ASSORTED WEIRD STUFF.

Yay, I got my photos onto the computer, and have added a few in earlier posts here and there. Caz took most of the photos, and I will load hers on soon, and add them into the blog. Meanwhile, here are a few of the kind of random things that grab my attention when I'm travelling, in no particular order. Starting with my official Chinese driver's license and registration document for the bike.

Typical Chinese scooter. The disc at the back is for the spare tyre. It has its own cover, complete with a ringing endorsement in "Ingrish" (see below). Not sure about the writing on the mudflap though.

OK, gottit. Maybe it makes sense in Chinese.

More Ingrish. Ditto.

Even the chairs are happy in this restaurant.

A couple of ancient Urals parked (permanently) in the street in Dali.

Jazzy little Stars n Stripes hire scooter. Also available in Union Jack version.

Some kind of blinged-to-death home made job, I think.

And speaking of bling.......

It doesn't get much more blingy than this attention grabber. It was also the only Harley we saw in China.

And here's the dude who owns it. A good try, but Asians just can't do "bad-ass" convincingly.

This shop sign says Piggy Chasing Meat. I have no idea either.

My disintegrated summer gloves after the trip. I had to trash my winter gloves as well, the lining pulled out. And I broke my glasses! Tough trip.

What the well dressed Chinese tourist in Chiang Mai is wearing these days. If he's colour blind.

Some seriously good handiwork here.

And again.

These columns are carved from marble. Exquisite work.

The centrepiece is a single disc of marble, with the "mountain range" pattern naturally occuring. Fantastic.

Ahah, Wahaha. Ha ha !

Generally speaking, Chinese beer was as watery and tasteless as it looks. Nobody found any that was really good, but that didn't stop us from drinking it.

And as for the world's most recognisable brand, that was fine.

The aftermath of our first night back in Laos. Party time.

Read this sign closely. Now, the next time you feel like being a buddah temple, here are the rules. Not sure of the penalty for impersonating a buddah temple, but I imagine they are harsh. You could even lose your tangtop. Interesting how the rules appear to single out females.

Mmm mmm, good old durian, the king of fruits. It stinks, but I like the taste. Nobody else has ever agreed with me. What?

At Nan, where we spent our first night back in Thailand, we were joined by a legend! David Unkovich (on the left, above, with Andrew) is an Aussie from Perth who has lived in Thailand for 35 years, and is the founder of Golden Triangle Riders. He pioneered group bike touring in the northern parts of Thailand in general, and into Laos in particular. Check out their website. I met David on my last tour, and this time he joined us on our run down Highway 1148, one of the best bike roads in Thailand, or anywhere else. That makes it three times for me.

I felt like a snack and this sure looked familiar, so I bought it. I mean, you can only eat so many chicken's heads, right? Still not sure how you say Snickers in Chinese though.

WHERE AM I ??

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.

MY IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA

Our route had to be changed a few times from the original itinerary for various  reasons, mostly beyond anybody's control. Such is the nature of running organised tours into places where things can change at the drop of a hat. Our route followed broadly from Luang Namptha, Laos, into China at Boten, then to Mengla, and on to Jihong. No, I'd never heard of them either. On to Xiaguan, aka Dali, a large city on a large lake, with its famous Three Pagodas Shrine, in the background.

When I think of Dali, I think of the weirdo Spanish artist Salvador Dali, and I imagine clock faces draped over tree branches, and all the other whacky stuff the guy painted. I used to appreciate the artist and his work as a teenager, particularly when I smoked substances other than tobacco, but that's got nothing to do with this place. From Dali, on to Lijiang, parts of which are world heritage listed, then across the Yangtze and into Tibet. Tiger Leaping Gorge was the first stop. As gorges go, it was not bad (you know, deep and all that) but the water level was low. Following the Yangtze for a while, we finished up at Shangri La, which I always thought to be a mythical place, but not so. However, having now seen it, I didn't think it was Earthly paradise.

From here, we really began serious climbing up onto the Tibetan Plateau, but had to miss the lookout on Mount Kawa Karpo (6700m) due to the road being socked in by cloud, and had to be content with snow, rain, ice on the road and freezing wind. On via Dequen, to Cizhong, a village where we had our worst meals of the trip. I'll get to the food later. Hey, its still memorable! Then it was back the way we came, with a couple of slight detours, via Weixi and Shaxi. The former is at the confluence of the Yangtze, the Mekong and the Nujiang Rivers, while the latter is a famous stop on the old Tea Horse Road, and its Sideng Market Square is listed by UNESCO as being one of the 100 most endangered cultural sites in the world.

Not that it helps much. China could bulldoze it tomorrow if it felt like it, and nobody would dare to lift a finger. The Tea Horse Road, by the way, is the route by which tea was first exported from it's original home in China by pack horse to the outside world. I think it tied in with the Silk Road at some point, thence to points further West. The Chinese drink gallons of the stuff, but try getting any sugar in this country. Anyhow, on to Lincang, then to Mengla again, out of China through the chaotic Boten again, and on to Nong Khiew, Laos, which really is in the middle of nowhere, but it was not China, and that was good enough reason for everyone to party hard. From here, to Luang Prabang. Our boat ride with the bikes down the Mekong was cancelled due to low water levels (maybe because China Power is building a dam on it, in Laos, mind you!), so we detoured through a brand new road (but it was pretty tricky due to excessive fine gravel and a noticeable lack of anything to stop you plummeting for a considerable time to a horrible but sudden death, see photos below) to Pak Beng, then Hong Sa, and finally back into Thailand.

Yes, I know these are photos of a road in Laos and I'm supposed to be talking about China. Get over it.

Ok, I am already conscious of the fact that I am bagging China a fair bit, and this may be pretty obvious. It was fascinating to finally visit the country, at least parts of it, but I didn't really like the place. It had a bad vibe about it, I thought. It is a highly authoritarian society, ruled with an iron fist by a hard line central regime. Like the vibe I got in the Soviet Union in 1977, if you can believe that. I didn't get the impression that people were happy, they just seemed to keep their heads down and not draw any attention to themselves. I found that most of them were either just plain rude, indifferent or stand offish at best, and gave no consideration to anybody else. Maybe if Australia had 1.5 billion people, we would be that way too, I don't know. Clearly the China of old is vanishing rapidly, as old villages are razed to the ground and entire new cities are being built at feverish pace to replace them.

Thing is, they are all either cookie cutter high rise, or cookie cutter low rise 1-3 storey buildings in regulation grey and white, with tiled roofs turned up at the lower ends of the hips, Chinese pagoda style. No room for individual expression here, that would be reactionary and bourgeoise. Besides, if you get a free house, just be grateful, why should you care what it looks like anyway? "Yes, we are all individuals," they shout in total unison.

I have already mentioned the spending on infrastructure like roads, bridges and tunnels, communications etc which is astonishing. Also, the number of new vehicles on the road, including the high end of the auto business- Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, Lexus, etc- defies belief. Seeing as how China now makes just about everything on Earth, and is raking in the foreign exchange as a result, they have plenty of dough to throw around to those of some importance, or perhaps I should get all Orwellian and say to those who are more equal than others. Pity none of the bastards can drive. And nobody knows what a rear view mirror or indicators are for. I'll say more about that later, but as far as I'm concerned, the Chinese should still be driving ox carts, they are completely hopeless and incompetent out on the road, and this made for a high degree of concentration, many near misses, and high anxiety levels for the group as a whole. As for communications, State run TV is just a hoot, but you can't get Google, and Google Maps doesn't line up with any adjoining countries. But you can have a mobile phone. In fact everyone has one, mostly used while walking on a footpath or driving a vehicle. This does a lot of the surveillance work for the State automatically!

Out on the road, the number of overhead gantries fitted with multiple cameras defies belief. These things constantly flash at 2-4 second intervals as photos are taken rapidly all over the roads we used. They can only be for surveillance purposes, but the amount of analysis required to process or sort the information would be phenomenal. Whoever does this analysis will get a bit of a surprise when the see my middle finger raised on quite a few photos, till even I got sick of doing it. We went through numerous police checkpoints. Ok, they have these in plenty of other countries, but they almost invariably wave foreigners straight through, in my experience. Not here. Every single time, the entire group was stopped, and required to produce passports, and/or bike registration and licensing details.

As if anybody could actually get that far into the country without passing border controls and all the other stuff they want. As far as I'm concerned, once you get admitted to a country, nobody should ask you to produce a passport until you leave. Not here. Sometimes the younger cops were friendly and polite, just doing what they had to do. But more frequently, they were swaggering arrogant pricks. If you wanted to go, they would make you stop. If you wanted to stop, they would make you go, with a dismissive wave and a mouthful. Just because they could. They were right into the power trip, and left us in no doubt who was in charge. As I said earlier, the locals seem to just accept it, but it hammers home the point to all on a daily basis that the individual is just an insignificant speck, of no importance, and it's the State which makes and enforces the rules. It reminds me of the way an ant colony operates. At a couple of police checkpoints, they were probing trucks carrying bulk goods like rice with long metal rods to make sure the cargo went all the way to the bottom of the truck. At others, there were high surveillance towers containing an officer with an automatic weapon, just in case anything might go down. It was highly visible and in your face the whole time. Tell me the knock on the door at 3 am, followed by being dragged to the cells in your pyjamas then beaten up doesn't happen here. You could take that to the bank, for sure. Now who's getting paranoid?

And if all that isn't enough, the air quality is abysmal. A few times, you could see bits of blue sky, but nearly the whole time the sky was grey, the visibility murky at best, the smoke or other pollutants in the air often made the eyes water. You could hardly see any mountains or hills clearly, to the point it was hardly worth taking a photo anyway. And after a week, I was coughing up stuff in the mornings that I hadn't seen since I was a smoker. Well, that's not strictly true. Just about all 1.5 billion of the buggers smoke. Restaurants, hotel rooms, lifts, shops, temples, anywhere you can think of, stinks of cigarette smoke, and people hack, cough, wheeze and spit 24/7, so the footpaths are covered in gobs of dark coloured mucous. Nice huh?

But let's not end on a churlish note. As always, there are moments you just can't buy. At one point we had stopped for a photo where rice was being planted in a paddy field. There were probably about 30 people involved, and it was quite fascinating to watch. Obviously its a job that needs to happen fast, so maybe these folk were contractors, or maybe the whole village was putting in to get it done.

Whatever. Once we had been spotted, they were all busy looking at us and talking and laughing among themselves. Then one old bloke wandered up for a closer look, then went and fetched a bottle of clear liquid out of the back of a truck. It wasn't water. He poured out a shot glass full and offered it around, while smiling and yabbering away. Sadly, nobody took him up on it as we had enough problems riding the bikes anyway. On reflection, it seemed a bit rude to refuse, and I now wish I had taken a sip in the interest of international relations. But my liver has enough problems.

On another occasion, we stopped at a road junction for a short break. There was a small industrial building nearby, and we soon attracted attention. A bunch of blokes came over for a look, including a hard bitten scowling character who I assume was the foreman. I threw in one of only three things I can say in Chinese, that being "nee how" (hello). He cracked a broad smile and replied nee how, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. Again, it is now an automatic response to say no, but now I wish I had taken him up. After all the other crap I was breathing in China, one more fag wouldn't have hurt. But it wouldn't have been much of a conversation, because all I had after "hello" was "thank you" or "Happy New Year".

Then there were these guys, who made a genuine effort to be friendly.

And this nice old bloke, who was riding his bicycle up hills that would give a yak a heart attack.

MEET THE GROUP

One thing that really grabs me about riding with a group tour is that you start out as a bunch of strangers, but by the time you finish, you are riding with a bunch of friends, generally speaking. You know each person a lot better, you know how they ride, you know how they operate, you know their motivations, and some of their strengths and weaknesses, and dare I say it, personality traits and possibly disorders. And they know yours. You laugh a lot, you get a bit miffed sometimes, you even get annoyed occasionally, but it is generally all good. A pecking order develops, where people find their preferred riding position within the group, and generally stick to it. You begin to bond as a group. Your riding improves, and by the end you are riding as a pretty tight group. You share the highs and lows, the pleasure and pain, and celebrate the cameraderie of a wonderful adventure together. Then you bugger off and never see each other again. Sometimes, that's a good thing, but other times, as Shakespeare said, parting is such sweet sorrow. Here is how I saw it, so meet the group.

From Big Bike Tours, we had Kay and Noah, the two managing partners, who took it in turns to lead the ride on alternate days, one riding, the other driving one of the service trucks. Also Tony, the pretty sharp Thai mechanic and general dogsbody, driving the other truck. Two trucks were necessary because of the size of the group and the amount of luggage. K and N were riding a BMW 300GS, yes, a 300. The poor little thing must have spent a couple of weeks being red lined and probably needs a new engine now that we are back in Chiang Mai. But these guys are such good riders that nobody could catch them if they decided to give it some stick. Then, in no particular order, there was....

DAVID AND VICKI: From Sydney, riding two up. David had the Heinrich Himmler haircut, which I have to say I found a bit confronting at first. Vicki is athletic and into Muay Thai boxing, and has the traditional bamboo tatts to prove it. Regular Asian travellers, and probably the fastest couple on the ride. Vicki got altitude sickness in Tibet, and David got food poisoning in Laos. That's commitment! I wonder if David being a non drinker has anything to do with any of that?

HOLGER: From "Chermany" and the oldest rider in the group at 72. Veteran of several BBT trips in the past. And he can ride. Up with the front runners for quite  a while before he decided he better back it off a bit and stay alive for his wife's sake, who he dutifully rang every day to clock in.

ANDREW: A Builder from the Midlands of the UK. Widely travelled, usually a small group rider or a loner. Quiet, courteous and thoughtful. Quite a fast rider too.

SAM AND MONIQUE: A very affable couple from Switzerland, the German speaking part near Zurich. Monique spoke a bit of English, but you could tell it was hard work. Sam spoke very little English, and said "Ja, ja" an awful lot. Hung out a lot with Holger, quite understandably because they could talk to each other. They were riding two up, usually at the back of the group, but occasionally demonstrated that they could mix it up. Widely travelled, with experience of riding in Africa and South America.

GUS: A retired accountant from Orlando, Florida. Very quiet guy who let his riding do the talking, and it talked fairly loudly. One of the faster riders, and an interesting conversationalist who has travelled and ridden in Asia a fair bit.

SCOTT: From Tassie, another fairly quiet guy who preferred riding mid pack or toward the back of the group. Always kept within his limits. Very widely travelled, including SE Asia, and recently did a trip across Russia. Usually always went local where food was concerned, and was very culturally sensitive and aware.

KEVIN: Company Director from Newcastle, UK, and a Geordie Jack the Lad to boot. Rides like he lives life, with no time to waste. Has five stents in his heart, has a wife in the UK, a Thai girlfriend here, and will chat up anything that's remotely female, even if gender might be blatantly questionable. Voracious appetite for beer, getting his kit off, and speed (the velocity kind). An inspiration to us all !

BJORN: Not a name one necessarily associates with Americans, but he's of Norwegian descent, and from Seattle, Washington, where there is a large concentration of Scandinavians who settled the State way back when. Former director of a company that made components for Boeing. Very smart man, very widely travelled, and very knowledgeable on many subjects, as well as being a gourmet and connisseur. A true adventurer. Multi lingual, including fluent Vietnamese! Caz and I both really enjoyed his company. Most surprising of all, he's relatively new to riding, but you'd be unlikely to pick it. Preferred to err on the side of caution, which only reinforces what I just said.

GREG: A mate of Bjorn's, also from Seattle. A very affable Harley rider, although nobody holds that against him!  Unfortunately, dropped his bike twice early on, and had a few close calls which would naturally slow anybody down. Always interesting and fun to talk with.

All in all, a great bunch of very nice people who had one heck of a good time. There was some challenging riding at times, particularly with the traffic in China, and the weather in Tibet. We covered around 4500 km and rode on everything from super highways to absolute goat tracks, wet, dry, dusty and slippery, roadworks, gravel, mud, occasional water crossings, and some places where you could die if you got it wrong. We rode in boiling heat up into the mid 40's, down to literally freezing in the Himalayas. We all got back here safely in one piece, albeit with some cases of minor bike damage, ready to live another day. Don't know about you, but I find that extremely satisfying and fulfilling.

Here we are, all back safely.

L to R. Kay, Tony and Noah.

Noah celebrates another successful trip.

Scott, Gus & Bjorn contemplate the worst meal we had on the trip.

Vicki, David, Kevin, Greg (obscured), Holger, Andrew, Gus. at the worlds biggest lazy Susan.

Sam and Monique.

1.5 BILLION CHINESE CAN'T BE WONG. OR CAN THEY?

Oh good, you're still there. Well, that was an interesting interlude. I am now in Luang Prabang, Laos, with a chance to grab my breath and do some laundry. China is a distant blur, so I am going to have to do something a little differently. Rather than my normal day by day, blow by blow description punctuated by photos, I am going to have to give you a review in arrears, under a series of topical headings. I will have to rely on memory for this, so it will be sketchy. I still haven't had any practice at getting photos out of the phone, so that will have to wait. As for taking photos with my phone, you can stick it! I want a camera. I know what a camera is. I can use a camera. A phone is for talking into, but apparently it can do other things. Oh yeah? For example, if I want to take a photo with my camera, first I have to make it switch on. I have a black screen with nothing else. I tap where I usually tap and nothing happens. I curse and swear. I have to take my gloves off, then repeat the above. Nothing happens. If by sheer luck I get the thing to work, I can't see what I'm photographing. I get a picture on the screen of the Earth taken from the moon. By this time, whatever I wanted to photograph has moved on, or I'm so pissed off I don't care anymore.

Anyway, in China they ban Google. So I couldn't get Internet. My laptop didn't work, my phone didn't work and so I didn't work either. Going from China to Laos was actually an improvement in many ways. I never thought I'd say that, having been to Laos previously. China is the world's biggest shitfight as far as I'm concerned, in many ways, worse than India, and I never thought I'd say that either! But that's travel for you. You think you've seen it all, then....booom! Here is a quick summary of what's been going on, before I get down to the nitty gritty.

We left Chiang Mai with Songkran still going on, but managed to escape unscathed. A quick stop at Chiang Rai to see the White Temple. It was very hot and uncomfortable in the bike gear, which was not pleasant. We crossed into Laos the next day, and rode to Luang Namptha just short of the Chinese border. The roads were dreadful, large sections of dirt, lots of traffic, mostly Chinese trucks. In a couple of places it was so dusty that visibility was down to zero, and it was very dangerous. We arrived at L.Namptha hot, dusty and cranky. By this stage, one rider had dropped his bike and was lucky not to have slid over the edge of a cliff, saved only by a randomly placed 44 gallon drum. The Chinese border crossing at Boten is the worst border crossing I have ever seen. It is a disgraceful, disorganised shambles. On the Laos side, it was pretty straight forward, then there was about 2-3 km of open ground, rutted and potholed, with clouds of dust. No signage whatsoever. Vehicles went in all directions, a total free for all, until we reached a construction site which heralded the Chinese side. They are building a casino and several high rise buildings. God only knows why. In the midst of this chaos, a lone woman valiantly sweeping the dirt with a twig broom. A job is a job!

The road to the Boten border crossing from Laos.

This is the Laos side.

Where we had quite a wait. But it was about to get worse.

This is the no man's land inbetween Laos and China.

This is approaching the Chinese side.

Some of us were less than impressed by the time we got to the Chinese side.


Then the joy of going through queue after queue of surly officials, stamps on documents, retinal scans, photographs, fingerprints. I was expecting "turn your head and cough" in Chinese at any moment. It took quite a long time to get through all this, then we headed about 40km up the road to Mengla, where we had to jump through more hoops. First, a medical, to demonstrate we were fit to drive on Chinese roads. This consisted of sitting in a waiting room, filling in a form, showing our passports and then leaving. Then to the vehicle testing station. This consisted of riding the bikes up a ramp onto a weighbridge, where a 20 year old dickhead in thongs recorded the weight of each bike, and then tested the front brake. The most pointless waste of time I think I have ever witnessed. The cost of this scam? Sorry, I meant most thorough inspection? 900USD per bike. The boundless irony of this farce would only become truly apparent later on, when we had gained some real experience of Chinese traffic, drivers and vehicles. After this we were issued with two laminated cards, one our official Chinese Drivers License, the other our official Chinese registration document for the bike. We would be required to produce these several time during our 10 days in China.

We were met at the border by Huang, our official (and compulsory) Chinese tour guide. A guy in his 30's, on an F800GS, dressed in bike gear including motocross boots. He looked the goods, but what a disappointment he turned out to be. Call it a clash of cultures between German and Chinese, I don't know, but he just didn't get on with Kay, and in the finish, kept sulking at the back of the group, and at hotels or mealtimes, vanished into thin air. The laziest drone of a guide I've ever witnessed, a total waste of space, and no help to anybody. When we left, nobody tipped him, and only a couple of the most polite in the group even bothered to say goodbye. The guy was as helpful as a crack in glass eye.

The second day out on the road in China, another rider dropped his bike. Routinely powering out of a corner, he lost the back end. Prior to this, I had noticed that the bitumen road surface was so highly polished by the volume of traffic, that it had become slippery. In addition, covered in a layer of dust, it was deadly. When I stopped the bike and my feet touched down, the soles of my boots would keep sliding. I was very concerned at this development, and feared for what would happen if it rained, but it was disturbing enough in the dry. My bike has Mitas off road tyres so I was extra concerned, but as against this, I had a pillion, so the additional weight helped plant the bike a bit better on the road, for which I was thankful. So this was the mindset in the first couple of days, like walking on eggshells.

The size of the population, and the amount of spending on infrastructure in this part of China is astounding. I imagined Yunnan would be a rural backwater, and maybe it is, in which case I never want to see the rest of the country. The number of spectacular road bridges and tunnels I have seen is mind boggling, and such a cost would bankrupt Australia. Just when you think you are out of the city, a few kilometers down the road, there is another one. And I do mean cities. Blocks of 30+ floor high rise apartments, clustered in groups of 15-20 at a time. Both finished and under construction. I didn't know there were so many tower cranes on the planet. Yet every available plot of earth has something growing on it, and by something I mean food. Rice, vegetables, nuts, bananas etc. Everywhere you look, there is somebody doing something. If they need it, they build it.

We spent 2-3 days in Tibet, which is more isolated and less populated, but it is clear the Chinese are pumping money and influence into this region, which they stole from its rightful owners in 1959, and have been busy ever since trying to prove it is theirs. And to convince the Tibetans that they really are Chinese, and that's quite a stretch. The style of the buildings and also the facial features of the locals are clearly different from Yunnan. There appears to be a lot more untouched forest on the hillsides. Also, the temperatures were a lot lower (2 deg C was the lowest readout on my bike), and the air is a lot thinner. The highest altitude we reached was around 3500 metres. I have been to 5000 metres in the past with no ill effects, but this time I had a constant headache, and was very short of breath. The effort of lugging my suitcase up 3 flights of stairs was debilitating and had me puffing like a steam train. They say it is like seasickness. Some days you get it, some you don't. Here we encountered rain for the first time, yaks for the first time, snow for the first time and ice on the road for the first time. It was kind of fun watching the two Thai guys, Noah and Tony (probably not their real names) experience cold weather. They were both rugged up like Eskimos, and for Tony it was the first time he had ever seen snow, let alone get a facefull of the stuff! In the case of the ice on the road, this was only apparent after following a truck, which broke it up and made it visible to Noah, who happened to be leading the ride at that time, and who wisely followed slowly in the truck's wheeltracks. I didn't even notice it and only found out about it later. Just as well, since I was having enough trouble in the dry! So, quite the tour. As I said to Kay, where else can you get malaria, sunstroke and frostbite on the same tour? He responded that Big Bike Tours has something for everybody!

From Tibet, we backtracked more or less the way we went up, but stopping overnight in different places. We had to endure the nightmare of the Boten border crossing again. The first night in Laos had everybody in party mode. The relief of actually leaving China was palpable amongst the whole group. We had Internet, we had decent beer (Beer Lao, whacko!) instead of the watery Chinese rubbish, we had red wine, we had food that was not floating in cooking oil, we had a hotel where the staff were actually helpful, smiling and polite. We were in a country where you could do what you like. We where in a country where whatever you did was nobody else's business. I shall expand on these themes in due course, and hopefully with some photos.

GOD DAMMIT. IT'S SONGKRAN. AGAIN !!

Greetings Readers, I am pleasantly ensconced in the Amora Hotel, Chiang Mai. Imprisoned might be a more accurate descriptor. You see it is Songkran, the Thai New Year Festival. The time of year when Thailand descends into the anarchy of one giant water fight. I have endured (and also described in detail previously) this particular ritual on two previous visits. Bottom line is this: Go outside, you get drenched to the skin. Period. Apart from a few emergency runs to the nearest 7-11 to get beer (wearing my bathers and a t-shirt that needs a wash), we have been trapped in the hotel. Although we did duck out early yesterday to have a massage, to get the kinks out after a very rigorous day spent flying up here. The oil acted as a water repellent, rather like duck feathers, but the downside is that your feet get slippery. Anyway, its so hot here that being drenched is kind of doing you a favour. Except when the water comes via a bucket filled directly from the canal. Many buckets and drums and countless giant water pistols are filled with tap water, which is risky enough, but some were observed to come from the canal that surrounds the old town. The canal water looks alarmingly like those stagnant brown/green ponds they have at the zoo for the hippos to wallow in, except here in Chiang Mai, the shit content is undoubtedly higher. These areas are to be avoided at all costs.


We had a long day getting here, starting at 4.30 am to get to the airport, then a 7 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, a couple of hours to change terminals. This is usually done relatively efficiently via train, but the train was out of action, and we had to do it by bus. The disorganised bunfight where a vast number of people were clamoring to get on the bus was good practice for the mayhem of Songkran to follow, albeit dry. Then to Bangkok, customs and immigration, then recheck at the zoo-like domestic terminal for the flight to Chiang Mai, so there was a certain symmetry to the whole experience so far. We arrived at 9.30 pm local time, but about 1 am Adelaide time, so we were wrecked enough to crash immediately.

One thing I did notice on the flight out of Oz was that program on the inflight entertainment system, you know the one where you can follow the actual flight, it tells you how far you have gone already, etc. had a novel feature. There was a screen which showed a compass dial, with an arrow labelled as pointing towards Mecca. Being a Malaysian Airlines flight, this came as no surprise. What did surprise me was that on this screen there was another arrow labelled as showing the direction to Port Hedland. I think it was most considerate of the airline to cater for those whose religion requires them to point towards Port Hedland and pray five times a day. You can't say they don't go the extra mile. Although in the case of MH370, they went a few too many extra miles.

At this stage, we have clocked the bike we will be riding, its a white F800GS fitted with K2 adventure panniers and top box. The guys also fitted a Touratech seat for me, remembering my back problem last time. I thought that was a nice gesture, although I don't recall having a back problem last time. Knee problem, yes. But its the thought that counts! The panniers on all the bikes are a new development though, since my last two rides here were on bikes with no panniers at all. The luggage went into the truck. This time we have a large group of 15 bikes, which will change the dynamics of the tour quite a bit. And I guess the luggage carrying needs to be shared a bit to avoid overloading the truck. The panniers add a substantial amount to the width of the bikes, which will require some caution in heavy traffic, and also add to the risk of bike to bike contact. So my plan is to hang at the back for a while till I suss out just who I'm riding with, but hopefully not too far back as to lose touch and get lost. Not sure if they will run a sweep rider (Tail End Charlie) or not, but there will be a briefing tomorrow to establish how it will all operate. We have a dinner tonight to get to meet the crew and all the other riders, then tomorrow, we are into it.

I haven't taken any photos yet, in fact I didn't bring my camera at all. Now that I have a new phone which I can't use properly yet, I thought I'd just jump in the deep end and use that, since it takes better photos than my camera ever did. At some point I hope to be able to get the photos out of the phone and onto the blog. Or as people keep telling me, I could learn to use Facebook. Yeah, right, as if! My new phone tells me whenever I  switch it on that I  have over 100 notifications from people who want to be my friend. Well sod off, there are no vacancies. Besides, the five friends I already have are enough work. And I really, truly, just don't give a rat's what people who I've never even heard of are having for lunch, much less see a photo of it. I've seen food before. Wtf is the attraction?

COMPUTER SAYS "NO".

Greetings Readers, Well, there it is, right on cue. An aviation disaster. Just as I'm about to fly somewhere. I have made mention of this phenomenon before, and its freakin amazing how it keeps on happening. I'm not kidding, go back and see, right here in this blog! This time it looks like a biggie. Boeing's 737 Max 8 can fly all by itself, it doesn't need pilots getting in the way. Its so state of the art that Boeing didn't even bother to tell anybody, least of all those pesky pilots, that now Skynet decides when the plane is about to stall, and it corrects automatically. That is to say, it corrects with an irreversible trajectory calculated to cause maximum carnage. I half expect the FAA to break down my door and arrest me as a prime suspect, if not an accessory after the fact. This series of regular coincidences could not possibly have escaped their attention. But as I have said before, at least it gets everybody focussed. We are scheduled to fly one leg of our travels on a 737-800, which Dr. Google tells me is a predecessor to the Max 8, not the actual Max 8. I was temporarily relieved at this discovery, until I remembered we were flying with Malaysian, who keep finding novel new ways to lose aircraft. But since then, in news just in, Boeing finally bowed to the pressure (but mostly a directive from Trump) and grounded the lot. Airlines and others now intending to sue Boeing for damages, please form an orderly queue.

So anyway, hot on the heels of my November adventures in Myanmar, where I really did fly with some dodgy airlines, I am now in the getting ready phase for the trip to Yunnan and Tibet, commencing in mid April. Way too early to pack yet, but preparations continue apace. Swiss Army Knife, check. Cheese substitute packs of Le Snaks, check. Ground Coffee, check. Vegemite, check. Better get a big jar this time, and the stuff in the tube is really awful, or is it just me? Oh, and we need a Chinese Visa, better get that happening.

Let me warm to the topic by way of example. I was going to the local gym the other day, and my electronic pass wouldn't work on the entry gate. As I pay by auto deduct on my credit card, this struck me as unusual. The 20-something chick on the front desk pressed a few buttons and says my accreditation has run out. My what?? Listen and be amazed. I get a discount because I have a State Government issued Seniors Card. Sad but true. Everybody who turns 60 gets one, and as it gives me free public transport off peak, its handy. We need to see your card to make sure its still valid, she says. But its open ended, I reply. They don't give you another one unless you lose the first one, and it doesn't expire, and anyway, you saw it when I joined, otherwise I wouldn't be "accredited" in the first place, would I?  We have to renew your accreditation, she says robotically. Listen lady, I walk here and I don't bring anything with me to gym except a towel and water bottle. Well, next time then, she says. We have to check it again, its part of the process, you see? God give me strength, I mutter. Yes, I see. And its totally pointless. Do these people think the Government is going to withdraw my Seniors Card because I'm getting younger?? When did common sense become illegal?

Being an old guy with too much time on his hands, I love to question just about everything, but especially time wasting bureaucracy. Mainly because now I have plenty of time to waste, and it really irks those who haven't. Anyway, perversely, I do kind of enjoy tilting at windmills like Don Quixote, (Google it, kids. Better still, read the book). Back to the story. Who am I to question what it says on the screen? See, the computer says this, right here, "Check for accreditation".  As if this in itself was some irrefutable proof. Gen X,Y, Z, or wherever we're up to, seem to have lost the ability to think for themselves. They just look at a screen and do whatever it says. Everywhere I look, people are staring hypnotically at the screen of their"device", awaiting instructions. Yeah well, not me. To me, device still means the clamp on the end of the workbench. And I'll go down swinging.

But this particular example of time being destroyed was merely practice for the Chinese Visa process. Thus far in my travels, the hardest Visa I've ever had to get was the one for Iran (and you can read about that earlier in this very journal), and a close second was the one for the good ol USA, if you want to stay there longer than 90 days. No complaints about either of those, I respect every country's right to decide who they let in, but by now I really am sick of jumping through bureaucratic hoops like a trained seal. And it turns out that China is not one of the easiest countries to get a visa for (bad grammar, I know). North Korea, Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan are the hardest apparently, while the top ten is rounded out by a few African basket case countries where tourists don't go anyway. So my device told me. So it must be right. Right?

The Chinese Visa Application Service (CVAS) is now an outsourced function, run by private contract. Obviously, even the Embassies are getting sick of  the drudgery of processing visa applications, and I don't blame them. The Adelaide CVAS office has only recently opened, and I suspect the staff are a bit new to it all. And I'm being very kind to them when I say that. I won't bore you to death with the administrivia, but don't go in there if you're in a hurry. Find another way. And good luck. Anything a little out of the ordinary throws bureaucrats into a panic as they are jolted out of their catatonic comfort zone and realise that the computer screen is no help at all!

First question. Where are your return airline tickets? Well, we are not flying to China, we are flying to Thailand. How are you getting to China? By road. From Thailand? I remind her that Thailand doesn't have a border with China. No, from Laos. But you are flying to Thailand. Yes, and then we are going to Laos. Its all in the application, I typed an appendix explaining the whole thing. Shuffle of papers. Where? Here, here and here. Maybe if you hadn't shuffled the paperwork......Checks computer screen hopefully, panic begins to rise, then picks up phone and babbles for about two minutes to some unseen power. And your invitation letter is filled in by hand, not typed! Hello, she's back. I knew right then it was going to be a long day.

The tour company have a guy in China, a local fixer, who issued a letter of invitation, and a full itinerary for our China leg, all written in Chinese, for the sole purpose of facilitating the Visa application process. All we had to do was fill in our own details on the blank bit. Well, it wasn't working. Then I was told to provide details of accommodation in Thailand. Excuse me?  With all due respect, I said, surely this is irrelevant? Application not acceptable, come back with details we ask. That went well, I mused, as I caught the train back home after having wasted a morning. Fortunately the train trip was free, I have a Seniors Card, remember.

So a week and a half of emails later, back I go with as much of the stuff as I could get, with two fresh applications, and all the answers on the tip of my tongue. I was ready to joust this time. Different lady on the front desk, good sign. Then I got "this photo same as passport" she says looking at my application. Seeing that they were both identical photos of me, I was somewhat perplexed at this statement of the obvious. Well, who's photo were you expecting, lady? Conan the Barbarian? I had stuck a leftover photo from my last passport application on the Visa application. They wanted a photo less than six months old. But my passport is still valid for another four years, with the same photo in it. Are you saying its not me?? Saying need new photo, so can stick on Visa form. Dammit, they had me on the ropes again! But I merely smiled and said "fine", while mentally counting to five hundred, and seriously considering going postal.

Then as it turned out, I really did go postal. I had to find the nearest post office for a new photo shoot. I then returned with 6 new photos, one of which she cut out diligently and glued onto the application. A period of intense scrutiny of the forms followed, then she finally said to take it to window 2. This only triggered a fresh round of questions. Eventually, much later, they accepted the applications and I was told to come back in 10 working days time and collect the passports, hopefully with visas attached. Thorough? Painful more like, and you just have to take it. Or cancel your travel plans. These are your choices. Speaking of trained seals, anyone got any fish? Ooh look, a hoop!

I have been fascinated by the name Tibet since I was in short pants, and just starting to learn about geography. It was one of the most isolated places on the planet, much like Nepal and Bhutan, the other mysterious Himalayan kingdoms. Home to abominable snowmen, (actually they're ok when you get to know them), yaks, yak butter tea, prayer wheels, singing bowls, chanting monks and of course, Everest. I have fortunately been able to visit Nepal, and parts of it were truly fascinating. I can now understand how Khatmandu blew the minds of the first westerners to ever get there. And not just because dope plants really do grow wild on the side of the road, and because Bob Seeger had a song called Going to Khatmandu. When I first saw a photo of the Potala Palace, which forms the totally awesome backdrop to Tibet's capital city of Lhasa, it messed with my head. It was the most exotic thing I think I had ever seen up to that point. I had heard of the Dalhi Lama, but must admit to not really understanding anything about Tibetan Buddhism until recently. I certainly did not appreciate the politics involved until much later in life. I had the opportunity of attending a conference in Sydney several years ago, at which H.H.The Dalhi Lama was a keynote speaker. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. The man has lived in exile in Dharamsala, India since 1959. At least, that's his postal address, for he spends a great deal of his time travelling the world, meeting world leaders, and generally inspiring millions. Including me. If anybody has a right to be pissed off, outraged and to go postal, it's him. But that is totally not what the man is about, and that is entirely the point. (Jihadists, take note). However, he is unlikely to be going home anytime soon. While our trip will include riding up onto the vast Tibetan Plateau, we will not be going as far west as Lhasa, unfortunately. It just won't be possible within the time frame we have, and we are already covering some 5,500 km.

China has poured squillions into consolidating its presence in the region, and has recently completed a high speed rail link to Lhasa, a project which in itself is an engineering marvel, and one which conquered numerous technical challenges, so credit where it's due. Why bother? Well, I might just leave it there, one never knows who is monitoring stuff on the internet. But watch this space. Meanwhile, the Chinese juggernaut rolls on, developing at a blinding pace, and rapidly becoming a serious player on the world stage. One suspects this is all happening in accordance with some vast strategic plan. I wonder what it is? I suspect certain others are asking the same question. Well, you don't stop till you've got the lot, do you?