Kunming

Rich is a genius and looked up bike shops in Kunming on the web, we had heard that there was one really good one in town.  I was not feeling 100%, a cold/sore throat was on the way which justifies the journey yesterday (in my eyes!)  Anyhow we headed out with guidebook and Rich with an idea of where the place is, me feeling under the weather and not looking for a long walk.  We had to head up to green lake, which a beautiful lake in the middle of Kunming complete with water lilies, pedalo's and tourists galore.  We this is where Rich falls from his genius status.... we have to walk about a quarter of the way round and then head into the back streets, so when we arrived back at the place where we first started walking round the lake I was not impressed and took over the map reading.... 15 mins later we were at the shop. They said that they can mend disc brakes and to bring the bike in.  We had not taken the bike as the traffic is a total nightmare.

Once the beast was present the fun began.  Little English is spoken in China, which is understandable and our mandarin now stretches to hello, thank you and egg fried rice, not that helpful in 'can you fix our disc brake please, this is what we want doing'  finally as we had got it all sorted with a good dose of google translator giving out 'Chinglish' (sentences that don't really make sense) we were heading out of the shop to return at 5 the next day when the mechanic came running..... he did not know how to get a part of the brake off.  So to cut a very long and boring story short, 4 hours in a bike shop long, a chap who is English and works there weekends came by, translated for us and we eventually left with the bike not fixed, to ring Thorn (the makers of the Tandem) to arrange parts to be shipped out ASAP to China.  Oh and another spoke was broken!

Thorn was going to get back to us the following day with prices for the parts so we could arrange a customs declaration form, China are really anal about how much stuff you can have sent to you so it had to be right so it did not get stuck in customs.  Finally two days later  on the 19/08 we got an email stating the price...... and a golden nugget of information.....all the hope disc brake parts are reusable!!! there should be no need for a delivery! 
quick phone call to a Thorn mechanic later and we are the proud owners of fantastic information.  Back to the bike shop the following day and hey presto one happy stoker i.e. me, Denyze as I have the disc brake, yippee I have some control!! Spoke mended, chain cleaned, bike boxed for packing and all for the extortionate price of £19, yes that is right approx 10 hours of faffing around on our bike cost the measly sum of £19. We love China!!


The rest of our time in Kunming has been spent trying not to spend too much money, which is always difficult when you discover Carrefour supermarket with imported cheeses and the markets have lots of lovely nic-nacs.  So what do you do with too much time on your hands... you up load photos, we have upgraded the flickr account and now we can upload as many as we want.  So go and have a look, if you click on the photos in the top right it should take you straight there.  The photostream is totally out of sync so go to the sets down the right hand side of the flickr page and have a giggle!  We hope to keep up to date from now on. 

Today (24.08.10) we had some good news, our Tibetan Travel Permits arrived!! We can now officially enter Tibet on the 28th.  Since 2008 every foreigner has had to have a travel permit applied for by a travel agent in Lhasa and you have to be on a tour, no holds barred, no permit no travel.  We were nervous about ours turning up,as we were having it sent to our hotel and we did not know what Chinese post was like, but after a confusing phone call for both parties and trip to reception to confuse the receptionist as she knew nothing about a telephone call, a knock sounded at the door.  Yippee, travel permit time, it was all a little like Fawlty towers.  Now we are spending time sorting out bike transportation! it just never seems to stop, but we love it.