - the lake actually had this deep almost fluorescent blue colour, brighter than any lake I've ever seen before...

Despite the fact it was downhill, we ended up doing alot of pushing on the way down the pass too, as it was very steep and very rocky terrain.

Once we got to the bottom of the pass, thinking we had kicked this tough day's ass, we were quite pumped. It had only taken us a couple hours to get up the pass, eat some lunch and get back down, so we thought we were in for a pleasant 15km to a beautiful campsite on the bright blue lake by a nice freshwater stream.

After the pass, the afternoon started out with a nice and easy, smooth downhill...

We had two options to choose from for camping - either continue on the slightly longer route to the (saline) lake where we had GPS coordinates for a freshwater stream, or go a slightly more direct route into the hills, where we didn't know how good of camping we would find, or if there would be anywhere to get water. Easy decision - right? Unfortunately, what we didn't know was that almost the entire way to the campsite to the lake was pushing through very deep sand, and we ended up (after "kicking the pass' ass") finishing the 45km of biking and pushing that day 10 painful hours after we started.

A view of Ureg Nuur and the big sky overtop...

One of the few rideable bits that afternoon by the lake... (we were too grouchy during the pushing parts to stop for any pics!)

Because of the very strong winds coming off of the lake, instead of camping by the stream out in the open on the beach, we stopped at a ger and asked to stay there, using their ger to shelter our tent from the wind. This is where we learned how Mongolia really does live up to its reputation. Everywhere you visit as a tourist, it seems like the "classic [insert destination] experience" is something that is packaged up nicely for the tourists and charges admission, something that isn't really reflective of the day-to-day there, but that they know the tourists love so they keep a bit of it around - like Leiderhosen at Oktoberfest in Bavaria, perhaps. But here we were, knocking on a random door in a random ger, and we got it all - unbelievable Mongolian hospitality, wrinkled old men coming with their horses to visit over vodka, airag and goat cheese, tiny little girls who milked and herded the cows in the morning. We stayed with the grandparents who served us supper, breakfast and goodies in between, visiting with the invaluable help of our phrasebook and their dictionaries with them, their two daughters and sons-in-law & their own kids (who all seemed to live in the ger about 25 meters away, although I think the littlest grandkids actually slept in the grandparents' ger) and the numerous visitors that came by on horseback that evening.

The youngest grandkids, Zaija (7) and Uriwe (8) (though I know we got the pronounciations wrong, they always just smiled...) who were so polite that they asked Mike for permission to stop listening to his MP3 player and go eat when supper was served...

Our campsite. Unfortunately, the best shelter from the wind was also right beside the bag of dried sheep dung they kept for fuel for their stove. Oh well!

The kids playing ball - the older brother/cousin showed off quite a bit of his English vocabulary...

Grandma and one of her daughters, separating the goat's milk into milk and a soft butter after suppertime... the process lasted about an hour and a half.

The girls doing chores in the morning as we packed up (and took pics)...

Mike and Grandpa in the ger. Grandpa had a very large collection of medals from his time in the Mongolian army.

Jen with the whole family, except the sons who had already left earlier that morning in the car.

The next morning, we set out on our last day into Ulaangom, a much longer one (76 km) but we knew that the last 37 km was on pavement and everything but the first 25 km or so was downhill. The first bit of the morning continued with alot of pushing, though it was interrupted after only 3 km by another family in a ger "up the road" that invited us to tea. We just couldn't say no, as they already had the tea out before we got there, having seen us approaching the ger.

As we drank our tea in their front yard, one of the ladies was busy with her sewing machine, repairing the ger...

They also (probably having met curious foreigners before) showed us in their empty ger for a picture once we whipped out the camera...

As we climbed out of the Ureg Nuur valley, we saw some of our first camels in the sandy hills around us...

Most of the morning was a nice smooth ride on excellent trails through a big clearing and another ger settlement. (Luckily we managed to speed on through this one, otherwise we may never have made it to Ulaangom!)

The morning ended with another big pass, the last one before Ulaangom. Luckily, as we were nearing the top, these two guys on horses (tending a herd of camels and sheep) appeared, just in time to push Jen's bike up the last 100 meters of the pass - nice!!

They couldn't help taking a bunch of photos with their cell phones of themselves with Mike's helmet on...

At the top of the pass, we stopped with them and shared our quick lunch of deep-fried bread dipped in sugar and hard cheese curds (which Mike is now addicted to), which the grandma of the family we stayed with had made us take with us before we left the ger that morning.

(We're not actually sure where the younger boy came from. He showed up on the pass just as we were taking the picture.)

After the top of the pass, riding got ridiculously easy. It was all downhill from there, first on a very well maintained steep, wide and smooth gravel road and later on almost 40 km of glorious pavement. After an amazing but difficult five days, those last 40 km felt like floating as we glided on the smooth pavement through a very empty steppe (seeing only one or two gers the whole way.)

It gave us some time to think, now that we didn't have to concentrate 100% of the time on the road. I couldn't help thinking of how, over the past five days, it had been so easy to get used to things that were previously so foreign to me - jeep tracks now seemed normal instead of a highway, and it didn't seem weird at all that we had just knocked on a random stranger's door the previous night, asked to stay there and received a response of "of COURSE" and the warmest hospitality they could provide. That's why I'm loving the blogging, it kind of gives us a chance to reflect on how much things have changed and how many new things we've seen in such a short amount of time. It's also why I love how slow we travel with these bikes - it gives you a chance to absorb so many little details - I can't imagine being anything but overwhelmed if we travelled any faster, as it is it still seems like we're zooming on by!

Several times so far this trip, Mike and I have noticed a weird phenomenon to do with the passage of time - with absolutely no routine to follow, each minute of our lives being decided as we live it, you realize just how very many minutes there are. As we approached Ulaangom (some pics of it below, another example of a quite rundown-looking Mongolian city), it felt like it had been much longer than five days between here and Olgii. If it continues at this rate, you can likely expect us to come home next year with some wrinkles on our faces and at least a little grey on our heads in what may feel like decades from now.

This picture below I (mike here) took as we entered Ulaangom. Gers are amazingly suited to nomadic Mongolian life and feel very at home there, but Mongolian cities have an this odd mix of gers and traditional homes which feels very uncomfortable to me. I don't imagine that gers are particularly well suited to the city life, but as the people migrate into cities they bring their gers with them resulting in many gers even in the down town of large cities.

Our next posts will likely be from Moron, a town northeast from here that we will travel to by van and then first bike west for a loop around an enormous beautiful lake bordering Russia (Khovsgol), after which we will continue on eastwards toward Bulgan, Erdenet and then eventually Ulaanbataar.

For now though we are off for breakfast which I (mike) find very unsatisfying lately. When we first left Canada, I was seriously enjoying a cup or two of really black delicious coffee every morning. Upon arriving in Kazakhstan it became clear to me that coffee made of real ground beans would not be obtainable (for some unknown reason) but being a trooper I managed to suck down the instant nescafe shit they sell around these parts. Now the problem is that just as I was getting accustomed to the nausiating taste of nescafe, even that was taken away from me in Mongolia. What they try to pass off here as "coffee" is the most rediculous invention ever called "3 in 1" which is one packet containing a small amount of instant coffee, and heapings of sugar and coffee whitener. This is an impossible problem too because from the moment these three are combined it is impossible to separate out only the instant coffee (I tried). I have dreams of the beautiful espresso machine that we got for our wedding sitting in its new box, unused! So all this rant is here to say is that if you ever visit Mongolia, it is an amazing place, but bring your own coffee!

Thanks for all your help, fellow bloggers!

2009-08-13T22:15:00.001-07:00

Here are the links we took loads of information from in doing our own trip planning. Many thanks for all your stories, stats and route guides!

Simon & Isabelle's "HK to UK - deCadence"
Erin & Sam's "Honeymoon to Remember"
Sebastien's "From France on the Road with his Bike"
Nick's "Under the Blue Sky"

Aug 5: Goodbye Russia, Hello Mongolia!

2009-08-07T01:35:00.001-07:00

Once in Kosh-Agach, we found ourselves a hotel, got some supplies and tuckered down for the night. We decided to take a taxi from here to Olgii in Mongolia, a distance of around 190 km, as we knew that we would have to go by car anyway for the 20 km "No Man's Land" between Russia and Mongolia and that it would likely be much easier to find a car in town. Mike also had some kind of bug that night, so we didn't really feel up to biking the distance, especially given the lack of great areas to camp between here and the border/Olgii.

Our hotel, the "Hotel Transit." No luxury palace, but the owners were super friendly and helpful, and we met some backpackers from Italy and a motorcyclist from Romania that we later crossed the border with.

After some negotiating at the Bazaar, we loaded up into a taxi with our Russian driver, a Mongolian businessman and two Italian backpackers, and were on our way!
(Check out our post about Russian visa registration for some comments on the border and some tips on taxis, prices, etc.)

Our Italian friends, Christina and Sara...

... and us with Huat, a Kazakh-Mongolian from Olgii whose wife was working in Kosh-Agach.

Me and our Italian friends chatting it up with a convoy of 11 trucks from France crossing the border into Mongolia

The change from Russia to Mongolia once we crossed the border was dramatic. First of all the roads went from smooth asphalt to dirt 4x4 paths shortly after crossing the border, and all of a sudden gers dotted the landscape everywhere. (Gers are round white tents that are the homes of the large majority of Mongolians, both rural and in the ger suburbs of many towns.)

Katraa, a 10-year old Kazakh girl who lived in Olgii, hopped onto the taxi at the border, by herself. I'm pretty sure neither Sasha (the taxi driver) or Huat knew her, but she rode with us all the way to Olgii, stopping at a Ger that we think belonged to her family (cousins, perhaps?) shortly after the border to pick up a bottle of Airag (fermented mare's milk) that we all later enjoyed. We thought that this might have been her payment for the ride? (At first, Huat and Sasha thought that she actually lived there, and were a little confused when she hopped back on the taxi with the pop bottle full of milk!)

Katraa's little cousins(?), at the ger where she picked up the airag.

Our taxi, on the "road" at the top of our first pass in Mongolia.

Though getting to the top of this pass wasn't easy (not exactly what you'd call a smooth ride), Mike and I assume we'll feel a little less "refreshed" at the top of the next one that we'll be climbing up on our bikes in a couple days...

Enjoying an "airag break" at the top of the pass....

Sasha got us to Olgii, safe and sound and much faster than all the other drivers we met at the border. When we stopped for some tea and buuz (mutton dumplings, the mongolian version of wontons or pellmenie or tortelini and the staple of the menus here), we learned that he is a very seasoned driver through these parts and can make the typically 60-hour drive from Olgii to Ulaanbataar (1600 - 1700 km) in only 36 hours. He currently lives in Russia (after having grown up on the Beiring Straight) but by the number of border guards and other folks along the way that he knew, obviously makes this trip quite often.

Now we're in Olgii, finalizing our plans for the bike through Mongolia, doing more laundry, resting our legs, uploading photos and downloading books in the internet cafe. It's a small town that in the evening when it quiets down, feels a little like a ghost town in an old western movie. The people here are friendly, used to tourists but not sick of them, and all the kids yell "hello goodbye" to us as we walk by in the streets. We've seen even more of the Mongol Rally folk all over town, especially in the touristy but excellent restaurants we've been enjoying...

So far so good! Our plan is to leave Olgii on Sunday for Ulaangom, which should be about 5 days bike away. We've both enjoyed the rest and the chance to explore Olgii, and are also very excited for what the next few weeks have in store. It looks like the two toughest stretches are the first ones, after which villages should be alot more frequent and roads not quite as rocky. Next time we post, there should be lots to tell!

Aug 2 - 4: Ondorhangai to Kosh-Agach

2009-08-07T00:29:00.000-07:00

Well rested after a day of eating, reading, laundry and bike tuning, we set out from Ondorhangai to a continuation of the idyllic scenery we had just left a couple days before. Our first day was another long one, with 112 km and the Chike-Tamen pass at the beginning (only half as big as the last one, though...)

A tiny little Jen (sorry, we only downloaded smaller pics so it would be faster) climing up the pass...

The life-sized version, still climbing...

The view from the top...

And back down we go...

More beautiful scenery, as the road met back up with the Katun river.

On the other side of the pass around lunchtime, the scenery all of a sudden changed. Instead of the rolling green hillsides, now around every new corner there was a new snow-capped peak. It made for a beautiful ride, which we ended in the evening at a beautiful (though INCREDIBLY buggy) campsite, just 5km past a very touristy rafting and horseriding spot.

First views of the snow-capped peaks...

The beautiful but buggy campsite...

The morning of the second day was a perfect experiment in the effects of lactic acid buildup (source of that "burning feeling" in your thighs after many hours of uphill biking.) My theory is that it has a kind of emotional amplifying effect. The day before, when a curve in the road led to an even more beautiful landscape at the almost exact same time as the Paul Simon I was listening to transitioned to a new key, the effect of the lactic acid seemed to amplify these emotions and make me almost delirious with pure happiness at how fun this all was.

The next day, the amplification seemed to happen in the other direction as, going uphill all morning in the sun in still great but unchanging scenery listening to the same songs for the 15th time on my MP3 player, I was literally brought to tears by what I can only assume was boredom and exhaustion. Clearly time for a break, we stopped in Aktash for a nice long lunch and some reading over tea, to give the mind some food for thought for the afternoon.

That afternoon proved much more successful, as the landscape again transformed into something even more dramatic. As we entered the Kosh-Agach region/county, we kept the snow-capped peaks in the distance but got some new reddish-purple sandy-looking mountains in the foreground instead of the lush greenery we had been travelling through the whole time in Russia. The next campsite we stopped at was absolutely perfect... no bugs, a river perfect for bathing and the most delicious meal of Ichiban noodles and cucumber-kielbasa sandwiches you could imagine (never thought I'd be saying that!! :)

Us entering the Kosh-Agach region...

This picture had special significance for me.... we've been "cyber-stalking" two fellow cycle tourists, Sam and Erin , who have followed a similar route but a year before us and as a result have been an amazing source of info and help. (Check out their Guestbook if you're looking for some great km-by-km guides through Mongolia.) Anyway, I remember seeing a picture of them at this spot when we were still in Montreal, researching our route, still skeptical as to whether or not this trip would actually happen, and how foreign and far away it all felt! And now we're here! It was definitely a funny feeling....

Mike at our campsite...

Our next and final day of biking in Russia saw the landscape get even more and more other-worldly atmosphere by the second... steppes at high altitudes, snow-capped mountains in the distance, all the green fading from vibrant to pastels and the hills getting more red and purple with each kilometer. We both felt so fresh and were so entertained by the scenery that we went almost straight through all the ~75km to Kosh Agach with very little stopping, only to visit with some French & German tourists at the side of the road or for a quick chocolate or sandwich break. The last 25km into Kosh-Agach we had an amazing tailwind, almost pushinhg us up the hills, as the numerous Mongol Rally participants on their way to Mongolia snapped photos of us as they zoomed on by. (We've also seen and met tonnes of them during our time here in Olgii - if you've got the time and money, seems like it'd be an awesome trip!)

First thing in the morning, picking up some supplies in town...

There are many war memorials here, all very elaborate, at least one in every town, regardless how small. This little fellow in front of it followed us all around town as we picked up some supplies, though he was too shy to say anything when we said hello...

The winding lush vallies of previous days were now gone, replaced by misty steppes between the mountains...

This picture doesn't do it justice, but the colours here were actually much more impressive than it looks, with hues of purple and reddish-brown and faded pastel greens...

Cycling on our first bit of gravel so far....

Descending into Kosh-Agach, with a lovely tailwind pushing us in...

Anyway, these made for three days of amazing cycling, capping off a fantastic experience in Russia. As you've seen, the scenery, the weather and the roads have made it just perfect cycle touring. To top it off, despite what we heard about the "grouchy Russians" we could expect along the way, our experience with the people here was absolutely fantastic. We met so many friendly people along the way, between our long conversations with shopkeepers (one lady once kept a line of people waiting for almost twenty minutes as she asked us a litany of questions about the trip, where we're from, where we'll go next), the helpful friends we met along the way offering their advice, phone numbers and time to help us with whatever they could, or the quick and friendly little visits with random drivers who stopped in the middle of the road to wish us good luck up a big hill or honked their encouragement as they passed by. All that to say, Russia has been very good to us and we are a little sad to leave, though excited for the next chapter. Da svidania Russii!

-Jen

Russia: Altai Republic Registration

2009-08-06T04:35:00.000-07:00

Lots of registering to be done in Russia, and we had some hiccups that with a little bit of info could be easily avoided, so we thought we'd post about it. In a nutshell, here are the different bits of paper we needed to collect along the way. I'll also try and help differentiate between the useless ones and the important ones, though with the disclaimer that things seem to be useless/important only on a case-by-case basis: (#3 is the one with the most important info)

1) MIGRATION / ENTRY-EXIT CARD: Crossing the border from Kazakhstan (or anywhere else) into Russia, everyone (including local citizens) fills this out (both entry and exit sides), hands in the entry side, keeps the exit side and gets it stamped with the date you entered. DON'T LOSE THIS. Every hotel we went to checked for it and we absolutely had to hand it back at the border. The exit date you put doesn't seem to matter, we just put the last date our visa was valid for, even though we left many days earlier than that, it wasn't a problem.

2) VISA REGISTRATION: This is done at the hotels. In big hotels with lots of foreign traffic (like the one we stayed at in Biysk) it's done very simply and systematically. In smaller places (like Gorno-Altaisk) we were told by one hotel that we couldn't stay there because she couldn't register us as her photocopier was broken (and she said there was a fine for having unregistered foreigners), but she later changed her mind. Another hotel in Gorno didn't do it for us since we were getting the OVID registration anyway. Either way, when you're camping you obviously can't get registered and of the 4 hotels we stayed in, we got registered at two. Though this is a sketchy system, we did need one of these hotel registrations (they asked for the first one) when we left Russia, and our guidebook says you should get it within three business days of entering the country. (The other registration went in the garbage.)

3) ALTAY-REPUBLIC REGISTRATION: This one seems to be the most contentious, as it is not obvious how to get it, recent regulations have changed in August 2008 and some people get it, many don't. We were advised by thorntree.com to get it, along with an outdated Lonely Planet, especially since we were going through a potentially difficult border crossing (Tashanta to Tsaganuur). We WERE asked for this paper at the border, as were two backpackers along with us. A motorcyclist we met didn't have it, we passed on what we had learned from some french tourists in a car, that if you say you're only "in transit" you don't need it (i.e. if your stay in the region is short enough.) We didn't see whether or not the motorcyclist made it through the border without this registration or not.

If you do want to register and you are coming in through the north (Gorno-Altaisk), then the office is beside the Gorny shopping centre on Kommunichesky road. It's hours are 9am-1pm and 2pm - 6pm Monday - Wednesday, closed on Thursdays and open Friday morning only (I think?). There, you will have to fill out a grey paper but also have it SIGNED AND STAMPED BY A TOURIST AGENCY. We asked the Moscow-based agency that provided us with our invitation letter (for our visa) for this, and they said it wouldn't be required, so we just brought the two documents they gave us. THIS DOESN'T WORK. It actually has to be the Altai Republic's own grey form with little white boxes, which you are unlikely to get from any invitation letter-provider outside the Altai Republic.

We would still recommend the same invitation letter provider - way easier from home than contacting a tourist agency in the Altai province.... but from there we would recommend the following steps:

a) Upon arrival in Gorno-Altaisk, don't go to the OVID Registration Office, but go straight to the AGUNA Tourist Agency and ask for (english-speaking) Lioubov. The address is apartment/office #309, in 39/8 Choros-Gourkina (This is the street that runs parallel to the main drag "Kommunichesky" street. The building (#8) is one of several at the address 39 Choros-Gourkina, all clustered around the main shopping mall.)

Tell her you need to register your visa. If you give her your passport, it will take about 20 minutes (if there is no one ahead of you) and cost you 10 Euros or 420 Roubles. She has the form electronically on her own computer, so you don't need anything but your passport with your Russian visa.

b) Take the form she gives you to the OVID Registration office (on Kommunichesky by the Gorny shopping center) and tell someone official-looking that you're looking for registration. (It's oficially supposed to be in the Kiosk #2, but this was unmanned the entire time we were there, all during its posted opening hours.) If you're lucky, the lady in charge of registration will be there, and you will be in and out in 2 minutes. If you're not, she will be shopping or out for lunch in the middle of operating hours (as was our situation), in which case you'll just have to wait. But if Lioubov filled out the form for you, you should have no problems when someone finally does get there.

That's it! Keep the stub of the form they give you, and at the border at Tashanta, they will want to see it along with your Migration Card and the Visa Registration that you got at your first hotel.... You will first show these documents at a small office before the actual border crossing, and then the agent at the big official crossing will keep your hard-earned bits of paper, likely for the trash :(

Our border crossing was very smooth, though we would suggest getting a taxi from Kosh-Agach straight to Olgii as we did - we didn't see any taxis waiting at the border at Tashtanta, and all the cars we say were quite full, including our own. Our Russian taxi driver and the Mongolian that was also travelling with us were EXTREMELY helpful, and as a result we seemed to pass through both the Russian and Mongolian borders much faster than the French and American tourists we saw in front and behind us.

We got a taxi at the Bazaar in Kosh-Agach (ask Sergei at the Hotel Transit - he will help) for 1200 Roubles (about $60) for the two of us with our bikes and all our luggage (it usually costs 350-400 Roubles/person without bikes.) There were however lots of taxi drivers (who seemed to be conspiring not to give us the "market price") at the Bazaar that wanted to charge us much more than that and only take us as far as the border, so watch out!

NOTE ON BORDER ZONES: We read in the Lonely Planet info from 2006 that suggested this border crossing might be in a border zone. It is not, even in the new August 2008 border regulations. Lioubov informed me that you don't need any border permit so long as you stay on the M52 and do not turn off onto the other highway at Kosh-Agach, which would lead you into one of the border zones requiring permits with long notice.

July 28 to Aug 1 - Biysk to Ondorhangai

2009-08-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

So, after alot of time on trains, buses and more trains, we finally got back on the bikes again. In spite of the big build-up, the biking still managed to exceed expectations. Our first day, we cycled a beautiful 100km or so out of Biysk on amazing roads, amidst beautiful scenery with little traffic. It's quite a touristy area of Russia, we passed the hometown of Shushkin (a famous Russian writer, for whom there are special celebrations this year that we had just missed by a week). That afternoon and evening we crossed over into the Altai Republic and stayed at a hotel in Gorno-Altaisk, the republic's rather ugly capital city surrounded by absolutely beautiful scenery in every direction.

There are cows on the road EVERYWHERE here... this one was passed by two cars in either direction several times but did not budge an inch....

The next morning we experienced some frustrations getting our visa registered. Fellow travelers who will be going this way might want to check out this post for some info that should make it MUCH faster and easier.

We ended up leaving only around 2:30 from Gorno Altaisk once our registration was finally complete, but made it about 45km before we stopped at this campsite, worried that it would be the last one this beautiful (it definitely wasn't, though!)

Where we ate dessert, two steps away from our campsite....

... the river was so close and so big that the sound of it actually woke us up a couple times.

At the camp, we met a fellow traveller from Germany who was travelling a loop from Germany through a few of the "stans" including Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia in his very formidable vehicle (that has also made it through several amazing journeys through the Sahara.)

The next morning, we washed dishes with a Russian engineer that very generously donated his topographic maps of the region and discussed his most recent telecommunications challenge with Mike. (Now that we're out of Russia, if there is anyone planning a bike or other trip through the Russian Altay, let us know and we'll be happy to send them your way for planning purposes... they are not very widely available outside the Altay Republic, we've only been able to find them in Biysk, not even the Kazakh Altay region.)

On our third day, we spent the morning following the huge and beautiful Katun river, then crossed a bridge after which the frequency of resorts, roadside cafes and traffic in general decreased dramatically.

At one of our lunch stops (our long biking days include multiple lunches and suppers, averaging about a zillion calories) we stopped at a shashlik stand and met up with a bunch of motorcyclists from the UK who are biking around the world from London to New York.

We also were able to directly observe the supply chain from whence our delicious shashlik came....

We also met up with two cyclists (on recumbent bikes) from France on their way out of Mongolia. This made both of our days, capping it off with a visit in the only remaining language we knew that we hadn't spoken yet that day (which gave me an extra spurt of energy for the last few hills), talking logistics about the route through Mongolia, benchmarking our equipment and amount of water storage capacity, etc. (which gave Mike a little extra jolt too!)

That night we camped at a site on a smaller river, but an equally lovely spot. We also hung out with two sisters from Novosibirsk and their father who were camping there enroute to the Mongolian border (we later saw them on their way back, unfortunately not able to cross the border without visas.)

(We had just got out of our "bath" in the river, so you'll have to excuse my horrible hairdo!!)

Our lovely little campsite in the pasture...

Mike practicing some new photography tricks he's been reading about...

The next day was a tough one, with a slow climb all morning to our first major pass, the Semalinsky pass. After spending all morning climbing the 30 km to the top (only about 10 km very steep), we had some shashlik at the peak and watched two different couples have their wedding pictures taken, before a very speedy descent all the way to Ongudai, where we would spend a day resting up and doing some laundry.

Jen ascending the pass....

Mike at the top of the pass... (notice the wedding party in the background)

The afternoon took significantly less time to cover the remaining 55km as it did the first 30km, but they were incredibly fun kilometers... a slight tailwind, all downhill, beautiful scenery and sunshine, no traffic other than a few cows and the odd herd of sheep and beautifully smooth tar and asphalt the whole way. I drafted behind Mike as we sped through the small hills and valleys in what must have been some of the most ideal surroundings for bike touring ever.

We arrived that night in Ongudai and found a charming little hotel with a tiny little sign on the front door with lots of space to ourselves for cooking and doing some laundry. (If you're following the same path and looking for it, go right at the first alley after crossing the bridge to the town's main street instead of left, where the bigger and more obvious but less clean and friendly hotel in the area is found.)

Jen descending into Ongudai...

We were very glad to have a kitchen of our own, and ended up using it to bastardize the local Russian "Pelmennie" (kind of like tortellini but with filling simliar to wontons) by covering it in an italian tomato sauce we put together- a bit of a clash of cultures, but delicious nonetheless!

All and all, this first stint back on the bike confirmed that we had picked the right kind of trip for us. The biking was amazing, and though we don't expect it to continue at this pace (our planned kms in Mongolia are dramatically less than we covered each day here), it was fun and exactly the kind of "slow travel" we were looking for. We have got to talk to tonnes of people... We've discussed our trip with local shopkeepers (so far one of the most common questions is still, "How did you get all that time off work???".... same as Canada. So thanks again to our bosses/deans!!!) and we've asked them loads of questions about the area, and all the little details of their lives that must seem like stupid questions to them but are very different to us.... Since we've arrived in Russia, we've also talked "shop" with the first fellow travellers we've met, some like us, some much more experienced with pretty crazy tales to tell...

So far, we're very happy with our choice of honeymoon!

-Jen

July 25 to 27: Goodbye Kazakhstan, Hello Russia!

2009-07-27T04:54:00.000-07:00

After 20 lovely days in Kazakhstan, we said goodbye to our friends (see me & Roma figuring out the train in Ridder, below) and the country - or so we thought! After deciding to take a train from Ridder right to Biysk, Russia so we could get right into the "good stuff," biking through the Russian Altay, we got on in Ridder on the 25th and were on our way. (we decided to take a train to Biysk once we fouund out that the border crossing 60km east is closed to foreigners as we talked about in our last post)

Mike, eating our "last meal" at our very favorite "Kafe Lakoma" in Ridder. In our week here, we literally became regulars at this place - great food, nice and cheap, with a whole buffet of amazing desserts for like 50 cents each.

About two hours into the train ride, the police controlling the customs process came and told us that, between Kazakhstan and Russia, foreigners cannot cross the border by train. He said we could cross by plane, bus, car, bike or foot, but that it was not possible in the train. We were confused, as we have heard of many people doing this, and argued with him, especially since the train staff had assured Roma and myself that we would have no problem with our bikes on the train, it would be easier crossing the border, etc... all knowing full well that we were from Canada. The train staff was also confused and surprised, but then also mentioned that they had never actually had a non-Kazakh or Russian citizen on their train before....

The police who broke the news to us also mentioned that, at the town near the border, he could drive us and our bikes to the border in his car and have his brother pick us up at the border and drive us to the nearest train stop in Russia, and should be able to do this in time to get us on the same train (since the next one only came two days later), all for $200US...... This raised a few red flags. From what we've learned about Kazakhstan, the police are one of the few things to be careful with, and $200US is an exorbitant sum for the 30km we'd have to travel, about 2x the price of the train ticked for the whole 1000km trip! All that to say, we said no thanks, and got dropped off after dark in Shemonaika, a small town 20km from the Kazakh/Russian border, leaving us without a train, taxi or place to stay still feeling a little suspicious about the whole situation. Thankfully, at the train station after asking around for a bit, a very nice couple led us to the local hotel (which would have been impossible to find without them) and we had a lovely, evening in the hotel (Mike very hospitably doing vodka shots with other guests) before scouting out our options the next morning.

It all worked out, we ended up bussing it from Shemonaika to Barnaul, a much faster border-crossing option than by car or bike (2 hrs vs what looked like a 4-5hr wait in the cars) and met yet another fantastic and friendly fellow from Ridder who now lives in Barnaul (Max)- proving that these great people from our favorite Kazakh town continue to follow us even into Russia!

Bikers seemed to abound in Barnaul, we even managed to hook up with this group of 3 adults and 10 kids that just finished a bike around the Altay region we're about to head into. They were camping out in a park near the train station, so we joined them for a few hours at their camp in Barnaul until our 3 AM train left for Biysk.

Jen sleeping on the train to Biysk, after a very tiring 24 hours without sleep....

So here we FINALLY are, three days later in Biysk, VERY excited to finally get back on the bikes again. Due to the heat and the timing of our Russian visa, we did much less biking in Kazakhstan than we planned. We had a great time nonetheless, but are now super pumped to spend the next two months far away from busses and trains, camping much more and hotelling much less, both of us excited for the bike trip that we feel we're only really starting now.

We've got more reflections on our time in Kazkhstan that we want to post, but the Blinny (Russian crepe) joint we're getting our internet from is about to close, so we'll save that for later.

Tomorrow morning, we're back on the bikes, headed towards Gorno-Altaisk and then the rest of the Russian Altay, and we should be crossing over to Mongolia in a week or two. The "SPOT" will be back on, so you can follow our progress on the tracker. We're not sure how much internet we'll have, but from what we've heard, the next few posts should be packed with some great scenery.

-Jen

(Mike in "BlinnyMaster" that is about to close, which has free WIFI if you are ever in Biysk)

July 23 - Border crossing for locals only?!? What the hell!!

2009-07-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

Our plan for the rest of our stay in Kazakhstan was to cycle east out of Leninogorsk across the nearby border crossing to Russia on the day our Russian visa takes effect and would get us to Onguday in Russia in only 280km or so. This road to Russia was built in the last couple of years and we were told that it is in great shape providing us with a very direct route through Russia (see below map shown in red)

Once in Leninogorsk though we heard rumors that the crossing was only open to locals only so we went to the local border office and they confirmed that there was no way we were going to get through that crossing....so back to the maps we went to try to find an alternate route.

The best route that we could come up with would extend the 280km to Onguday that we had planned to 975km (see below map shown in green at 700km+275km). The problem with this is that Roma (our local source of information!) assured us that it would be a boring and brutal ride.
As well this detour would add at least a couple weeks to our Russian segment and we are already running out of time to get all the way across Mongolia before the snow comes and winter sets in.

After much mulling and debating over coffee (albeit instant coffee which is all that can be found), beer, borscht and donairs we opted to take a train to Biysk (shown in blue in the below map) which brings us directly into the beautiful Russian Altai mountains and will save us some time hopefully making for a warmer ride across Mongolia this fall.

The map of our options (click on the map for a larger version)

While the first few weeks of our trip have been a bit more bus and train than we originally planned, but I guess this is to be expected. There is not alot of information available (that we could find) for this area (e.g. our lonely planet guide has only covered two of the cities we have been in so far) and what information is available is often inaccurate or outdated. As well it seems that some mistakes need to be made first hand before you really realize that you should have known better!

With that said we are having a good time in Leninogorsk hangining out, doing local rides and hikes and reading but we will be happy to get back on the bikes in a couple of days and tackle the Altai mountains! I will try to get some more pics uploaded of our stay in Leninogorsk at this link (http://picasaweb.google.ca/Jennifer.Zwarych/20090723Ridder2?feat=directlink), but the internet here is painfully slow so my patience may expire before all the uploads finish!

-Mike