March 4, 2007
To Mengla: Border crossing into China
Just out of town, we stop at the mile marker--China Border 19kms, then stop again at mile marker 10kms; we take a picture of both of us together. The road is a nice new wide road to the border.
At Bolten, Patrick goes into a store to spend the few kip we have remaining. There is a huge hotel/casino in Bolten; we are told by a Philippian woman it is ALL Chinese.
As we cycle up to get our exit stamp for Laos, the uniformed man waves for us to go back to the red and white line on the road. We go back, then he waves us over to him and points us to the building; we have to roll our bikes down an embankment, the guard doesn't want us to leave our bikes leaning against "his" stop sign.
We cycle on and pass a monument in Chinese we think marks the actual border. The checkpoint is further on. There is a huge boulevard lined with shops. We line up at immigration, Patrick goes first and gets the entry stamp. Then Rachel goes up to the window and gets a lot of questions from a woman at the desk..."Where are you planning on exiting, how long do you plan to stay, what provinces are you going to visit," she seemed surprised that Rachel has a 3 month visa, "where did you get it?" Ahh, it must be the difference between a Dutch passport (Patrick) and an American passport.
Rachel said she was happy that she only used one of the "T" words--tourist, didn't say Tibet and that the bikes were parked out of sight. We'd been warned not to mention "bikes". We started to cycle on and were waved over by a guard and we showed him our passports and he checked for the entry stamp. After a food break, and after Patrick being accosted by women to change money, finally we are cycling in China....
.... Then we are on a red dusty road again. China is building a new road to the border. We put our Cambodian face masks on. It was confusing to know where to go, sometimes the road is part of the old road. Once, a woman waved at us and indicated the new road is not passable and pointed in a direction we could see the old road with traffic...and a track to get to it. Nice and surprising so helpful, our first impression of Chinese people.
For 20km or so, we navigate through construction and torn up roads and the old road. There are lots of trucks on the road and small minivans, and small buses...and not much honking. The drivers seem to know how to anticipate getting around us by slowing down and waiting. As we cycle into town, we see 3 "muzungus" and we stop and talk. They are also cycling but for the moment one has an injured arm and they have bussed here to rest. They are 2 Frenchmen and a Chinese guy and they are waiting for another Chinese guy to arrive. They show us their guesthouse. As we are outside, Patrick goes into check the room, 3 more "muzungus" walk by...an Argentinian, Spaniard, and French backpackers.
We move into our room and clean up. The TV news Asia is on and in the corner of the screen the time is shown, we are now an hour later than Laos. We go shopping for supplies and on the way back we see the backpackers eating, we go in and order what they have, a cold noodle soup, very tasty. We see another dish a lady is eating and ask what it is, and Rachel writes the Chinese characters for both dishes in a notebook for reference.
Later in the evening we return to the same restaurant and have the second dish, a noodle and vegetable dish. Back in the room resting there is a knock and it's the two Chinese cyclists. We share information, they are going South into Laos and we are going North where they just came. One takes our Laos map to be photocopied. Patrick found 20,000 kip in his long pants and gave 10,000 to each to have a Beer Lao.
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Today's ride: 78 km (48 miles)
Total: 6,161 km (3,826 miles)
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