D34: 石桥 → 石佛寺

July 9, 2022

Nothing better than finding yourself on the wrong side of a "Military Control Area" sign. Technically, it only says "no admittance" (in both languages) and not "admittance forbidden" so, I'm probably not in deep shit, but I still shouldn't be here

I think if the route I had picked for myself today had been a bit more consistent about being rural and a bit less consistent about being a construction site, I'd have had more fun. I dunno.

When the brand new straight road of hillcuts and as yet uninstalled bridges was off to my side somewhere taunting me with the future possibility of four fast lanes of tarmac with shoulders and landscaping and a complete lack of anything interesting to look at, I didn't really mind so much. It was when it broke up the road I was on and forced me into rutted bits of technical dirt that I really don't want to be doing with luggage and want even less to be doing until the next time I tighten my brakes¹, then I minded.

The video I did of this advertisement for weight loss camp and how it represents China's success at "building a moderately prosperous society" was the only time this Tour that I got reshared by a traditional media outlet

Also, although this seems to be an area which has gotten some tourism development, whether the reasons are Covid or the under construction road, there aren't even barely any shops so I go the whole day more or less without food² which puts me in quite a fine mettle for when I get dumped off of the technically flat onto to the rather definitely hilly to contend with large numbers of large trucks.

Over the years since my first Tour I've gradually come to realize that trucks and truckers are not my enemy, that despite their ability to kill me much deader than your average car (which will still kill me dead) they are driven by professional experienced people who know what they are doing. This helps slightly with the amount of pants crapping terror that they cause me, but only slightly.

No bullying or mistreatment of women who give birth to girls

Party members are forbidden from participating in religious activities

Even though it's the car drivers who are maniacs and the truck drivers who are likely to buy me lunch, I still don't like being on the road with trucks and I'm very happy to reach the urban edge of Shifosi.

I was quite positively impressed with this town when passing through a year ago. I was somewhat less impressed this time around.

First of all, since I've been somewhere other than Nanyang in the past week, the hotels are wanting a 24 hour validity NAT. However, despite this requirement, there's nowhere to get a NAT in town. This is a pretty busy place for all sorts of trade related to stone carving and statuary that appears to have had had a fair bit of international business in the pre-Covid times, and which still has quite a lot of domestic business from all over the country. But, no place to get a NAT.

Too much of the time, the road was like this

One of multiple times on the truck route where the GPS tried to take me off road to save a kilometer

During my multiple calls with the hotel that I think is the one I booked, they agree that I can come by, check in, leave my stuff, take a taxi to the People's Hospital in the nearby county seat³, get tested, and come back with proof that I was tested (but obviously no results yet). Then I arrive, they freak out over my being a foreigner, I declare that I guess I'm going to spend the night on their lobby sofa, police are called yadda yadda.

Only things don't go the way they ought to predictably go at this point because this isn't the hotel I booked. I booked a completely different unrelated hotel with a different name. Somehow in initially calling two hotels of equal interest level to me, I ended up booking the other one.

Achievement Unlocked: First Rice Paddies of the Tour

Particularly when the area is left unmaintained, there's really nothing aesthetically pleasing about a gate like this

At least gates like this serve a purpose

That 100 yard stare tells you all you need to know about how I feel about sharing the road with trucks

I don't usually use bad words like 傻逼 (stupid cunt) in interactions with the Chinese police but when I do, it's self deprecating and the person being insulted by me is me.

Following the police, I then go to the hotel I've actually booked where—finding themselves unable to muster the massive balls of courage that hotel in Xingtai did and say to the police "we don't have the (non-existent) license to take foreigners"—their excuse for not letting me stay is that they accidentally sold my booked and paid for room to someone else.

Never mind though, after the police force them to give me a cash payment on top of the refund, that's what they'll tell the OTA I booked with as the reason for why they couldn't honor my reservation.

If I hadn't had the Form for them to pick and choose info off of, I don't think I'd have succeeded at getting into the hospital for a test

Considering that Rapid Antigen Tests are a thing, I was shocked to see them making somebody covered in blood go to the NAT kiosk

Faced with a choice between passport and Form, he chose my Form

Hotel #3 is willing to take me at least but now comes the whole part where I've got to leave my stuff and take a taxi and get a NAT test and have I mentioned that I haven't eaten yet (because I have a bad habit of throwing up recently consumed food when getting a Covid swab) so I'm in an increasingly pissy, hangry mood.

Of course, no one at the hospital has a clue with how to register a foreigner so I end up with a test linked to my Chinese name and my phone number and nothing else. Come morning, the hotel (speaking on behalf of the local police) wants me to stay in my room until I've got the test results that will never come but my Jedi mind tricks are stronger than her spine and I check out anyways.

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¹ Note to self, must learn how to adjust disc brakes to account for wear.

² Popsicles are not food.

³ My reasons for not wanting to stay there include, from the previous Tour, a particularly poor opinion of their police

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Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 2,035 km (1,264 miles)

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