comeing soon – a Singlesh advertisment? (in a hotel lift)
Nothing special to say about the tour, most ingrediencies had been mentioned before, fresh morning, then fresh morning wind (the windiest time seems to be between 8-11, but a week in China is not enough for valid statistics), then some sun or at least brighter sky (I maybe will mention every day without rain extra, because I am grateful and on the other hand would report every rainy day for sure, so, let’s be fair and grateful!), the normal mixture of roads, that means: not extra bad roads to mention and again something to be grateful, but also some beautiful parts on smaller roads with very little traffic and pleasant countryside. And here, I am grateful for two reasons: one is to see it and one is that komoot sometimes offers roads offside the main roads that I never would dare to try and they are like hidden treasures. (and I am extra grateful every time, when these roads are good and don’t end in a nowhere!!). So, nothing special, but good things that repeat are not only still good, in a way they are even better, because they mean the prolonged absence of bad things.
Now, some comments to the few photos from the way.
These entrances to streets or villages in their uselessness still fascinate me. They are like relicts from old times when there were also guards protecting them against intruders. I wonder why in communist times they not only still exist but are even built new, normally from stone, in this case by bamboo. On this photo, you also can see that it was taken between 8-11, (just look at the red flag on the right side).
Around Kaiping, there are some villages, looking like that one on the picture, a pond and a line of houses behind. In some areas, you also find the Diaolou, fortified multi-storey watchtowers.
Today, I again saw bamboo along the street and made some videos, in a distant future to see on youtube. But the cut bamboo looks beautiful, too, and impresses me by its dimensions.
The last photo shows a field burned off, producing a lot of CO2 and pollutants, killing myriads of insects, and a archaic practice that should finally be banned worldwide. What about globalisation, what about best practice examples? There is so much to learn from each other and never before it was so easy. Why only spread coca cola (or worse things like our ways of moving people surrounded by a ton of metal – I mean cars -, on landscape destroying oversized roads?!)
in Kaiping, I met Lijuan. Months before, I had written some public hosting requests for different places and had not got any reply. So, I gave up trying to find hosts, because it is very time consuming and in the end frustrating, if you write request after request and no one answers. If I would calculate that time with an hourly rate, it can easily sum up to a hotel booking.
So, I had booked a hotel for Kaiping and last week, Lijuan’s offer came too late. But we agreed to meet up for dinner. So, she came to my hotel with a cycling friend. It was not only dinner, they showed me around
and we cycled up a hill with a tower on top. The view would be nicer without smog, but maybe in some decades, this will be better…
We met another cycling friend and together went to a restaurant.
This friend ordered snakes and of course I had to taste one.
I can live without it. I am not sure, what to think about it from an environmental and from an animal-rights viewpoint, it might be better than consuming cows, pigs and chicken.
After tour and dinner, I had to find back to my hotel on my own, but that worked surprisingly well.