Distance
covered today: 68 km
Total
mileage to date: 526 km
Time in
saddle: 4h11m
Max Speed:
50.4 k/h
Average
Speed: 16.4 k/h
Time from
departure: 5.5+ hours
Finally
rolled in to Hekou, the last city on the Chinese side before Vientam. The road was remarkably good, until the last
5k before town. There it turned into
several inches of mud. It might have
been ok, but the damn motorbike in front of me stopped short, forcing me to
stop. Restarting in that much mud was
not possible. After walking a bit to a
harder patch, I was able to ride out.
But everything got caked thoroughly.
Today, though has made me start to
rethink how far I really want to go on the bike. The stopping points in this part of the world
are few and far between. And what there
is is pretty awful. These are not places
one wants to see, stops are made only because riding any farther is too
exhausting. I am starting to realize
that I could end up spending weeks of my trip mainly in shit villages to
exhausted to do anything but nap. I have
been to tired to really study Chinese the way I wanted. I would like to take another online class in
November, but cant see how I will have the energy to put into that while
cycling. On top of that I am already
"falling behind" on my travel schedule. Cant even relax on vacation.
I thought about paking it in from today,
but there doesnt seem to be a way to ship the bike on and I am loath to just
dump it. I really want to find a way to
get it to Australia as I really liked biking for short daily trips. The Chinese post office "jibuliao"
which translates to "we dont do that and we are not going to try in anyway
to help you" and a local delivery shop could only send me toward the post
office. So I am going to try something a
little different.
Sapa is only 33k from the border cross,
although it appears to be all uphill.
Tomorrow I plan to push to the hotel in Sapa, via cycle. Not all that different. Then the hope is that I can put the bike on a
bus to take with me to Dien Bien Phu.
From there it is a pretty easy ride to cross the Lao border. Then I can continue with the plan to put the
bike on a boat to Luang Prabang.
basically try for a while to travel with a bike rather than on it.
If that can work out, then great. If not, I may be stripping what I can off the
bike and then making a village kid really happy.
Oh and a word on saddle sores. They are really painful. And can appear really fast. I always thought that saddle sore was a like
a general reference to sore muscules from riding too long. Not a specific raw spot (or sore, I get it
now) that plagues you while you ride.
Another reason to be off the bike.
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