motorcycle diaries

well, a lot has happened since my last post. the main development has been that we've "given up" on the dream of reaching the end of the Great Wall by bicycle, and instead said dream has been replaced with "reaching the end of the Great Wall by 3-wheeled motorcycle". no, the reason is not because we're lazy asses, but i was struck down by a mysterious (but not so serious) illness that involved me feeling light-headed and unbalanced while riding my bike. so to prevent any likely accidents, such as falling into the path of an oncoming truck, we decided to abandon the bikes and take up this motorised vehicle.

now things aren't necessarily easier with this motorbike. i often have to hop out of it and give andy a push start if we are going up a steep hill or if it's been bogged in sand. so now it's not my leg muscles getting the work out, but my upper body. also, its really fucking cold riding in this thing. cold air whipping against your face and frozen/numb feet doesn't make for the most pleasant ride in the back of the motorcycle tray. thirdly, on bumpy roads, riding in the back is a frightful experience. if i sit on the raised bench in the back, and the road is rocky, i feel like i'm on a bucking bull. it's such a battle to be NOT thrown out of the back. not to mention the constant jarring feeling in your neck and your lower back everytime its wheels regain contact with the ground. so don't call us wimps for adopting this new mode of transport! we are by no means, wimps. we're sticking it out. in it til the end (of this damn Wall)!

xian: awesome

gosh darnit. i am so SO sorry for not updating, but i've been bikeriding my ass off and writing a travel article so my downtime is very valued at the moment.

i'm currently in xi'an, the capital of shaanxi province (a city of millions). this trip to the big smoke has happened a little prematurely, we weren't supposed to be due here for a few more weeks... but i've come down with this mystery illness (not severe don't worry) which has resulted in me not being able to keep my balance while riding my bike, and fainting on the side of the road. so we've temporarily suspended our riding and come to xi'an in search for an english speaking doctor.

xi'an is a really, really awesome city. one of my favourites so far... everything a girl could want - great shopping, great food, starbucks, haagen dazs icecream... i'm sounding really superficial at the moment, but i think i deserve this indulgence - we've been travelling through some very poor and under-developed places of late and i'm missing city life incredibly badly. [if my writing seems a tad shit tonight, it's because i'm distracted by this fantastic internet bar soundtrack which features a mix of disney theme tunes, mariah carey, whitney houston, celine dion, toni braxton - all the great crooners]

yesterday, we witnessed a disaster. ok, so we didn't actually SEE the disaster occur with our own eyes, but we drove past a few hours after it happened. a whole section of a city street was cordoned off, with a massive crowd, police cars and what not. a ten-storey high GIGANTIC section of scaffolding had collapsed outside a building being constructed, killing at least five people. we must have ridden past when they were cleaning up the carnage... utterly awful. i took photos of the disaster, but i don't think they do the scene justice, nor do i believe it's good of me to post them, so i'll refrain from exploiting their misfortune any further.

on a slightly cheerier note, we found a great backpackers hostel where we've been spending quite a bit of our time. OMG they've got an ENGLISH BREAKFAST FRY-UP on their menu - which i've been craving for a few months now. haven't purchased said item just yet... but god i'm looking forward to getting my mouth around some bacon (have been mostly vegetarian for the past seven months - maybe that's why i can't balance on my bike, lack of iron or protein) last night we had a piss-up with some cool swedes. and we ate a KICK ASS margharita pizza in the hostel too (worth mentioning because china has MANY pizza places, but very few good pizzas).

xi'an is incredible, i love it.

signing out

freeways, concrete floors and sore butts

sitting in one of the less seedy internet bars we've graced since being on the road. we're in a city of more than one million people - a place called wuwei - and for that many people, and that much dirt and pollution, i'm really quite impressed by the state of this establishment.

we have now ridden 16 days and have covered 688 km - that's roughly the distance from perth to kalgoorlie (plus another 90km on top of that). craaazzy shit. my calfs are now roughly the size of a female swedish shotputter's. no, i'm joking. they are pretty much the same as they were is oz, but hopefully all this exercise will tone me up a little more by the end of the trip. my endurance has definitely increased by miles - i can now ride for ages past the point that i want to pee, drink water, eat, collapse, or am feeling incredible nausea or pains in the ass. i think the butt pain is way worse than the leg pain. to quote andrew while we were riding the other day: "have you ever had such a sore ass that it hurt to fart?"

one of these riding days we rode on a busy freeway. a freeway where shiny black audis and VWs zoom past you at about 160km an hour. a freeway where bikes aren't allowed to ride. yes, so we technically broke the law, but many police cars also zoomed past us at lightning fast speeds, and did not seem to care one iota that we were occupying the emergency lane. there were also a shitload of gigantic trucks and semi-trailers on this freeway. when they ride past you, you feel like you're going to lose your balance because of the kind of suction effect they create with the wind. it's really quite scary. it's basically a test of keeping your balance and not falling into the traffic. andrew has created a "bail" signal, where if he sees a car or truck careening out of control in our direction, he'll shout "BAIL, BAIL, BAIL!!!!", and we will tip ourselves over the edge of the road, with our bikes, and into the scrub, to avoid being hit. we've got it sussed, don't worry.

a few days ago, we were in a city called jinchang. i saw another incident of animal cruelty that made me shout "bastards!" and that would make RSPCA staffers' blood boil. while in the lobby of our hotel i was looking out the window and saw a group of men in a back alley. they were standing around the back of a car, with the boot open. then i spotted a small to medium-sized black dog with a collar and a leash. one of the men grapped the leash handle, and whipped the dog up into the air, hesitated (while the dog dangled in the air with the collar choking its neck, like a noose) threw it into the boot, and slammed the door shut. of course i was mortified, and when the men drove out of the alley, they hesitated and saw us through the window. i gave them the sourest look, and called them bastards through the window. of course they had no idea what i was talking about.

the next night we stayed in some pretty budget accomodation. you couldn't call it a hotel really, just a "place to stay". basically, some villager, who has turned their spare rooms into very shabby motel rooms. imagine, brick or concrete floors (basically the same ground as outdoors), on which you can throw your cigarette butts, sunflower seed husks, wet tea leaves or even spit. also provided were hard beds with crazy colourful sheets that god knows when they were last washed. and the standard beanbag pillow with a dodgy towel on top. there was electricity - a weak lightbulb hanging from the roof - but no bathroom, toilet or washing facilities. in fact, there wasn't even a designated hole to shit in. in this section of the village, you just had to go in the open air in front of everyone else in a rubbish/shit area on some sand. i shudder at the memory. i'm actually liking this accomodation though on the whole, because we've camped a few nights, and staying in these dodgy 20 yuan places is relatively warmer, and requires a lot less effort (in having to set up and pack up the tent, and load the bikes etc.)

yesterday and today, my stomach twisted and turned in many directions and for many dead animal-related reasons. yesterday i saw alotta roadkill on the highway whilst riding, and i'm NOT good with roadkill. a dead cat, a few dead birds, and something which appeared to be animal organs strewn on the edge of the bicycle lane. extremely nauseating. the worst thing is that when i see these things, i lose my balance and concentration. it shocks the hell out of me and i start losing control of my bike until i regain my composure. i also had a man on a motorbike ride up next to me, for about 3 seconds i ignored him, until i finally looked over at him. he was smiling at me, then i looked at the back of his bike and there were some animal furs - with what i thought were still heads attached to them. of course i freaked out, i screamed at him in a high pitched wail, broke immediately and burst into tears. i'm not good with dead animals. and today, my stomach turned once again when we saw some roasted sheep heads in the markets. i went out of my way to deliberately walk on the opposite side of the pathway to get as far away from them as possible. so, this trip may be hardening me up physically, but when it comes to be mentally tormented by stomach-turning, gross shit, i still want to run away and weep like a little girl.

signing out from wuwei x

desert musings

My horrific tan line from riding in the sun for 9 days straight

Onions... In onion territory

Snow-capped mountains... in the desert!

Andrew packing up the campsite. Trusty Wal-mart tent in the background.

The desert

writing from a town called zhangye, located in gansu province, northwest china. quite a dodgy place, the people are a little unfriendly at times, and a couple of days ago andrew was accosted by a slightly dirty-looking old man who was ranting on about organised crime here or police corruption or something. very strange... not the type of place you want to take a nice midnight stroll alone in.


sorry i haven't updated for yonks, but it's very difficult when you gotta do it from chinese internet cafes where viewing blogs is prohibited!




so basically, we've been on the road for about 10 days. the first 9 days of our trip were spent riding our bikes like crazy olympic cyclists. we achieved between 30 and 55km each day. a total of more than 350km in 9 days. just a quick fact: the whole length of our ride, when we've finished, will be the length of perth to sydney.


we've seen a few crazy sights in the first few days of this epic journey... many donkeys up close and personal (we road throw lots of donkey farms), many squashed onions on the sides of the roads (we also road through what appeared to be the number one onion producing territory in china!), lots of marijuana plants lining farmers' properties on the side of the roads, and a hell of a lotta sand. we rode through fair dinkum desert, including the gobi, where the sand is orange, there's rocks aplenty and not a tree or water source in sight.


we also dabbled in a bit of desert camping for a few nights. of course, it was freezing at night, dropping below zero outside our crappy (andrew will disagree with this description) wal-mart tent. we ate many packets of uncooked chinese 2-minute noodle-type snacks, and were tormented by endless sandflies and mosquitoes. we would've been eaten alive if it weren't for the aerogard. and on a slightly less pretty note, we had to dig our own toilets.



and in a small town called jinta, we were confronted by policemen who came into our internet cafe and wanted to take us away. we were afraid they were going to deport us because of a visa glitch. apparently we had entered a place restricted to foreigners (there's lots of places like this in china). the punishment for doing this is a fine, but andrew used his superb chinese skills and charm to sweet-talk us out of it.



well, this is really all i have time for, because again, i'm at an internet cafe and my precious net time is ticking down. till next time.......... much love

random update - ji an, north korea, changbaishan

so we've lost the internet at our apartment. using our net was good because we could utilise an australian proxy server to view blogs. now, when we need to use the internet at school or at internet cafes, we can't view blogs because of china's darn web censorship! sometimes you can't even view wikipedia. that's a crying shame. so, i can update my blog - but i can't view it!!! so, if the formatting, layout, font and shit is all weird, don't blame me. i can't view it and can't change it to make it more aesthetically appealing to you. so like it or lump it. :)

we'll be going on a mega 5-month bicycle journey following the path of the great wall, probably leaving next week. so, i won't be able to update the blog all the time. maybe once in a while when i get access to an internet cafe. i'll try and update my photobucket as much as i can though.

meanwhile, here are some more photos from our most recent trip to a city called ji'an and to a place called changbaishan mountain.

me and andy standing in front of the view of north korea, in the city of ji'an. the river behind us is the border between china and north korea. excuse our horrible apparel combination of three types of green. you just don't care when you're backpacking.

changbaishan mountain. very beautiful, probably the most beautiful place we've ever seen in our lives. but, unfortunately we didn't get to see "heaven lake" - a gorgeous lake on the top of the mountain, due to china's insanely inflated tourism prices and some information that was lost in translation. we didn't have enough money to see it in the end.


the sixth biggest city in north korea. it actually looks a bit like an amish village to me.


a billboard message on the north korean mountains (written in korean) facing china. i have no idea what it says. but it has an exclamation mark at the end, so it's probably either something funny or damning.

we also went to the changchun zoo, but i didn't get any pics cos my camera died. there were some pretty horrific scenes there of animal cruelty. andy got some photos though and i'll put them on photobucket when i get a chance. while the large enclosures where mostly fine, there was a small building where you had to pay an extra entry fee to enter. we paid ten yuan each and were greeted by a range of animals trapped in tiny cages, some of which were chained up. there was a small bear in a small cage, losing his mind, running around in circles non-stop. we were probably in this small enclosure for about 2 hours, and the bear didn't stop running once. he was obviously traumatised. i have a feeling that is all the bear does 24 hours a day. at the monkey enclosure, there were empty water and soft drink bottles strewn everywhere. the guy next to me threw a bottle of fanta into the enclosure. a monkey went to the bottle, unscrewed it, and tipped the fanta onto the ground. he licked it up fiercely. one minute later, the woman on the other side of us, threw a bottle of sweet ice tea into the enclosure too. the same monkey drank it. then he started chewing on the bottle lid. i can't believe how stupid these people were. they had no idea that feeding them sugary soft drink could make them sick, or even kill them. it really made my blood boil. and in the reptile house the first thing we saw were two large turtles in a small aquarium, flapping around wildly. poor things. they wanted to charge us extra money to see the rest of the reptile house. we refused and walked out.

click on my photobucket link to see more photos from the ji'an / changbaishan trip

crazy english translations

we went to a swanky coffee place in another city (i can't remember the name) on our most recent trip, and were greated by some rather strange english translations on the menu. i would love to share them with you:

'Vanilla skillful crisp ice granulated substance' and 'Fragrant sweet potato milk shake'

'The garlic fragrant butter roasts the bread' - I think they mean garlic bread


Colombia Coffee: 'Bring sweetly in the acid, It is flat in bitter flavor. Make people intoxicated'


'Coffee sipped through the ice-cold cream, The last happy syrup. Three sections of feelings can bring unusual pleasant surprise to you.'

'The one who isn't good at funny frome life, do you feel depression when traveling lonely.'

'Waffle (Honey, Meatfluff, Chocolate, Mulberry, Strawberry)' - Meatfluff????

more pics from harbin and changchun

ni hao waiguoren,

you can see some more pics from this trip here

credit to andy's superb photo-taking ability. most of the photos in this folder, he took. the others, are from my stupid point-and-shoot camera.

cynth