From the First Graders:

How do you ride for so long every day? –Autumn

Hi Autumn,

When we are riding, our bodies are demanding more nutrition than if we were just chilling out. A big part of being able to ride all day in the sun is hydration. We drink tons of water and stop for snacks and small meals all day long. By never being too full, but also never being too hungry we keep a good flow of energy. Also we drink gallons and gallons of water so we can keep sweating enough to stay cool even though it’s boiling hot out.

Thanks,
AsiaWheeling

What kind of animals have you seen? –Molly

Hey Molly,

We’ve seen lots of animals. In the cities, we see lots of dogs and cats wandering around. We also see rats and mice picking at things. In some cities, there are even monkeys wandering around digging through the trash and begging for food from people.  Also, it is common to see cows and goats both in town and in the country. Especially in countries where people practice Hinduism (a religion where the cow is holy), cows will wander all around and no one seems to care.

Elephants are not so common, but we’ve even seen them. Most of the time when we see them it is because a fellow has one and is using it to make money selling rides.  Horses we see more often.

We also see chickens and roosters all over the place. Most of these are destined to become satay (this is a food kind of like a shish kabob with peanut sauce on it). Careful… the roosters will get a little feisty with you if you get too close!

People also trap many kinds of beautiful (though probably very sad) birds. They sell them in wooden cages by the side of the road.

In many of the cities we visit, there are lots of bats at night, big and small ones, which we are always happy to see because we know they are eating bugs that might otherwise bother us.  Spiders help us out by doing the same.

When we are in the ocean, Scuba diving or even just swimming we see tons and tons of different colored animals.

We see fish, rays, sharks, turtles, sponges, and even jellyfish (a few of those stung us).

And we see lots of coral. Did you know that coral is an animal?

I am sure I forgot all kinds of cool animals that we have seen. But we’ll try to take more animal pictures for the website now that we know you are interested.

Thanks,
AsiaWheeling

Do you have fun every day? –Cailey

Hi Cailey,

I know it sounds crazy, but we actually do have fun every day. I certainly can’t say that the whole of each day is fun, but the two of us are really quite good at enjoying ourselves even when we are put in somewhat harrowing conditions.

Hope you’re having fun too,
AsiaWheeling

Does it ever snow there? –Presley

Hi Presley,

Since we are traveling all over Asia and the Middle East, we will be visiting plenty of places where it snows. Right now, we have been in a part of the world called South East Asia. We are very near to the equator, so most of the time it’s either quite hot or raining like crazy. But even here in South East Asia, it gets plenty cold, and even snows on the tops of mountains, assuming the mountains are tall enough.

Enjoy the snow in Colorado!
AsiaWheeling

What is your favorite place so far? –Sammy

Howdy Sammy,

That’s a tough one. I’ll assume you’re asking about just the places we’ve visited so far on this trip (in part because it makes it easier for us). In that case, I might say Jogjakarta. Jogjakarta is a city on the Indonesian island of Java. It’s called the cultural capital, because it’s where a lot of arts and crafts (like fabric and painted masks) are made, and where there are a lot of local bands that play a style of music called Gamalan music. The people are very friendly there, and many of them are willing to sit down and chat with you even if they don’t speak much English.

The food is great, and the traffic is very friendly to bicyclists. You can also get to and from Jogjakarta by train. We love trains, here at AsiaWheeling.

Thanks for asking,
AsiaWheeling

Is it really hot there? – Cayley

Yes. It’s really hot in most of the places that we travel (at least during the times that we’ll be there).

Right now it’s 29° Celsius in Singapore.  Do you know what that is in Fahrenheit?

Luckily, we like it hot.

Thanks, Cayley.
AsiaWheeling

Second Grade

Hi my name is Hannah. What’s your favorite fruit?

Hi Hannah (#1),

Our favorite fruit is the Durian. It’s known as the king of fruit and it smells a little bit like feet but tastes like a delightful lemon custard. The outside of the fruit is pointy and green and the inside is pale yellow with big seeds.

The entire thing is about the size of a bowling ball, but not as heavy.

For more on Durian, read the wikipedia article.

Keep eating fruit!
AsiaWheeling

Hi my name is Hannah. Do you like were you are right now? P.S. Peace and love!

Hi Hannah (#2),

Yeah, we love the place that we are right now. It’s called Semporna, and it’s on an island called Borneo, which is claimed by a few different countries, including Malaysia. Can you name the other two?

It’s a great place, full of interesting people and interesting animals.

Peace and Love right back at you!

AsiaWheeling

Third Graders

My name is Julia. Do you have TV?  You can write in Chinese if you want.

亲爱的Julia小朋友:

当然我们有电视，我们还可以收到美国的很多频道。你们同样的也可以看到中国的频道对吗？
希望你好好学习中文，长大了可以到中国旅游。

高洁

Did the coffee taste like American coffee?   –Konne

Hi Konne,

The coffee is different than American coffee to be sure. Often the coffee is made by pouring the grinds into a cup, and just pouring hot water over the top. This means that there is always a delightful layer of sludge at the end of the coffee. Otherwise, they use powdered instant coffee, which is generally better than American powdered coffee.

Also, rather than using milk and sugar, often we find that they use sweetened condensed milk, which is a yellowish goo made out of boiled milk and sugar. In fact it’s sometimes tough to order a cup without the goo. So we are just learning to love it.

Nice question,
AsiaWheeling

From the Fifth and Sixth Graders:

How many lizards have you seen that are the size of a small dog? Also what other strange looking animals have you seen? –Brandon

Hey Brandon,

Good question! We see lizards a lot. Usually crawling on the wall. However, most of these are tiny guys. Maybe the size of a GI Joe. However, we have been seeing a few larger lizards as well. So far the count is at three. One in the Jungle in Bali (he ran away when we came up).

One in an open sewer in Borneo (he was alive and breathing, but I think he was pretty sick of being in the sewer) and another laying on the ground in an empty lot in Semporna. This monitor lizard was just hulking in the sun, soaking up the rays, and watching people go by. At first it’s shocking to see such a giant lizards, but we try to respect their space, and admire them from a distance.

Be Safe,
AsiaWheeling

Have you met any kids our age? Is their school-time/ schedule similar to ours? What kind of houses do they live in?

Dear 6th Graders,

We meet loads of kids on the trip. Unfortunately, we often cannot talk very much with them because they don’t speak any of the languages that we speak. Even if we can’t talk much, we often find kids who are yelling at us or waving at us while we drive by. Some of them are asking for us to give them some money or to buy things from them; others are just saying “hi” or wanting to play with our bicycles.

School times for students in the countries we visit during AsiaWheeling are very different depending on where we are. We have been on some islands and farms where the kids don’t even get a chance to go to school at all. Instead, they work with their parents trying keep the house together and put food on the table. In a lot of other places in Asia, children go to school for much longer during the day than in the U.S., and also have a much shorter summer holiday. My guess is if you visited a school in any of these countries you would find it to be very different from yours, though the things they are learning might be familiar.

Kids live in all kinds of different houses depending on where we travel as well. Where we are right now, in Borneo, many people live in houses made of wood, held up on stilts over the water. In Singapore, many people lived in apartments inside tall buildings, with special devices to let them dry their laundry out the window. In Indonesia, many people lived in little cottages, made out of concrete, if they were wealthy, or if they were not so wealthy, houses made out of whatever they could find — plastic, wood, stones, and metal sheets.

Good question!
AsiaWheeling

Do you ever get sick of each-other? –Hannah

Hi Hannah,

I think the short answer here is “no.” But to leave it at that would be misleading. When you are traveling for as long and to as many places as we are, you experience a full range of emotions. We think the trick to any friendship is communication. So no matter what is bothering one of us, we do our best to talk about it, and work on it together.

Your Friend,
AsiaWheeling

In your pictures it looks like more people ride bikes and motorcycles than cars. Why is that? -Kiera

Hi Kiera,

There are two reasons for this. The first is that bikes and motorcycles are cheaper to buy. Many families can’t afford to buy a car, and in the city one has to have a place to park the car as well. The other is that, gas is expensive in most of the places that we travel (even worse than in the U.S.). Motorcycles and Mopeds use only a tiny fraction of the gas used by a full size car, so people choose them over the car to save money.

Wheel Safe,
AsiaWheeling

What kinds foods of do you eat? –Taylor

Hi Taylor,

We try to eat local foods whenever we can because we find it exciting.

From time to time we are in a place where we cannot find any local foods that we think would be safe to eat. In that case, we might go to a restaurant designed for foreigners. These places serve familiar foods like pizza and hamburgers.  However, they are generally more expensive and the food is sort of like someone played telephone with the recipe, passing it from person to person and in the end it’s been changed a bit from what you might recognize in America. Usually the change is in the less tasty direction.

Cheers,
AsiaWheeling

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel

AsiaWheeling has a few classes of penpals at the Cherokee Trail Elementary School in Colorado.  Here, and periodically throughout the journey, we will answer some of their questions about life on two wheels.

We received a few questions in the comments of a recent post, the answers to which are below.

Q: Do you feel safe around all the people there?

A: Not all the people, but most. Indonesians are in general very friendly and welcoming. Every once in a while we encounter someone who is trying to trick us into giving them money for nothing, or over-charging us. On a very rare occasion we might meet someone who does not like Americans very much, or does not want us to photograph them or their stuff. In these cases, we try to be as respectful as possible. There are many reasons why people don’t like America or tourists in their country and we understand that.

But on the whole, we feel very safe, and enjoy meeting new people both locals and other travelers.

Q: How far do you ride on the cool bikes every day?

A: We ride between 10 and 70 km a day. It really depends on the weather, the traffic, and the way points that we chose.

Q: Do you like the food?

A: We love trying new foods, and whenever we can be reasonably sure that it won’t make us sick we try new things. Most of them we like. For instance, a few nights ago, we had some chicken hearts and lungs that were incredible, all wrapped up with veins and very well spiced. Sometimes we have things that are strange, but not so tasty, things like some very fishy crackers that are popular in Indonesia, or some fried cows lungs, which I think had sat out too long.

Q: Have you met anyone new (not a part of Asia Wheeling or their families) there?  How did you meet them?

A: We meet new people all the time. We meet lots of fellow travelers in hotels and on the streets. We also get to meet many locals. Since there are not many white people here (did you know that being a white person is actually quite rare and special on planet earth?), people come up to us and ask to take their picture with us, so we make friends that way. We also need to work with locals to buy tickets and get food and shelter, so we are constantly meeting new people.

Q: Have you seen any other people that you knew before (like the plane trip)?

A: Nope so far all new people. Soon we will have some other friends come join us, though. So stay tuned.

Q: Where are you sleeping and how long do you stay at each place?

A: We stay between 2 and 7 days in your typical place, depending on how good the wheeling is there. We try to stay at all kinds of places except expensive. So we stay at youth hostels, business hotels, and family-run inns. Later on we might stay at a few super-fancy places, but those are few and far between due to the high cost.  Our favorite places to stay are old hotels with lots of character at affordable prices, such as the Hotel L’Orient in Pondicherry.

And now for the postcards.

Hey There Aiden,

Glad you’re studying about Asia in school.  It’s an interesting place.  Here, we drink a lot of water every day.  Because we’re out in the sun, riding bicycles, and taking medication to fight malaria which needs lots of water due to side effects of skin sensitivity.  On an active day, we consume about 5.7 liters of water.  Do you know how many gallons that is?

However, in most places in Asia, you can’t drink the tap water, because it will make you sick.  We either drink bottled water, or tea or coffee which is so hot that it kills the bacteria.  Bottled water here is not very expensive compared to in the United States.  In Indonesia, India, and China, a normal 600ml bottle of water may cost around 17 cents.

Staying hydrated by drinking water is important no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

Best,

AsiaWheeling

Greetings Garrett,

Thanks for your letter.  Our favorite colors are Ivory, Graphite, and Avocado as you can see from our website.  You’re lucky to have so much school and go on Ski Trips as well.

We’re so glad that you’re a math geek.  We are too!  In fact, we wear calculator watches because we do so much math every day.  Doing it in your head is good practice too, especially because you can’t use a calculator watch on tests in school.

Keep it up,

AsiaWheeling

你好，Ilka, 你的名字中文可以叫爱卡，很好听的名字，相信你的人长得也像你的名字一样美丽。中国地大物博，有很多好吃好玩的东西。 祝愿你好好学习，好好学习中文，将来有机会到中国来 看看。也欢迎你多上我们的网站，里面可以看到各个国家的奇闻趣事。最后，祝你越长越美丽。

高洁

大中华高级顾问

全球自行车探险 (AsiaWheeling)

Good Day Trevor,

Great to hear that you do so many sports.  We like Indiana Jones too.  In fact, our favorite activity is exploring the jungles like he does.

We also like doing math, drinking coffee, and understanding better ways to stay safe while traveling.

Your Friend,

AsiaWheeling

Hi Jake,

Nice stussy.  Those are all great sports. Stay active and be safe.  Our favorite number is 23.

Cheers,

AsiaWheeling

Howdy Austin,

We’re glad to hear that you like hockey and biking.  The most important thing is to be interested in things and do them as much as possible.

Keep riding that bike, and when you’re older, you can pick any part of the world to explore.

Wheel Safe,

AsiaWheeling