No room at the inn: The trials continue

November 13, 2014

I shall have to merge a few days together again here. I have no doubt that you, dearest reader, are as keen to get on to Laos as me, but we must persevere.

Some sort of marching band walking down the street. What made this so very typically Chinese was all the people throwing firecrackers behind them across the road, without the slightest care where they went or what passing cyclist they might hit

On the 13th I began to follow Peter's excellent suggestion for a detour around the unappealing city of Kunming, one which would take me on a mixture of dug-up old roads and brand-spanking new ones that passed whole ghost cities of empty new skyscrapers. The highlight of my day, if you can call it a highlight, was seeing a traffic jam on a small road. (That sentence right there tells you what my life had become by this stage.) Anyway, this traffic jam was caused by a big truck that had broken down at a particularly narrow section, thus blocking cars in both directions. Fortunately for me there was still space for bikes to squeeze through. But as I went past the line of vehicles stuck coming from the other direction, cars started driving towards me on the wrong side of the road. These impatient idiots had evidently decided that they were too important to wait and thought they'd rush on up to the front, and clearly lacked the necessary intelligence to calculate what was going to happen when the road eventually cleared and they were faced with two rows of traffic trying to come the other way too. I therefore only describe this as a highlight because of the little smile I allowed myself thinking of how long it would take these morons to get home.

Peter did say this road might be a bit bad

But in the places where brand new roads existed they often came with a marked bicycle lane. It was also a bus lane though. And a car lane. A truck lane too actually. Now I come to think of it the only thing I didn't see using it were any other bicycles.

I really never thought I would see people this stupid

On the 14th I got to the city of YuXi at nightfall and decided I should stay in a hotel because a) it was dark and b) there was nowhere to camp and c) I needed to charge my laptop which had Peter's directions on it and d) by this stage having an imaginary argument with my talking bank balance was the most entertaining thing in my life. Unfortunately the task of checking into a hotel proved typically difficult. The first one didn't house foreigners, the second one was full (which meant they didn't house foreigners), the third one just shook his head miserably (I'm not sure he wanted to house anyone.) I walked all over the city looking for more accommodating accommodation. I didn't know what I was going to do. It was a big place and there was certainly nowhere to camp. But then I found another hotel, a lively place with rooms advertised for 50 yuan. I went in and found two happy young girls bouncing around behind the reception desk as loud pop music played. This lifted my spirits and I turned on the charm as if they really had to let me stay here. "Of course you can stay here" the one who could speak English said as the other giggled nervously. She took my passport and went to put things into the computer system. I had a place to stay. Relief.

Then she started to look worried. An older woman came to help her. Then a man. Another man. Security. They all crowded around the computer and started looking worried. My passport was handed back to me. "Sorry. We can't read English" the girl said, and I was shown the door.

I was extremely close to rolling out my sleeping bag and lying down in their doorway. Well, there was nowhere else for me to sleep was there? How could the action of exchanging money for a bed be so unbelievably difficult? I walked away to wander the city streets some more. As it turned out I did eventually find a hotel that would accept me for 100 yuan, but by that stage it was so late it was almost time to start cycling again.

On the 15th I was away from the Kunming region and back into steep tropical forested mountains. The roads were well paved again now, but were narrow and twisty and turny. Most of the traffic either consisted of big trucks or learner drivers, both equally dangerous but for different reasons. It was incredible the number of learner drivers. Why they were all out here on these mountains roads I did not know, and they certainly had a lot to learn. 'Beep beep' they went. Dear me, they were actually being taught to do that!

There was nowhere to camp that night. I was in a narrow valley where they were building yet another new expressway. This one seemed quite unnecessary because there wasn't much traffic on the existing road, other than the trucks carrying building materials and things for the construction of the expressway. With it being a narrow valley there would have been nowhere to camp anyway, but with everywhere being a building site, and one that the workers were still busy working away on even at dusk, I had very little choice. I kept cycling after dark until I finally found a tiny little patch of trees right next to the road with just enough space for my tent. I threw the tent up and crawled inside for the worst night camping ever. My feet were literally two metres from the road and the trucks kept coming past all night. With their big lights hitting the tent walls and the deafening noise of their engines one could certainly file that night under 'restless.'

By the 16th I was exhausted. It was another day of doing nothing but cycling up big steep mountains. This was my life now. My legs were so tired. My body so worn out. Again I ended the day camping right next to the road. I had another 500 kilometres to go to the border and five days left on my visa. The end was within sight.

13/11/14 - 104km

14/11/14 - 103km

15/11/14 - 109km

16/11/14 - 92km

Today's ride: 408 km (253 miles)
Total: 33,618 km (20,877 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	6
Comment on this entry	Comment	0