WOW, that's gotta be some kind of record. I'm back home in Adelaide after a trip to Tibet. Only four blog posts and no photos. What kind of trip is that?? Was I really there? Did I dream it or did it really happen? My head is spinning. I have just spent the last three days cranking up the washing machine, then going back to bed, waking up then hanging clothes out on the line or shoving them in the dryer. Repeat till all the stuff on the floor has disappeared. There is duty free booze in the kitchen. And a small carved wooden elephant as well. Looks suspiciously like I have been somewhere. I have some vague memories of riding through some mountains, hanging out in Chiang Mai, then moving to Koh Samui, catching some planes, and finally about 24 hours with no sleep until some Indian taxi driver dumped me at my front door and said "Thank you, come again". I don't think I can handle the pace anymore. I think its time I started seriously considering a visit to the Floriade Festival in Canberra for my next trip. Or maybe I'll just stay home and watch the Chelsea Flower Show on Foxtel.
Fair dinkum, I'm totally stuffed! But enough whining. There was a lot of quite demanding riding, with very little opportunity to recover. We seemed to be forever getting into town late, having an hour or so to shower and change, then out to dinner, bolt a few beers then back to the hotel. Up at 6.30 most mornings for an 8.30 departure, then into it again. When we got back to Thailand it was seriously hot, I mean mid 40's, which didn't bode well for sightseeing, even Samui was hot, so same problem there. I spent the last week sweating my buns off, but now that I'm home, its cold and its raining. Go figure! Occasionally, some visions wander into my brain. "Oh yeah, I remember that" kind of thing. I just received a giant email from Sam and Monique in Switzerland with all their photos, so that helped crystallise a few memories. I promise to post a pile of photos in due course, so hang in there.
But in the meantime, I will share some random recollections about the trip.
SCARIEST MOMENTS:
I think one point in Tibet when we were following the upper Mekong on what was a reasonably good road. Cruising at about 100-110 kph, came round a tightish bend and right there, with absolutely no warning, the road turned into a pile of dirt. Potholed, rutted and fairly loose, for about thirty metres. I instinctively figured I had the momentum to get through it, I just had to keep it straight and hold on. Caz freaked and swore loudly into my earphones. Of course, I'm used to that by now. Anyway, we came out the other side, but I bottomed the front suspension, hurt both wrists, and gave myself a cracking headache. And ironically here in Australia, we have to have multiple warning signs and speed restrictions for about 2 km ahead of some roadworker who just wants to fart. Common sense ain't that common, it turns out.
There were several anxious moment when we hit a stretches of dirt in Laos. One before China, when dust reduced visibility to zero, with trucks going all over the place. Lucky nobody got cleaned up. Another, after China, when I let my speed drop too much in third gear (well ok I was in the wrong gear for the speed) and the bike just cut out, ie it stalled. The 700/800GS series has a tendency to do this, and its not the first time I've been caught, but this time I was still doing about 25 kph when it stalled, and it locked up the back wheel. Immediately the back slid out about 30 degrees, Caz freaked and swore loudly into my earphones (again), but I managed to pull in the clutch and straighten it up before we went down. Thank you Stay Upright, the best course I've ever done!
And while I'm on the subject, it took us a while to crack the code, but in Tibet, a piece of foliage on the road means "caution". And here's me thinking it was just another thing to ignore, of no more significance than a leaf or a piece of paper. Caz figured it out first, but I scoffed and told her more than a few times to get real. But she was right. From then on, a bit of tree branch or similar was invariably followed by a broken down vehicle, or a patch of missing road, or some other diabolical problem just around the next bend, eg a missing bridge. What could possibly go wrong here?
I kind of wondered why they didn't put a sign out, till I remembered that all the roadworks signs must here in Adelaide. I recall that in India, they put rocks on the road for the exact same purpose. Problem in India, is that when the vehicle or obstruction is removed or fixed, they leave the rocks on the road!
WORST MEAL:
Not an easy choice, we had a few shockers in China. No complaints in Thailand or Laos, nothing but the highest praise, because Noah always told the kitchen staff what we wanted, or more importantly, didn't want. But he doesn't speak Chinese and our Guide was worse than useless. Chinese food is extremely oily, at least in the parts we visited, and this gets to you after a while. One night in Tibet, we witnessed a rooster being chopped up with a cleaver on a wooden block outside our restaurant. The whole chicken. Nothing was removed, apart from the feathers. It all went into the pot. Then the vegetables were chopped up on the same block. I selected a few pieces from a dish on the table that turned out to be solid bone. At first I thought I was a bit unlucky, there has to be a few soft bits in there somewhere. Nope, all bone. To make matters worse, the host produced a bottle of red wine. Normally cause for celebration. I swear this stuff was balsamic vinegar, the worst bottle of wine I have ever tasted. Nobody who tasted it could swallow any of it, we all spat it out. The stupid guide reckoned it was ok, finally proving beyond doubt that he was a complete dickhead. We abandoned that meal.
Mind you, I have seen Noah eat some unbelievable stuff. Last trip it was blood soup. This time, he tucked in to chicken's feet with gusto.
And in Phayao, he had dancing shrimp, a snack he bought from a passing vendor on a bicycle. Dancing? Let me explain. You buy two containers, one with a red hot Thai chilli sauce, the other full of tiny crustaceans, not dead but very much alive. You mix the two, and the shrimps immediately start jumping. My conclusion is that its the chilli sauce that makes them jump, it certainly makes me jump! Then he started eating the poor little buggers, while they were still alive. But I imagine that's preferable for them than putting up with the pain of the chilli sauce. We live in a sanitised world in the West, we really do. But even Noah drew the line at eating chicken's head, served up on a plate as two symmetrical halves. KFC it ain't. Well, I don't think so anyway.
TUNNELS:
What do I know about tunnels? In Adelaide, we only have two road tunnels and they are short and straight. In China, they have squillions of them, and some are quite long, up to around 10 km if memory serves, and often with curved alignments. Some are well lit, others not so much. The big problem for me, seeing I was riding in sunglasses, was that the minute you enter a tunnel, it all turns to black for a few seconds until your eyes adjust. This is particularly dangerous, so I came up with a strategy to lift my visor, lower my sunnies onto my nose, then close the visor again while peering over the sunnies. Then I had to reverse the process when we exited. This was a nuisance, but it worked ok.
One day we spent most of the day on the freeways to cover the required distances. The group had split into two, and I found myself at the head of the second group. This was no plan, it just happened. Anyway, I kind of like it because I could just please myself, and relax in the knowledge that at least we were safe from oncoming traffic, and that was a very good thing. Anyway, we stopped for a break somewhere, and Holger came up to me and said how great it was to be following me, which kind of gave me a buzz. Then he brought me back to earth by telling me that I was going into the tunnels too fast. Too fast? Me? Are you kidding? OK, I admit I was way over the speed limit of 80 kph, but hey, I'm on holidays. By this stage I had mastered the sunnies lowering technique, so I couldn't see what the problem was. But I deferred to his superior German experience with tunnels and decided to back it off a bit, without really knowing why. I didn't have to wait long. Inside the very next tunnel, up ahead I thought I saw something on the road. Sure enough there in the middle of my lane was a bundle of something on the road. I switched lanes and hit the hazard lights. Something had fallen off a truck, I don't know what it was, or whether it was hard or soft, but it was big enough to do some real damage if anyone hit it, and I would have hit it first. Holger didn't let me forget it either! So file that one away for the future. Expect the unexpected!
OK, I'm going away to think of more stuff.
Pause.
And now that I have, the story continues.
WORST MEAL PART 2:
Like many other visitors to Asia, I am continually staggered at how you can routinely see meat and fish displayed in open air markets, unrefrigerated in searing temperatures, and crawling with flies. If you did this in a first world country, you would be jailed. Yet people buy this stuff, take it home, cook it and eat it with no ill effects. As far as we know! Clearly their immune systems are much more highly evolved than our wimpy systems. Nevertheless, it can be quite confronting, and I have convinced myself that you have to eat, and you are only ever one meal away from disaster, so best not to think too deeply about the preparation of your food. The group had several instances of gastroenteritis on this trip, including Kay, who should have known better than to order Atlantic Salmon in Laos, but Caz and I managed to avoid being seriously affected. The luck of the draw, perhaps, but picture this.
The group is in Lijiang, China, and have gone out to the main food market for dinner. After doing the rounds to see what was on offer, and deciding that certain things were just too gross to even consider, some of us went for the most benign looking offerings, but some were more adventurous. They paid for it later.
I did actually try yak meat, and found it chewy, but otherwise ok. That's a big skewer because that was a big kebab. While I was wandering around looking for something I could have as dessert, I spotted a flash of movement out the corner of my eye. It was a rat, and it bolted through one of the stalls, and took refuge under one of the counters. One of the cooks saw it too, and immediately started after it with a pair of tongs. With much yelling, he probed under the counter with the tongs trying to bring it out into the open where he could deal with it. The rat was having none of it and stayed put. After the yelling died down, the chef went straight back to work, dishing out salad with the very same tongs. Try not to think of the possibilities, or you'll starve.
After we got back to Chiang Mai, we had decided to go ziplining, just for a bit more adrenaline, and it was an early start, with a hotel pickup arranged for 6.30 am. We were in the dining room of the hotel at opening time, 6.00, and not surprisingly, had the place to ourselves. Staff were still setting up the food display. As Caz headed off in one direction for the coffee, I headed the other way for some cereal. On the way, I passed by the area where they set up the Chinese breakfast offerings (don't bother, it's just too weird!) and again I spied something I wish I hadn't. There were several small cockroaches crawling around on the crockery and around or on some of the bowls of food. I had never seen this before at this particular 4 star hotel, which I had stayed in twice previously. Clearly, the roaches own the place until the crowd starts to build up and scares them back into hiding. I didn't mention this to Caz, and again went into don't think about it mode. But I'm thinking about it now, and its not doing me any good at all. Somebody once told me a big part about bike travel to exotic destinations on a shoestring budget, is that you have to learn to love cockroaches. Meh.
CHANCE ENCOUNTERS. (Don't mention the war!)
On our first night after China, we stayed in Nong Khiaw, Laos. While gazing abstractly out the hotel window, I heard the unmistakeable rumble of a certain kind of motorcycle made in Milwaukee. Then I saw a large bunch of riders rumble up a nearby street. Followed by a large van with a very prominent Harley logo. That figures, you would need a breakdown van with that many Harleys, I thought unkindly. But this is self evident, because they had one! After much more rumbling, this mob eventually turned up at the same hotel, where there was a considerable amount of further rumbling while they sorted out the parking.
As bikers do, we quickly ascertained the facts about who was going where and doing what. Beer miraculously appeared from somewhere, and the bs began to flow. The group was Vietnamese, and they had ridden from Hanoi the previous day. The Hanoi Harley Owners Club. No irony there, I thought. Are you freakin kidding me?? Anyway, all seemed to be forgiven. Close inspection revealed that there were two current model R1200GS Adventures mixed in with this group, both with lowered seats, the Viet Cong being generally of short stature. I didn't know you could lower the seat that much on a GSA without cutting into the frame! There couldn't have been much suspension left either.
See what I mean!
After the roads we had been on in Laos, none of us could imagine what lay in store for these Harley riders, who were planning on riding to Luang Prabang the next day, just as we were. It was decided unanimously that next morning we better get going before they did. Anyway, at about 7.00 next morning, the rumbling started again, while I was having breakfast. Out in the car park, what started as a polishing session on these already gleaming chrome monsters had turned into a "start the bikes" session, as one after another they cranked the bikes up into a deafening roar. Just to make sure they still worked, I suspect. Bad luck for anyone in Nong Khiaw, let alone in the hotel, who still wanted to sleep. After what seemed like an hour, they shut it all down and came in to breakfast. We got away shortly after, and didn't see them again, but I can't help wondering how they got on.
Fair dinkum, I'm totally stuffed! But enough whining. There was a lot of quite demanding riding, with very little opportunity to recover. We seemed to be forever getting into town late, having an hour or so to shower and change, then out to dinner, bolt a few beers then back to the hotel. Up at 6.30 most mornings for an 8.30 departure, then into it again. When we got back to Thailand it was seriously hot, I mean mid 40's, which didn't bode well for sightseeing, even Samui was hot, so same problem there. I spent the last week sweating my buns off, but now that I'm home, its cold and its raining. Go figure! Occasionally, some visions wander into my brain. "Oh yeah, I remember that" kind of thing. I just received a giant email from Sam and Monique in Switzerland with all their photos, so that helped crystallise a few memories. I promise to post a pile of photos in due course, so hang in there.
But in the meantime, I will share some random recollections about the trip.
SCARIEST MOMENTS:
I think one point in Tibet when we were following the upper Mekong on what was a reasonably good road. Cruising at about 100-110 kph, came round a tightish bend and right there, with absolutely no warning, the road turned into a pile of dirt. Potholed, rutted and fairly loose, for about thirty metres. I instinctively figured I had the momentum to get through it, I just had to keep it straight and hold on. Caz freaked and swore loudly into my earphones. Of course, I'm used to that by now. Anyway, we came out the other side, but I bottomed the front suspension, hurt both wrists, and gave myself a cracking headache. And ironically here in Australia, we have to have multiple warning signs and speed restrictions for about 2 km ahead of some roadworker who just wants to fart. Common sense ain't that common, it turns out.
There were several anxious moment when we hit a stretches of dirt in Laos. One before China, when dust reduced visibility to zero, with trucks going all over the place. Lucky nobody got cleaned up. Another, after China, when I let my speed drop too much in third gear (well ok I was in the wrong gear for the speed) and the bike just cut out, ie it stalled. The 700/800GS series has a tendency to do this, and its not the first time I've been caught, but this time I was still doing about 25 kph when it stalled, and it locked up the back wheel. Immediately the back slid out about 30 degrees, Caz freaked and swore loudly into my earphones (again), but I managed to pull in the clutch and straighten it up before we went down. Thank you Stay Upright, the best course I've ever done!
And while I'm on the subject, it took us a while to crack the code, but in Tibet, a piece of foliage on the road means "caution". And here's me thinking it was just another thing to ignore, of no more significance than a leaf or a piece of paper. Caz figured it out first, but I scoffed and told her more than a few times to get real. But she was right. From then on, a bit of tree branch or similar was invariably followed by a broken down vehicle, or a patch of missing road, or some other diabolical problem just around the next bend, eg a missing bridge. What could possibly go wrong here?
I kind of wondered why they didn't put a sign out, till I remembered that all the roadworks signs must here in Adelaide. I recall that in India, they put rocks on the road for the exact same purpose. Problem in India, is that when the vehicle or obstruction is removed or fixed, they leave the rocks on the road!
WORST MEAL:
Not an easy choice, we had a few shockers in China. No complaints in Thailand or Laos, nothing but the highest praise, because Noah always told the kitchen staff what we wanted, or more importantly, didn't want. But he doesn't speak Chinese and our Guide was worse than useless. Chinese food is extremely oily, at least in the parts we visited, and this gets to you after a while. One night in Tibet, we witnessed a rooster being chopped up with a cleaver on a wooden block outside our restaurant. The whole chicken. Nothing was removed, apart from the feathers. It all went into the pot. Then the vegetables were chopped up on the same block. I selected a few pieces from a dish on the table that turned out to be solid bone. At first I thought I was a bit unlucky, there has to be a few soft bits in there somewhere. Nope, all bone. To make matters worse, the host produced a bottle of red wine. Normally cause for celebration. I swear this stuff was balsamic vinegar, the worst bottle of wine I have ever tasted. Nobody who tasted it could swallow any of it, we all spat it out. The stupid guide reckoned it was ok, finally proving beyond doubt that he was a complete dickhead. We abandoned that meal.
Mind you, I have seen Noah eat some unbelievable stuff. Last trip it was blood soup. This time, he tucked in to chicken's feet with gusto.
And in Phayao, he had dancing shrimp, a snack he bought from a passing vendor on a bicycle. Dancing? Let me explain. You buy two containers, one with a red hot Thai chilli sauce, the other full of tiny crustaceans, not dead but very much alive. You mix the two, and the shrimps immediately start jumping. My conclusion is that its the chilli sauce that makes them jump, it certainly makes me jump! Then he started eating the poor little buggers, while they were still alive. But I imagine that's preferable for them than putting up with the pain of the chilli sauce. We live in a sanitised world in the West, we really do. But even Noah drew the line at eating chicken's head, served up on a plate as two symmetrical halves. KFC it ain't. Well, I don't think so anyway.
TUNNELS:
What do I know about tunnels? In Adelaide, we only have two road tunnels and they are short and straight. In China, they have squillions of them, and some are quite long, up to around 10 km if memory serves, and often with curved alignments. Some are well lit, others not so much. The big problem for me, seeing I was riding in sunglasses, was that the minute you enter a tunnel, it all turns to black for a few seconds until your eyes adjust. This is particularly dangerous, so I came up with a strategy to lift my visor, lower my sunnies onto my nose, then close the visor again while peering over the sunnies. Then I had to reverse the process when we exited. This was a nuisance, but it worked ok.
One day we spent most of the day on the freeways to cover the required distances. The group had split into two, and I found myself at the head of the second group. This was no plan, it just happened. Anyway, I kind of like it because I could just please myself, and relax in the knowledge that at least we were safe from oncoming traffic, and that was a very good thing. Anyway, we stopped for a break somewhere, and Holger came up to me and said how great it was to be following me, which kind of gave me a buzz. Then he brought me back to earth by telling me that I was going into the tunnels too fast. Too fast? Me? Are you kidding? OK, I admit I was way over the speed limit of 80 kph, but hey, I'm on holidays. By this stage I had mastered the sunnies lowering technique, so I couldn't see what the problem was. But I deferred to his superior German experience with tunnels and decided to back it off a bit, without really knowing why. I didn't have to wait long. Inside the very next tunnel, up ahead I thought I saw something on the road. Sure enough there in the middle of my lane was a bundle of something on the road. I switched lanes and hit the hazard lights. Something had fallen off a truck, I don't know what it was, or whether it was hard or soft, but it was big enough to do some real damage if anyone hit it, and I would have hit it first. Holger didn't let me forget it either! So file that one away for the future. Expect the unexpected!
OK, I'm going away to think of more stuff.
Pause.
And now that I have, the story continues.
WORST MEAL PART 2:
Like many other visitors to Asia, I am continually staggered at how you can routinely see meat and fish displayed in open air markets, unrefrigerated in searing temperatures, and crawling with flies. If you did this in a first world country, you would be jailed. Yet people buy this stuff, take it home, cook it and eat it with no ill effects. As far as we know! Clearly their immune systems are much more highly evolved than our wimpy systems. Nevertheless, it can be quite confronting, and I have convinced myself that you have to eat, and you are only ever one meal away from disaster, so best not to think too deeply about the preparation of your food. The group had several instances of gastroenteritis on this trip, including Kay, who should have known better than to order Atlantic Salmon in Laos, but Caz and I managed to avoid being seriously affected. The luck of the draw, perhaps, but picture this.
The group is in Lijiang, China, and have gone out to the main food market for dinner. After doing the rounds to see what was on offer, and deciding that certain things were just too gross to even consider, some of us went for the most benign looking offerings, but some were more adventurous. They paid for it later.
I did actually try yak meat, and found it chewy, but otherwise ok. That's a big skewer because that was a big kebab. While I was wandering around looking for something I could have as dessert, I spotted a flash of movement out the corner of my eye. It was a rat, and it bolted through one of the stalls, and took refuge under one of the counters. One of the cooks saw it too, and immediately started after it with a pair of tongs. With much yelling, he probed under the counter with the tongs trying to bring it out into the open where he could deal with it. The rat was having none of it and stayed put. After the yelling died down, the chef went straight back to work, dishing out salad with the very same tongs. Try not to think of the possibilities, or you'll starve.
After we got back to Chiang Mai, we had decided to go ziplining, just for a bit more adrenaline, and it was an early start, with a hotel pickup arranged for 6.30 am. We were in the dining room of the hotel at opening time, 6.00, and not surprisingly, had the place to ourselves. Staff were still setting up the food display. As Caz headed off in one direction for the coffee, I headed the other way for some cereal. On the way, I passed by the area where they set up the Chinese breakfast offerings (don't bother, it's just too weird!) and again I spied something I wish I hadn't. There were several small cockroaches crawling around on the crockery and around or on some of the bowls of food. I had never seen this before at this particular 4 star hotel, which I had stayed in twice previously. Clearly, the roaches own the place until the crowd starts to build up and scares them back into hiding. I didn't mention this to Caz, and again went into don't think about it mode. But I'm thinking about it now, and its not doing me any good at all. Somebody once told me a big part about bike travel to exotic destinations on a shoestring budget, is that you have to learn to love cockroaches. Meh.
CHANCE ENCOUNTERS. (Don't mention the war!)
On our first night after China, we stayed in Nong Khiaw, Laos. While gazing abstractly out the hotel window, I heard the unmistakeable rumble of a certain kind of motorcycle made in Milwaukee. Then I saw a large bunch of riders rumble up a nearby street. Followed by a large van with a very prominent Harley logo. That figures, you would need a breakdown van with that many Harleys, I thought unkindly. But this is self evident, because they had one! After much more rumbling, this mob eventually turned up at the same hotel, where there was a considerable amount of further rumbling while they sorted out the parking.
As bikers do, we quickly ascertained the facts about who was going where and doing what. Beer miraculously appeared from somewhere, and the bs began to flow. The group was Vietnamese, and they had ridden from Hanoi the previous day. The Hanoi Harley Owners Club. No irony there, I thought. Are you freakin kidding me?? Anyway, all seemed to be forgiven. Close inspection revealed that there were two current model R1200GS Adventures mixed in with this group, both with lowered seats, the Viet Cong being generally of short stature. I didn't know you could lower the seat that much on a GSA without cutting into the frame! There couldn't have been much suspension left either.
See what I mean!
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