China 2: Guizhou Province

Crossed into Guizhou unknowingly and knackered from a very hilly few days. From the time I entered Guizhou it was 3 150k+ days to the capital city of Guiyang, nice sunny days and beautiful nights in my hammock...

Highways on massive stilts pass through the mountains.

I noticed myself turning into a 'camping snob' as I would pass on many perfectly sleepable spots in search of the one which would afford the most pleasurable sunrise

A lonely horse on a steep hillside.

A train descends from the mountains heading west towards Guiyang.

A 3-legged truck heading into the capital city on a very dusty road.

Arrived in Guiyang around dusk very tired, sore, and craving cold beer(s). It took a couple of hours to find my hostel, which turned out to be a great little place hidden in a maze of alleys and rarely frequented by foreigners (relative to other Chinese urban hostels), I immediately coughed up $3 which afforded me an amazing meal and several cold beers which I drank while trying to communicate with a Chinese couple who spoke no English. The next day a couple of guys from the newspaper did a short, broken interview and printed an article the following day in the local paper about my trip. Click here for the article.


Busy intersection in downtown Guiyang.



Chinese people are obsessed with umbrellas; rain, shine, or otherwise. 



Article in the Guiyang newspaper.




Downtown Guiyang



Old men pass their time playing Xiangqi, aka Chinese chess.

I think they prefer to be called 'little people'.

As evening sets the food stalls come out and prepare for madness.



What to eat?  So many choices!



This poor fish made it about 6ft down the street as it's owner chased it whacking at it's head with the flat side of a meat clever. Kind of pissed me off to watch this, but it didn't ruin my appetite.

The food became a bit spicier in Guizhou and the 'hot pot' reigns supreme. This comes in many different forms and usually seems to consist of a vat of spicy boiling liquid in the middle of your table in which you cook a wide range of ingredients. Also rice noodles are still very prominent and come in all shapes and textures.

Little pots containing blood pudding, mushrooms, quail eggs, pig bits and other things patiently await being ordered.



A little girl grills herself a piece of marinated pork on a stick.



My favorite meal in Guiyang was this bowl of wide bitey rice noodles (similar to Italian pappardelle) with braised chicken thighs, pickled vegetables and a very spicy and oily broth. This type of happiness only comes from noodle soups and is what I love most about all of the Asian countries that I've been to.

Round rice noodles with meat, pickled beans, scallions, vinegar and chili.

In the Guizhou countryside I ate dozens of bowls of these very wide (2 inch) rice noodles served room temperature wth loads of pickled and fermented vegetables and an acidic vinagrette-like sauce.

Pans of crayfish and chicken feet.

Pan of snails boiling away in a liquid dominated by chili.

The good stuff: various pig parts inclucing tails, noses, bone marrow and organs. Seeing this makes me realize how far I am from muslim Indonesia!

After several days rest and a horrible stomach illness that left me literally 'bedridden' for a day, I got back at it and headed northwest through the mountains towards Sichuan province. Although I would not see the sun for a long time and have rain everyday, It kept getting more and more beautiful as I got closer to the Sichuan border...

River early in the morning. 

Road less traveled.

Went through many tunnels, many of them over 2k long, which can be quite scary due to shoulderless traffic and darkness.

My damp bicycle looks at me like I'm a complete idiot as I try to make a fire for the third night in a row with wet wood.

Well that's a relief because that dangerous main road back there was really scaring the shit out of me.

A passerby looks at me like I'm from another planet.

A plant.

Zero visibility up in the clouds near Xuyong



A river so brown with earth that I had flashbacks of Borneo, except the mountains are bigger here.

 The fuzz (aka police) gave me a hard time for sneaking onto the expressway over and over again when the side roads were unpassable, unnavigable, or under construction. As the police never are able to speak any English I use these opporitunities to explain in clear English the importance of papaya glazed wasp's toenails, or maybe a short lecture on Burmese gorillas colonizing one of Jupiter's moons and after about 15 seconds of this jibberish they usually realize that they are not going to accomplish their goal of removing me from the highway, so they just wave me on. It wasn't until a police car showed up with a camera crew that I was actually forced to leave the highway in a police car with my bike hanging out of the trunk. Afterwards I wondered if they aired a clip on Chinese television of me saying absolute nonsense to a policeman.

Early one morning, just before crossing the border into Sichuan, I was riding along the empty mountain road when I saw at least a fifty people huddled around two giant dead pigs. They quickly swarmed around me and before I knew it I was sitting at a table sharing a massive bowl of noodles with 6 chinese women varying in age from 30-80 and drinking hot tea as countless short fat Chinese men tried to ride my bicycle in the street. They refused money and sent me off with a smile that lasted all day, and after that day I felt completely comfortable around Chinese people for the first time.


A lot going on in this photo: a girl eats a bowl of noodles, a man smiles at a foreigner on a bike, a pig with a hole in it's neck drains it's blood into the street, and another pig is having it's hairs burned off with a blowtorch while people cook, eat, and drink tea in the background. 1000 words!



Goodbye Guizhou, it's been real...



China 1: Giangxi province

Crossed into China around noon from Vietnam's Lang Son border crossing. I'd overstayed my Vietnam visa by a day so I slipped my last note (50,000 VND) in my passport and, after some dirty looks from border officials (it's only a couple dollars), got through with no problems.


Last photo in Vietnam



The gate to China

To say that I came to China unprepared would be a huge understatement. I didn't have a map, any idea where I wanted to go, couldn't speak/read any Chinese, and I thought I would just sort it all out naturally-I was wrong. China is not that easy, people are not very friendly, they seem to get annoyed when I don't understand them and they are not very empathetic or eager to help me out. My first days were very rough, I crossed the border and was on a nice highway with roman letters on the signs and I thought 'wow this is great!', then as soon as I got to a toll booth they wouldn't let me on the highway with a bike and I spent 3 days going in circles on unmarked back roads somewhere along the Vietnam border. It was a province called Giangxi and I knew that I wanted to go the capital city Nanning, but everytime I asked someone where Nanning was they couldn't understand and usually just pointed in any old direction. Finally I found a road that went to Nanning and I did 180k in 1 day to make it to the 'small' city (small as in only 6 million people).

Ginagxi province

What a nice road, it lasted for about 10k

A rare sign on the back road labyrinth that I was lost in, unfortunately I have no idea what it means

Sunrise, at least I know that I'm going east



On the final day to Nanning there was a 40k stretch of torn up road under 'construction', but I didn't see anyone doing any work





I was a mess when I finally got to Nanning around sunset, I was filthy, sunburnt, and extremely tired, borderline delirium. The city was much bigger than I expected and there were no English signs or anyway for me to find a place to sleep, wifi, or anything else that I was in need of. I went into one hotel and was turned away due to my appearance, with hundreds of Chinese people staring at me I almost exploded with rage. I considered getting drunk and sleeping on a park bench but finally I went into a hotel and paid over $20 for a room (an obscene amount of money in China), took a shower, then went straight to a corner store and bought beer and whiskey to erase the pain of the day's ride. I fell asleep dreaming of Vietnam, playing pool with my mate in Hanoi, and most of all, my girl in Saigon.

The next day things got sorted out. I found a place with wifi and used it to find a hostel where I spent the next three days studying Chinese, getting advice from dozens of other travellers, and eating tons of food...

gloomy Nanning upon arrival

Considered sleeping in this park after I was turned away from a hotel

Typical alley



Food street

 As for the food in Giangxi, it's got a lot of rice noodles, and soups served in metal bowls that remind me of the bowls that dogs eat out of. The food in China is really cheap and most meals are around $1.

They press these rice noodles through a sieve and into boiling water as you order them, very tasty with pork broth and various kinds of pickled and fermented vegetables 

Fresh egg noodles with mushrooms, green veg, and pork

Delicious little steamed pork buns, piping hot for under 10 cents

Grilled oysters, clams, and Chicken wings can be found on food street

This is the only thing served in all of the small rural towns I passed through: rice noodles with various pig innards in broth with pickled and fermented beans and vegetables. I ate at least 5 bowls a day while on the road.

After leaving Nanning I felt much better about things. I was well rested and better prepared with a map and a rough idea for a route across this massive country. As I made my way north it got more and more mountainous and beautiful.