well we finally are here and its been an amazing journey so far. We crossed over the border into China on valentines day, we also saw the big dipper for the first time while camping that evening. Felt like it was pointing us homeward bound(in a few months).
Presently we are in Jihong a major city in swest Yunnan. Lonley planet guide states a population of 90k well with all of the constructiona nd massive highrises everywhere more like 10times that ammount. Taking a rest day here to catch up the head out in a northward bound for Dali which wil take us close to 2weeks. The weather here is hot but as we head north and to higher elevation it will be cooler. Noerth of Dali is soem pretty amazing mountainous teraina nd we hope to access some of it as spring arrives.
The riding has been great despite the BIG hills. Very rural here with banana pineapple and rubber tree plantations as well as soem preserved areas of natural forests. Our worst day was when we took the main hwy to avoid the big hills and ended up ahvign to go through multiple tunnels some up to 4k long which had no lighting in them. We hasd to ride the raised sidewalk no fun ata ll and pretty stressful so next day went back to the secondar road which ended up taking us up and over a huge pass!! oh well at least it was pretty.
Compared to Vietnam we find the chinese quiete , better drivers, but the yougn folks smoke more. In the city the young men are obsessed with their hairstyle and video games! In the rural areas they work hard and are very poor. A huge disparity of wealth it seems no unlike anywhere else. We ahve found the towns to be very dirty even shocking for us. Folks are very friendly but I still dont understand the hygeine stuff.
We have been able to communicate with much patiende on their part and good humour. Excpet for the main hwy no signs are in english and everything is in characters. One learns to look at lot. I was anxious to get to China and get on with the learnign curve and so far it is not so bad. The best part is we have been able to camp and have doen so until here and will continue tod o so . We like to be out of town and cook for ourselves, plus we prefer the rural areas.
Anyhow I think the initial culture shock is over and we are settling in more to come later but not for awhile. Internet is hard to find and relatively expensive. Next time will be a blog update with pics.
Sal
No comments:
Post a Comment