With the 30 day chinese visa's safely in our passports we headed out of the relative safety of Bangkok today. With it goes western menu's and easy ordering of vegetarian food. Luckliy we arrived in our first port of call Chachoengaso and after dumping our bags in the dump of a guest house we set off exploring looking for food. We have managed to explore all of about 300 meters from the hotel and are at present in the airconditioned luxury of an icecream parlour that does food has a waitress that can speak some English and has free wifi. Talk about intrepid adventurers tasting the wares of the locals!
We are putting off going back to the guest house for as long as possible as it is a little more than grotty but the only one we could find and that was with the help of the taxi driver who drove us from Bangkok. We also have the delight of putting the bike back together and packing all our stuff, although we sent lots home we have managed to buy lots of books just to even it all up.
The big news Rich forgot to say in the last post is that we have decided after much lugging about of the bike in its packed stateis that we really do not want to be gadding about all over China by train as was the first plan, so have revised the route. We have decided that Vitenam will have to wait and to head straight up Laos and into China rather than via North Vietnam, then head straight towards Tibet and the big hills. So no Beijing, no great wall or Terrocotta army but also no lugging the bike around packed up!!
lets see what tomorrow brings.....
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Love you long time....
I am very frustrated!! To cycle to from Bangkok to Delhi involves pedalling across a few thousand Km's of China via the Himalayas. The main reason for my frustration is that in Bangkok we decided we would apply for our Chinese visas, and while almost all countries in S.E. Asia only grant a 30 day tourist visa as a matter of course,... so too does China.
Great, I hear you say. And if you are cycling across Laos it is, but China is just a tad bigger. In theory, you can obtain a 90 day visa, but try as we might, the constantly smiling lady in Bangkok's Chinese embassy, would not admit the possibility of getting anything more than a 30 day visa. The upshot of all of this is that either we have to cycle to Hong Kong to try our luck of getting a longer visa there, or rely on the generosity of the PSB (the very communist one party state sounding 'Public Security Bureau') to allow us visa extension once in China. We collect our passport, Chinese visa et al. tomorrow.
Anyway on to impressions of Bangkok. After the relative familiarity of Australia, Bangkok is like a developing world slap in the face. Hawkers, trying to sell you stuff you never knew existed, you never knew you needed and you certainly have never wanted. Street venders pushing the limits of their stalls across the pavement into the road, health and safety be damned. Tuk-Tuk drivers conning naive gap year backpackers straight off the plane for 10 times the going rate for a 2km ride. Yet, it still makes for a soft landing pad into indo-china. We've not yet been given a menu without an English translation, in the area we are staying western tourists outnumber the locals and there's a heavy presence of the ever comforting 'tourist police'.
So from here we are heading to the east, to the Cambodian border, and on to the famous Ankor Wat temples. Apparently the roads have been tarmaced over the last few years... here's hoping! If not, then at least we will be getting a proper dose of adventure cycling!!
Great, I hear you say. And if you are cycling across Laos it is, but China is just a tad bigger. In theory, you can obtain a 90 day visa, but try as we might, the constantly smiling lady in Bangkok's Chinese embassy, would not admit the possibility of getting anything more than a 30 day visa. The upshot of all of this is that either we have to cycle to Hong Kong to try our luck of getting a longer visa there, or rely on the generosity of the PSB (the very communist one party state sounding 'Public Security Bureau') to allow us visa extension once in China. We collect our passport, Chinese visa et al. tomorrow.
Anyway on to impressions of Bangkok. After the relative familiarity of Australia, Bangkok is like a developing world slap in the face. Hawkers, trying to sell you stuff you never knew existed, you never knew you needed and you certainly have never wanted. Street venders pushing the limits of their stalls across the pavement into the road, health and safety be damned. Tuk-Tuk drivers conning naive gap year backpackers straight off the plane for 10 times the going rate for a 2km ride. Yet, it still makes for a soft landing pad into indo-china. We've not yet been given a menu without an English translation, in the area we are staying western tourists outnumber the locals and there's a heavy presence of the ever comforting 'tourist police'.
So from here we are heading to the east, to the Cambodian border, and on to the famous Ankor Wat temples. Apparently the roads have been tarmaced over the last few years... here's hoping! If not, then at least we will be getting a proper dose of adventure cycling!!
Monday, 5 July 2010
Australia and beyond......
On the Whitsundays cruise a lady asked the question, 'My 5 star friend says that the outer reef is the only place to really go to see great coral, is this true?' the response: The coral here is just as good if not better. I wish we had believed that as we could have saved ourselves a lot of money! Don't get me wrong the reef was great and we did get to go scuba diving (Rich's first time), but the reef was looking sad and very similar. lots of patches of dead reef and apart from the giant clams size -Huge!!! the coral we saw at the Whitsundays was in better shape. We did see one part of the reef that looked like it was out of saving Nemo which made up for the disappointment of the morning snorkel, but would like to know what impact the tourist industry is having on the reef as it was startling how much of the coral was dead.
the last full day in Cairns was spent running round the shops, changing money, buying tyres, getting bike boxes, parcel tape and all the boring stuff you have to do when you move on. Finally when we were back at the campsite we set to work on the bike packing it up, we gave ourselves plenty of daylight hours to complete the job, as last time in Auckland we ended up scrabbling around with head torches on, not great to find that bolt that just pinged off!
So having started the job at 4pm you may ask why we were still struggling with one, yes ONE part of the bike 3 hours later!! we had not had the bike apart for the entire two months which should not cause a problem except it had a good coating of sea water on several occasions, the water got down in to the dry coupling for the hydraulic brake and that was it, not budging. So after about half a can of WD40, Rich's patience had deserted us, pliers, adjustable spanners and a rubber hammer (Thorn, the bike shop's idea) we were no nearer to getting it off and starting to panic. Our saviour was in the guise of a guy who runs cape york 4W drive trips. He had a trailer of wonders and we eventually sorted it with monkey wrenches a and G clamp. Talk about saving the day. Panic over we stripped the rest of the bike and set to work packing the rest of the baggage. Our major moves always seem to have a glitch somewhere.
That was it Australia was over for us and it was on to cheap Bangkok!! We thought we would do a quick summing up of our thought on Australia:
Expensive
Friendly to the unusual traveller
Grey nomads zipping everywhere in their RV's and caravans
Massive divide between indigenous and westerners
same same countryside for very long stretches
Grey nomads more fun, less noisy and friendlier than backpackers
Big difference between tourist and non tourist spots, latter were the better
good trip and got lots of mileage in, but on the whole weighing up the money spent and things seen we could have missed it out and gone straight to Indochina and seen all of Oz another time
the last full day in Cairns was spent running round the shops, changing money, buying tyres, getting bike boxes, parcel tape and all the boring stuff you have to do when you move on. Finally when we were back at the campsite we set to work on the bike packing it up, we gave ourselves plenty of daylight hours to complete the job, as last time in Auckland we ended up scrabbling around with head torches on, not great to find that bolt that just pinged off!
So having started the job at 4pm you may ask why we were still struggling with one, yes ONE part of the bike 3 hours later!! we had not had the bike apart for the entire two months which should not cause a problem except it had a good coating of sea water on several occasions, the water got down in to the dry coupling for the hydraulic brake and that was it, not budging. So after about half a can of WD40, Rich's patience had deserted us, pliers, adjustable spanners and a rubber hammer (Thorn, the bike shop's idea) we were no nearer to getting it off and starting to panic. Our saviour was in the guise of a guy who runs cape york 4W drive trips. He had a trailer of wonders and we eventually sorted it with monkey wrenches a and G clamp. Talk about saving the day. Panic over we stripped the rest of the bike and set to work packing the rest of the baggage. Our major moves always seem to have a glitch somewhere.
That was it Australia was over for us and it was on to cheap Bangkok!! We thought we would do a quick summing up of our thought on Australia:
Expensive
Friendly to the unusual traveller
Grey nomads zipping everywhere in their RV's and caravans
Massive divide between indigenous and westerners
same same countryside for very long stretches
Grey nomads more fun, less noisy and friendlier than backpackers
Big difference between tourist and non tourist spots, latter were the better
good trip and got lots of mileage in, but on the whole weighing up the money spent and things seen we could have missed it out and gone straight to Indochina and seen all of Oz another time
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