Hong Kong to Singapore

This is the blog of our trip to Singapore.

Below is what we had in mind for the trip....

You can find the entries of the trip on the right of this page.

Have fun,

Whiskey and Hoying

the house is empty and the bikes are full......

time to start

our livers need a break after 3 weeks of solid partying!

We are in Wuzhou! The first two days went smoothly although admitted with some saddle pain...... We did not even get lost, or at least not really. B's Cantonese proves useful although he has already been told that he has a horrible Hong Kong accent.

China is shocking us as it usually does. You can fool yourself you are living in China when you are in Hong Kong but just travel 100km out and you know it isn't true. We spend the first night in Zhaoqing which we suspect was beautiful but the "mist" prevented us from seeing the famous lake and mountains. After 4.5 years in Hong Kong we do no longer belief in something as innocent as morning mist......... and stinging eyes and sore throats confirmed this was some pretty bad polution indeed. It stayed with us much through the first day, a 105 km trip to Decheng along the Pearl river. Again we did not see much of the river nor the mountains beside it as sight was limited to about 500m. The bikes are holding up great and start to look dirty and old as they should.

Today we took a little ferry to the other side of the river. We had been cycling on a local highway the day before and although it was totally doable; not too much traffic and a very good road, we were longing for a bit more local local roads and scenery. We kept following the river for most of the day. We took a noodle break in Junan and asked for the way to Wuzhou. Two people simultaneouly and very convincingly pointed in two opposite directions.... only to decide a fraction later that indeed both were possible. Unfortunately we could not quite understand the rapid explanation that followed so we just chose what looked to be a more quiet route. It turned out to lead us to another ferry so back we went over the river and back to our lovely highway....

Now we are in Wuzhou, checked into a hotel (we should not have worried about finding hotels, there are more than plenty and they all think it is perfectly normal that we take the bikes up to our room) and are exploring. This is actually a quite nice city........ it is a surprise to us too, we are travelling without a guidebook so have no clue what our daily destinations actually have to offer. We just choose them by size and disctance. Anyway, the few streets that we have seen so far look nice with some old buildings and street markets. We may even stay here for a day and take some rest.

Guiping: on the map you see 3 rivers at the bottom of some "scenic montains"."Maybe we should stay there for a day" suggested W at lunch. Turns out to be just more of the same.....

The same we saw on the road today....all buildings are either falling appart or, even more new ones are being built. I sometimes wonder what is what...

Here is your average South China town that we cross app. every 25 km.

Yeah there is a lot of progress also around here. We have people taking us over on the newest motorbikes, shaded Mercedeces, etc..On the other end of the spectrum you have people pushing the most amazing push-cars, and doing the most amazing jobs: todays most impressive: manufacturing motherboards for phones, manually feeding the incenerator with garbage, and my favorite: sweeping the highway (temporarily) free of dust. Again manpower is of no short supply here.

Every time we stop it takes about a minute for a crowd of 5-10 people to come from out of nowhere, and gather around our bikes. High volume discussions start and frowned faces to us....do we really not understand what we are talking about...?

Navigation with a pure English Map, and sign boards 95% in Chinese is fun, it is a big puzzle to find out what city matches what characters....

So, yeah in Guiping now, and I don't think we will take a break here, not really my hood.

and... be carefull before you know it, someone will try and stuff you in one of these bins....