Planalto Cycles

Constanze had to leave earlier than me to get her flight, so we had another “twisted” goodbye, because I left her apartment one hour later.
Maybe, my camera wanted to transform this situation into art, because all photos are blurred, maybe it was just because of the bad light situation.

My first stop was the International Travel Healthcare Center of Zhuhai to get a certificate for the next cargo ship passage. I need help two times to find my way, because Mr.G doesn’t show layovers, so, I wouldn’t know if I already passed the health center on my way to the ferry, my next destination. Both times, I had good luck to meet friendly people who could speak English.
At the health center, at first, I didn’t find my passport, I had put it in one of my bags apparently randomly, because even after finding it there, I wondered how it got there.
They scanned it, took a picture of me, pinned two photos on a form with that picture and sent me to a doctor. He said, he would make a health examination according to their scheme and after that I could have my certificate, but only in the next afternoon. Sending it to Shenzhen, my next address, was impossible, but I got the information that there is a similar center in Shenzhen, too.
So, I went on to the ferry. On the way, I saw the 55km bridge that connects Zhuhai to HK since last year. The construction was very expensive and additionally took the lives of 19 workers. Only 10000 vehicles are allowed every day and I didn’t try to find out it my bike could have been one of them.

At the port, I didn’t find any non-Chinese written clue to which building I should go, but it was easy to ask. There was a check-in procedure like for a border crossing, including x-ray for the luggage. The ferry was good booked, only a few seats were empty although there is a ferry every 30min.

After 1h, we landed in Shenzhen and I expected a 34km ride to Hasmik’s apartment which is still not outside the city.

Riding on a bike was between pleasant, uncomfortable, dangerous and annoying, depending on the different situations and structures. Dangerous was not the normal road traffic, there is space enough and most drivers are not speeding, it was when I was banned to the pedestrian ways /bike lanes by police. There, you had to be very careful not to crush into bikes, motorcycles and phone-blinded pedestrians and the surface could be quite bad. And annoying were big detours caused by the bike lanes that made bends to the right when I had to go straight and I had to make big detours, so, in the end, it was 39 instead of 34km.
By the way, in my statistics that say that I made 10600km so far, I only include kilometres from moving on. In Zhuhai, Constanze and I were moving around much by cycling and all in all, I would have nearly 100km extra only by the 3days in Zhuhai.
When I arrived, Hasmik’s lessor let me in and gave me the keys to her apartment. Another strange situation. Hasmik and I had contact by WeChat, talking also about things I could need, like water. I went down for some food and when I came back, a 19l “bottle” was standing in front of the apartment ?
Hasmik, staying in Yerevan, had ordered the water online by WeChat and it had been delivered so fast…

In the morning, we prepared the text for a recording of Schillers “Bürgschaft” (English: “the pladge”). Too late, namely in Malaysia, I started the project of reading that poem by the friends I visit, always some lines up to one of the nineteen stanzas. First, I read the text and she made a recording, later she tried it herself.
Constanze and I went to a skating area in the 5^th floor of a mall.

She could do it a bit and for me it was the first time after 45 years to do it and I was shocked how bad and insecure I felt on the ice.

But apparently, a nice little girl also was shocked and lent me a kind of walking frames for ice skating where I could find hold and compensate my disability to stay balanced.

We did it for 25min, then there was a 30min-break for preparing the ice again. That was good, because not only my feet needed to recover because of the hurting shoes, also I as a whole was a bit exhausted by those shaky and clumsy movements. And Constanze used the break to practice Schiller.

After another 30min, the movements of both of us were a bit more fluent, but I still had preferred to have my skating walking frames and I was ok with the end of our training, because it was  not only exhausting for the body, I also had to concentrate much to keep my balance and not to fall, because I am getting more and more in that age where falling becomes dangerous and I don’t want to test my bones if they break or not. Not on this trip, at least.
At home, Constanze and I made a video of her reading.

She wants to be perfect and as a singer she is used to listen carefully and besides that she has some language skills additionally to Chinese and English in Italian, French, German and even Russian. So, it will be a nice recording (I want to edit it during my stay in Shenzhen)
In our last evening, Constanze invited me to a Sushi restaurant (“you don’t go to Japan anyway, so we can have Sushi in Zhuhai!”) and I dare say it was better than what I know from Austria.

At home, it was time for packing, Constanze for going home to her parents (Spring festival is the time of family reunions in China) and I for going on to Shenzhen for nearly visiting Hasmik and staying in her apartment (she is in Armenia where we had seen each other in August 2018).

Later in the morning, Constanze again took a city bike and we went to the island with Concert hall and opera building. She told me about the complicated situation of one company responsible for the whole area, one for the building and one for program. Because of political directives, patriotic Chinese music is preferred, not Western or supposedly Westernized music and even Latin as the language of Western church music is forbidden. So, only one opera, Madama Butterfly, had been performed and Andrew, who also rehearses and weekly performs at the opera, had to radically transform the repertoire for fitting to those “specifications”.

We had lunch in a nearby restaurant and then, Constanze went to the choir center to finish some work and I first went home to get my PC and then went there, too. On my PC, I have two VPNs but both were not able to establish an internet connection. One of them at least could connect the translator and to my blog.
When I compare the situation to Iran, I have to say that the regime in Iran at least pretends to have a religious agenda and oppresses and restricts people in the name of god. But China in fact has nothing, just a regime with restrictions, oppression – and nationalism.

Constanze left to work at the choir center in the morning and I worked at home on my PC. For me, keeping my diary updated and trying to catch up with cutting the videos, is kind of work. I can easily see that by the way FB can distract me (reading the disgusting news about Austrian politicians who forgot or never knew what democracy, law, constitution and politics are) and by the way I prefer to do the less “important” things first, like “cleaning” my traveling data on excel.
But here I am ?
For my cargo ship trips, I always need a certificate from a doctor that I can stay on a ship without need of treatment, because I am in a healthy condition. This paper must be issued 15-45 days before departure and regarding the trip from Kaohsiung to Melbourne, this starts now. Only after that I get the ticket from the company and with this ticket I can show that I will leave Taiwan and only then I get the ticket for the ferry to Taiwan, so I want to get the certificate soon.
Constanze had given me the address of a hospital treating foreigners and on a website I had seen this department should be on level 5. When I went there, on level 5 there was a “VIP”-department and they sent me back to level 1, to the information. The lady there pointed on a sign with Chinese writing and with a gesture to 2^nd floor. There, a nurse took me by the hand and brought me to a doctor. This doctor sent her with me to another doctor, who looked on my papers and sent her to the information at level 1, always holding me at my arm and pulling me so that I looked like an emergency case.
From there, she went outside the building, showed me the direction (“go straight”) to another building and left me. I went there but there was no clue for me where to enter, so I asked a doctor. He went to me to a department with the promising -English!- name general health care department (or similar to that, I forgot) and finally translated the information he got:
In this hospital, I will not get that paper, but at least they gave me a card with another address. But it was afternoon and in 2 hours Constanze and I would meet at the choir center. And then, there is weekend and on Monday, she goes home to her parents and I leave to Shenzhen. Maybe I can do it on my way to the ferry, but I will have my fully packed bike then.
I went to the centre and luckily, Constanze had showed me a photo of the entrance, because it was above all a center for business and I would have thought I am wrong.
I was early, so I went in to try by chance to find the right door. At the end of the corridor, I heard piano music and through the glass door could see Andrew, the conductor of the Zhuhai Classical Children’s Choir playing, so I had found the right place by just walking straight. Andrew, Constanze and I talked for a while and then, he had to leave, because he was going home to another city, where his family lives. Constanze took a city bike and we went to a restaurant and had a big dinner, hot pot, but not the spicy one ?
Later, we went to a supermarket, because I wanted to get unsweetened Soymilk, but you cannot get it and also no chocolate made in China. We saw normal milk coming from Poland, Germany and Ireland but no Chinese milk. Instead, we saw fancy apples with writing on the skin.

Finally, I found organic milk made in China and took it. The 1,5l-carton-package contained 12 small Tetra packs, for me symbolizing the mad love for useless multilayer packaging covering South-East-Asia maybe even more than the rest of the world. At least, some articles like dried beans or nuts are offered openly in many supermarkets, but when you want to buy them, the immediately also land in a plastic bag.
Some things must get worse before they become better, it seems. And as to prove me right, we came to a fruit shop where every fruit, except a few bananas, was packed in foil. And if someone buys those fruits, they of course land in plastic bags.

Only in the morning, I realized that Frances, the couchsurfer in Jiangmen, had sent me another photo with the location of the restaurant for meeting, so it was good that I was awake early to integrate that in the plannings, because it was ~45km to the meeting point and I wanted to arrive a bit earlier than our set time, 11:45, to find the place.
But also with the additional information, it was not possible to create an exact route there.

After leaving the hotel, I took breakfast at a restaurant where I had eaten the day before, too, and they, mother and son, were waiting for me, even photographing me. Normally, I forget, or I am too shy to take a picture of people that I don’t know, but I want to establish the rule that if they take a picture of me, I do the same, but again I forgot, although my camera was near.
The route to Jiangmen again mainly lead me through villages and I am not sure if I found more traces of religious worship in this area or if it is only a matter of coming spring-festival.

I arrived at the given and actualized location of the restaurant and – of course – there was none. I asked people for directions, but – of course – they didn’t know or didn’t understand. I had 20min left to find the place. Now, I saw new messages from Frances, including photos. But I couldn’t open them. I had to reboot my phone and then it worked. 15min left. The photos showed some details to the restaurant and the decisive hint, a bridge that I had see on my way. I had to go back to a traffic light and compare reality to the photo and gave it a try. 10min left. And now, the photos solved the problems that without would nearly be indissoluble, because I only saw Chinese signs here and there, but now, I could compare with the photos and came nearer and nearer to a hidden place. On time ?

Frances came with Sophie, her daughter and we had a great lunch, again with some never before tasted flavours.

We talked about travelling and I showed some photos that I also had used in my blog. I will insert them here with the new information, maybe it is interesting or funny to compare my former ideas with that.

At 2p.m., I realized that I should go, because another 90km had to be done. We took some pictures

and said good bye, then Frances showed me the way to a new built road and bridge.

So, I could avoid a detour of some kilometers, but still in was +130km in the end.
I don’t want to say that 90km is nothing, but it was a different feeling after a long lunch break, and mainly some huge bridges made for climbs, so it way not too hard.
So far, in China I had seen sugar cane only sold as a whole stick, but there was a short passage, maybe less than a kilometer, where many farmers sold their sugar cane and some had a machine for making juice, something I hadn’t seen after leaving Vietnam (and also there mostly South of Hué).

Also, only in one, but in this case bigger area, I saw very flat foil tents. Then, I discovered that they roof over ponds, apparently for fish or shrimp production.

Around that time, the sun was slowly sinking.

I had connected my phone to the USB from my dynamo to charge full, before I need the light (the charger doesn’t work at the same time with light). But the battery was not charged, it was nearly empty!
Something had gone wrong…
I turned the phone off to get more battery before it is dark and saw that it charged and stopped charging every minute or so.
At 8pm, I arrived in Zhuhai, Mr.G said that I had reached my destination and – of course – there was not Constanze’s home and I had 1% battery and couldn’t do anything except going through a list of plans B. Mr.G had brought me directly in front of a petrol station so this was my first option to go there, buy some food and ask if I can charge my phone. I could but the phone apparently could not. The battery still was at 1% after 40min but at least Connie and I could communicate and find a spot to meet. I had not just been waiting at the gas station, I had been going around with my bike, so I knew that place and we could “risk” to meet there without having the chance to get in contact and it worked well. It was necessary to meet anyway, because she is living in a gated community and I wouldn’t have been able to go to her apartment.
Later that evening, near to 22:30, we went to a tailor where Constanze had some clothes for changing the size. I wonder if I ever will get used to those weird opening hours in maybe the most countries in the world except middle and Northern Europe….

No, i didnt ask for the way to Sanjiangjiaotongyunshuguanlisuo, I went to 珠海

In the hotel, there is always a sound to hear like a periodically increasing and decreasing draft. It is not loud, but my ears were awake earlier and told my brain that there is something to hear and my brain, as an early bird, started working and processing that noise. My problem is, that when my brain starts working it is also me who is awake, yes, I identify myself to a high degree with that organ. So, it was a uselessly early start in a day that was meant as a rest day.
When my brain has switched from sleep/dream mode to normal, in a short time he makes some lists. Things that should be done, things I want to do, things I don’t want to do and still should be done. This is a good trick to adjust my blood pressure on a higher level, so also the rest of my body is activated, and I can get up. At 5a.m. Until 9, I did some things that should be done, then I went out to find a place for breakfast and to buy my usual staple food.
The weather was nice and so, I decided to follow Lijuan’s proposal to visit one of the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages, after all a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a 30km tour.

I had seen some similar villages yesterday without knowing that they are special for this region and had wondered about such a tower (see day 186).

The weather, the landscape,

the villages

and those towers were a nice composition

and the contrast to the nearby town Kaiping with big streets, high buildings and noise

was big enough although Kaiping seems to be a comparably quiet city.

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.

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.

In Dongxing, Ann from the China mobile shop went to dinner with me, in Yangxi, Yuan from China Unicom wanted to take breakfast with me. There had been a problem with the blurred picture of my passport (She had tried several times to avoid the reflections) and we had to repeat it. So, we met at the shop, drove to a nearby restaurant and had several small dishes summing up to a great breakfast (and again I had no chance to pay, because she did it so fast by WeChat) and then we returned to the shop.
The problem is, that the software must identify my picture in the passport and the photo of me taken in the shop as one person. The passport has a foil over the photo that makes reflections and I have a kind of beard that doesn’t exist in the passport. But in the end, it worked. Meanwhile my SIM card had stopped working and Yuan tried to fix that problem, too. It was strange, my SIM card worked in her phone, her SIM card worked in my phone, my phone worked with WiFi. So, in the end, Yuan activated a new SIM card and then it worked.
It was 10:30, when I finally left Yangxi, but luckily, today it was only 49km, so I had still enough time. The first two hours, the wind showed me that also a shorter distance can be exhausting, but then it became better. In the beginning, I had a stop and a cyclist came. He had no luggage, only a Chinese flag, waving in the wind. He was a bit strange and when I resumed going I admittedly tried to be faster then he. And he, obviously tried to catch up (He had started later, because he had picked up a cigarette from the street). Slowly he came nearer, but then a small truck overtook me, and I could hide in his slipstream with some efforts and escaped ?
A few minutes later, I saw another Chinese bike traveller with flag (and luggage) on the opposite side of the street, but he didn’t hear me. And half an hour later, a group of 3 cyclists, this time without flag, but again not hearing me, maybe because of the strong wind.
Today, I saw the first street sign with Zhuhai and Shenzhen, my major stops in China. For me this is always exciting, because ideas and visions get a realistic touch.

Mr.G brought me near enough to the hotel that I could see it. My normal afternoon/evening routine began, but this time not only buying food and having dinner, I also bought a PC-mouse, because my touch pad doesn’t like my fingers anymore and sometimes, I hardly can do anything, because the cursor flips around and with wrong movements,  I even can delete something, but at least don’t catch what I want.
Tomorrow will be a normal 106km tour, depending on wind and weather normal or special…
Today, I take an earlier rest, because the last night was less relaxing, because of strange neighbours. A man knocked at the door, a woman shouted, he shouted back, she opened and even after closing the door I clearly could hear them. That would be enough, but it happened 3 times like that and one time, he even knocked on my door, before he found the right one (there were two, mine and theirs.) Or was this more than one man?

When I entered the hotel yesterday, I saw a guy throwing a tissue on the floor right in front of the door. When I used the lift this morning, there also was rubbish on the floor. And this was made by outgrown men, each of them driving one of the big cars (even some German brands) parking in front of the hotel.

In the evening, in a simple street restaurant, I saw that the people throw the cover of the one-way chopsticks just on the floor. Not even Austrian “bad boys” would do this to that extend.

Today for many hours, cycling was pleasing. Mostly no wind, some sun, temperature around 15°C, only 25% bad roads, the rest ok or good and originally only 85km. Half the way was between fields and forests,

the rest dirty and dusty villages or dirty and dusty towns. In one city, Lianjiang, I saw pupils with their teacher on a cleaning tour. We have that in Vienna, too, called “spring cleaning” and I also participated once with a class. But we had no ribbons with slogans.

Today, I saw many signs with communist’s slogans, quite sure they would sound funny, if they were not part of a reality that I don’t find so funny.

Back to the road. I landed in Huazhou according to location given at booking.com and in maps.me. But no one knew the place. Then I came to a big new built house and before I even could go there, a man came to me, offering help, and another one and a third, and a woman and so on until there was a crowd of 12 people. One of them brought me two bottles of water and one of them talked to me in English. He showed me the location of the Chinese address written in the booking-email: 17,5km from there! I was used to wrong locations, but always within a reasonable distance. I asked him to call the hotel and after that, he gave me another number of the owner of the hotel if I would have any difficulties.
Now, it is not nice to have the feeling of being landed, and first look around and ask and then learn that you must nearly go back 17km. Additionally I had been going 11km more then necessary to reach the wrong location, so it is 28km more. But on a short day, this is not so bad. Tomorrow however, I would have had 130 km anyway and now it is 17km more (and I don’t like to do the same road 2x…)

To have no stress with biological necessities when I have problems in the town finding the place or so, I made a stop on my way. When I came back to my bike, I Chinese bike traveller arrived. He looked as if he would cycle a lot and since long. He couldn’t talk English, so we just took some selfies and said good-bye. Btw, he is born 1949, according to the ID-card he showed to me.

The route was long but not complicated for the first 16km and then I asked again a woman selling oranges. (The last two days, oranges were the most offered food along the streets) She was friendly, and I bought 3 oranges. When I again didn’t know how to continue, I was in front of a tea house and again a group of people came together from different sides. Some of them seemed to know what I am looking for, a girl told me the owner would come in a few minutes, meanwhile, children took photos of me and everyone seemed a bit excited and amused. The owner came on a motorcycle and we went ~500m to his hotel.
After check-in, I made early evening walk to get food. I got my bananas and milk for the muesli,  some sweets, some breaded and fried vegetables and a noodle soup.
Then, for the first time, I saw a shop for “China Unicom”, the only company that has SIM cards working with my phone (or the other way around). But the shop assistant told me, he cannot sell them to foreigners…