184 to Yangxi 20.1.2019
With the
first morning light, but that means 7:10, I started to Yangxi. I tried several
views on the situation to make it nicer to go 145km instead of 130, because
someone didn’t care to give the right location. One view was, that the “real”
trip, with 130km, started on 8:30, before, I was just going to the starting
point. The other view was, to do 60km, then 50km and then the smaller rest. But
more important than playing with numbers for psychological reasons was, that
most of the time, I had no wind, most of the time it was sunny or at least
bright and most of the time, I had good roads. And so, I could go fluently and
at noon even cycled only in t-shirt and I needed more to drink than at every
tour of the last 3-4 weeks.
I only took on picture (I thought it had been more than one, but find only the
broken bamboo) but many videos, some also, to out-take pictures, but I am too
tired and will do that when I finally find time to care for the videos of the
last 3 weeks – since then, always other things had been to time-consuming,
mainly the China preparations.
But now, I have all hotels, since today, I have a better SIM-card (another
time-consuming project and now some things must be re-arranged, but: tomorrow!)
After the experience with the wrong location, I just check that again for the
remaining hotels, because I found out that in many cases, there also are
coordinates and when I check the address in English, in Chinese, as
booking-location and as coordinates and everything fits together, then I maybe
can rely on it ?
Ah, a small poem from my notes:
oil
chicken fat
children
chicken dead
helmet, firework
That means: when I stop, please Martin, grease the chain (didn’t help, it still
sounds bad)
Chicken fat: the Chinese chickens in general are the heaviest I ever saw.
And I never saw so many flattened chickens on the street like in China.
Children: I see so many women carrying babies and some have two or three
children. Of course, I don’t know which belongs to them and which not, but
sometimes I got the impression all of them. I read that although now Chinese
couples now may have more than one child (and in some rural areas and
especially for minorities there are other regulations) the birth rate is still
sinking. I still cannot understand why politicians think that more babies solve
their population problems, because by that you just shift it to the future…
Yes, and children often reversely sit on the motorbikes. Maybe, because so they
can use their mobile phones better.
Helmet: in Vietnam, many helmets looked like military helmets. Here, many men
were helmets looking like working man helmets (or actually are that) and it
seems to be non-obligatory to wear one. And the “art” of wearing jackets
reversely is here again common (like in Malaysia.)
And firework:
China is the motherland of firework, but
what I saw, or better: heard!- so far makes me sad. It is just horribly loud,
they have chains of firecrackers and for half a minute or longer it cracks. That’s
it.