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[P|B]usan Ho

Is it Busan or Pusan? The answer is it’s both. You see in Korean there is no real distinction between the “p” noise and the “b” noise, at least as far as romanization goes, and particularly true in the pronunciation of this city. Go ahead; try for yourself. They are pretty similar.  Coincidentally, [P|B]usan was where we were headed that day. So we relished our last fried eggs and toast breakfast at the Bebop house, before bidding our friends there farewell, and strapping our belongings onto the Speed TRs for the ride to the airport.

The sky was bright blue and speckled with fluffy white clouds as we headed towards the Seoul’s central railway station. Even the giant pollution monitoring units broadcasted that it was going to be a beautiful day.

The ride to the train station was just long enough to really get the blood flowing, and burn up whatever was left of the eggs and toast. When we arrived, we noticed quite instantly that the station was huge. There was a decent amount of time spent searching for the hall in which we could buy tickets for the trans-Korea trains, but with only some minor scolding from security and a few mistaken rides in glass elevators, we found our selves in a huge shiny hall, filled with flat panel displays and orderly lines of Korean people.

Our beloved Schwalbe big apples squeaked comfortingly against the waxed floor as we wheeled our fully loaded cycles into line. In spite of some rather disparaging looks from a few of our fellow passengers, we deftly purchased two tickets on the next slow train to Pusan.

With that out of the way, it was time to eat a little more. We selected a crowded and efficient looking restaurant across the hall from the ticket counters, and made a huge pile out of our bags and folded bicycles, which angered the staff just slightly less than the amount which would have prevented them from serving us.

We ended up ordering a couple of soba meals, which were delicious, and came complete with a couple rolls of sushi (suspiciously similar to kim bab), some tempura, and some random Korean salads. We never quite deturmined if this was a Japanese or a Korean restaurant. We know there is some overlap. But the food was tasty enough, I guess. Ok, to be honest it was not great. But AsiaWheeling can’t bat grand slams every meal.  In our defense, we were in the train station. I dare you to get soba in an Amtrak station.

The next task was to acquire snacks to fuel us during the train ride, which would take most of the remainder of the day. Luckily Korea is a great place to buy interestingly packaged products.

Laden with snacks (well, to be honest, mostly laden with cans and paper cartons and little bottles of coffee drinks), we made our way to the platform.

When the train came, it was time for the old how-will-AsiaWheeling-fit-all-its-stuff-on-the-train hustle. Lucky for us, we had the rearmost seats in our car, which gave us just enough space to cram the bikes in. Inevitably, we would eventually get seats in the middle of the car, but we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. We’d managed to get the bikes on board in Uzbekistan after all.

The subsequent ride gave us some much needed time to catch up on correspondence for you, dear reader, a task which we relish. We took breaks from writing and sorting through photos to do shtick with the Wikireader, speculating about all manner of things (not least among them the White Stripes) and reading about Pusan in the lonely planet PDFs.

It was night when we finally arrived in Busan. It felt good to get off of the train and unfold our bikes. It was a warm night, and there were plenty of people out for a гулять. Not only was it nice outside but this was a tourist-town of sorts and we were fresh with energy from being cooped up on the train ride (the canned coffee helped too). We could afford to be picky with hotels, we thought, and so we started riding around, ducking in and out of inns, and comparing relatives prices/amenities.

A few things began to become obvious to us as we rode conducted this research: price fluctuation in lodging was high, fluctuation in amenities less so; our blood sugar levels were plummeting, and this was unlike any tourist town we’d ever been to. It was much more like a border town and though I might have been mistaken, I think I even detected a hint of Hekou, mostly in the concentration of brothels and strip joints. While the less than savory establishments of Hekou had catered mostly to the traders who crossed between Vietnam and China with goods on everything from semi-trucks to wheel barrows, Pusan seemed to cater to sailors on shore leave, a fair number of which were probably Russian, for we saw more Cyrillic writing here than we had in Harbin, a place much closer geographically to the federation.

Eventually, we found a place to stay. It was a “love hotel,” which I think technically means a place designed for a customer of one of the brothels to bring his …er… service person. The room reeked like smoke, and the woman who ran the front desk was almost certainly a demon, but it seemed clean enough for AsiaWheeling, and the price was right, so we threw our things down.

Without any more dilly dally, we headed out in search of food. We were hungry enough that we just ate at the first restaurant we saw, which was literally two buildings downhill from the hotel. It served over-priced and under-portioned fish and, much like the soba place earlier this day, was underwhelming. We vowed to get back on the  epic-feast-train the next day, but for now just felt good about being full. We even indulged in a quick after dinner stroll, which was effective in solidifying our suspicion that we were staying right in the heart of Pusan’s sex industry district.  Someone had even slipped literature featuring lewd portraiture with corresponding phone numbers under our door.  We could have been missionaries!  Shrugging it off, we rested for another day of a different type of godswork.


Out of the Raw and Into the Well-Done

We woke up our last morning in Hohhot and feasted briefly on the Internet before strapping all our things down onto our cycles and heading to our in search of noodles.

We ended up going back to the same Uyghur noodle place that we’d found our first morning here, and ordered a couple more bowls of lamb noodles, this time accompanied by a few Uighur kebabs, and what the Chinese call “Chuar.”

The symbol for Chuar is 串, which can be found throughout all over most mainland Chinese cities. It’s an easy one to spot, the Chuar character, since it looks like a kebab. Another character which I noticed it also looks a lot like 中, which is the first character of the Chinese word for China, 中国, literally translated “Middle Kingdom” or “Central Country”. That made us think. What if there was a chuar guo (串国)? Would that place be anything like our beloved Xiniang Uighur semi-autonomous region? And so with it we’d like to announce a new t-shirt: Chuarguo, in hope of promoting it as a pro-Xinjiang underground movement in favor of increased chuar consumption and support of Uighur entrepreneurship in the world at large.

And with that we hopped in the bus.

Even before the bus had left, the drivers’ started playing ridiculous kung fu movies, each of which seemed to be better than the last, and which continued to play throughout the entire ride to Beijing.

The highlight of the bunch and the final film was John Woo’s classic Once a Thief.

The ride ended up being pretty long.  For part way through, we hit some truly horrendous traffic, which had us waiting for hours in frustrating gridlock, making me wonder whether wheeling would not have been faster.   People hopped off and on the bus to relieve themselves and smoke cigarettes.  Looking out the window at our fellow stuck travelers, I began to realize that with the exception of busses, almost all of it was commercial drivers: mostly giant trucks transporting industrial and agricultural goods. China was moving so much stuff, that they could have a full stop and go gridlock traffic jam on a 6 lane highway in the middle of nowhere the most depopulated Provence of the country.   Most of it was product which was paid for by point B to be moved from point A.  This country never ceases to impress. Eventually, thanks be to Jah, we hit the open road again, and made it into Beijing only a few hours late.

It was by then well after nightfall. Gone were the days of blessed far north summer nights when the sunlight extended on until 10 or 11, and we were not quite sure where we’d been dropped off. What we were sure of was that it was surprisingly warm out. We had been able to wear the leather Jackets still in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, but it seemed that here we would need to put them into storage deep in the bags, hoping for a reappearance in Korea.
It had not been this warm at night since perhaps somewhere in Turkey, or even before that. And I marveled at how quickly I became soaked in sweat just wheeling away from the bus station and out to the main road. Our only real goal was to find an affordable hotel, and knowing China, we figured that would not be too difficult. We’d wheel into the city center the next day.  So off we went, wheeling along and keeping an eye out for the ubiquitous Chinese business hotel. But, strangely, we couldn’t find any. Perhaps we were in the wrong neighborhood, we thought. Heading on further, and keeping our eyes peeled.
Still no hotels presented themselves. We did spot a delicious smelling cluster of restaurants, though, and decided that eating could only help our situation. So one giant sizzling plate full of fish and few plates of greens later, we climbed back on the cycles with not only full stomachs, but armed with directions from the waitress towards a hotel.


We found the place no problem, but it turned out they were not authorized to accept foreigners. This was something we’d never encountered in China before… and we were puzzled. The owner of the hotel apologized and sent us on up the street to another hotel, but that place was way too expensive. And I’ll be darned if this trend didn’t continue on well into the night. We would wheel up to a perfectly respectable and affordable looking Chinese business hotel and attempt to check in, they would have vacancy and be very friendly, but sad to inform us that we as foreigners were not allowed to stay there, and then send us on to a nearby fantastically expensive place. How is a man to choose freedom in such conditions?
It was thus that, at nearly two AM, exhausted, sweaty, and discouraged, we rolled up to a certain hotel whose name shall remain for now a secret. The owner of the place was just leaving after a long night of balancing the books, and walked by Scott just as his front desk manager was being sorry to inform him they not authorized to accept foreigners. Something touched the man about us. Perhaps it was seeing our haggard state, or being somewhat of a cyclist himself. Maybe it was Scott’s Chinese, which we must have sounded not unlike Scorat: Cultural Lessons for Choosing Freedom in Chinese Cities and Betterment of Glorious Partners of AsiaWheeling Global Enterprises. Whatever it was, he decided to cut us a break and do a little under the table deal making.
He let us into a room where we would be able to sleep, showed us how to use the bathroom, and how to flush the toilet by diverting the water from the sink to the shower via a large metal handle, and then spraying water into the keyhole.  But he never even gave us the key. Presumably we were never to do anything more than sleep, get up, and leave, so there would be no need.
The room was interesting. Not Chinese business, but it was nice, like sleeping on the futon in your unemployed friend’s basement apartment. It had two huge beds, which took up almost all the floor space, the rest of which was taken up by a low table on which was a complementary Windows XP PC. Having our own notebooks, we had no interest in the PC, but we were able to use its Ethernet connection to sync our email. Then we just crashed hard and woke up the next morning to leave. The owner wished us good luck finding a more legitimate place to stay and then we were back on the road, wheeling fully loaded again.


This time we pushed on towards Tiananmen square, scanning all the way for a noodle shop. There were plenty of people wheeling as well, and a very intense police presence in this city, really unlike anything we’d seen in China. There was going to be none of the usual white crimes of AsiaWheeling, like running red lights or dashing across an intersection in between signals. Here the cops were on the job and tuned in to bikers, shouting at you if you crossed too far over the yellow line which marked where cyclists should wait when crossing the street.
We continued to wheel, keeping eyes peeled for noodles, but to my great indignation, they continued to be a scarce commodity. When we passed our third McDonalds I turned to Scott “Three McDonalds and no noodles? Are we still in China?”
And it was true, Beijing felt different than any other Chinese city we’d been to in this great country, and different then it had felt in 2008 when we first visited. It was so… shiny and clean. People we so orderly, toeing the line. Where was the raw? Where was the yelling? And where were all the damned noodles?
Finally, after much searching, countless McDonalds, KFCs, and Pizza Huts, we found a restaurant that was not a noodle house, but was at least a down home Chinese restaurant.

We ordered a large plate of pork with cumin, a cucumber salad, some white rice, and drank many pots of their tea, so much in fact that the tea in the pot became so exhausted by repeated soakings that we were no longer able to detect the actual tea flavor by the end of our time there.
Now, with some food in our stomachs, we continued to wheel on, past Tienanmen Square.

Even Tienanmen felt significantly different than the last time I’d visited, which had been on a cool and misty day. Today the sun was blinding and there was not a cloud in the sky. I realized then, also, that I had not ever seen Beijing with so little pollution. It was really quite amazing.


When we spotted a China Mobile office, we called a waypoint to buy a SIM card. We were able to do this no problem, but were quite surprised to find that here in Beijing SIM cards cost about 100% more than had we bought them in, say, Hekou.


A phone would be important, so we decided to purchase one SIM card to share between the two of us.  Scott ran in and executed the mission while I sat outside and just played the ukulele. Most of the well dressed Beijing pedestrians had no idea what to do with me. I must have looked like a filthy homeless vagrant (which is what I was) and Beijing is not a city with street performers. So most pedestrians, as they passed, would just glance at me uncomfortably and then avert  their eyes while walking onwards stiffly. Doing our best to push peoples limits here on AsiaWheeling, on rendition of BlackWater at a time.
Scott came out triumphant with the SIM card and ran over to buy a peach from a man and his wife who were roaming the streets with a peach selling cart.
Just then, our man MCK called, and as luck would have it, he knew of a hotel not one block from where we stood just there and then. It was a place by the name of Hai Na Binguan, and we strolled in to find that they even had a vacancy for us. So we headed up to the room, pleased to see an Ethernet cable hanging out of the wall, and that the bathroom was on a raised platform, covered in deafeningly screechy sliding smoked glass doors and headed out for a quick sunset wheel.


We began by heading down a large street near our hotel, lined with block after block of restaurants, making our way down the bike lane which ran, strangely enough, through the middle of the sidewalk. As we wheeled along, people called out to us, sometimes even in English asking us to come investigate their restaurant or their wares.

When was the last time that I had been yelled at on the street to advertise a restaurant… I can’t even remember… what was Beijing becoming? Bangkok?


We wheeled on, through shockingly manageable, well organized, and mostly brand new streets, able to get almost anywhere, without ever having to ride on a road with no bike lane, and spending an unprecedented amount of time waiting, under the watchful eyes of multiple traffic police, at stoplights.  A new Beijing sprawled before us.

After taking a huge loop, circumnavigating and eventually plunging back into Dongzhimen, we headed across the street from our hotel to try out the Uyghur restaurant there. We ordered a cucumber salad, a variety of Chuar, a big bowl of spicy Lakman, and some of that wonderful Uyghur bread called nung. The food was very good, but the nung was truly incredible, cooked in a large coal burning oven outside the restaurant, and brushed with oil and spices and browned on the char grill before being served.
As we were leaving, we stopped by the register to pay, and thanked in owner in his own central Asian tongue. “Rakhmet.” We were admiring a large calendar on his wall, featuring a large gold accented photograph of the K’aba. He came over to us, and seeing the mustaches (which are a symbol of being muslem in China) asked us if we’d been on the Haj?
“No,” Scott replied in Chinese “But hopefully one day, Insha’Allah.”

Ulaanbaatar has more A’s

The Sim City 2000 theme rang out loud and clear, bright and early. We were somewhere outside of Ulaanbaatar, on a train bound from Ulan Ude into Mongolian capital. The Dutch women that we’d been sharing the compartment with had already woken up and had enough time to brew their first cup of coffee. They drank a strange space age kind of Nescafe that foamed and bubbled, whipping itself right before your eyes as you mixed it with hot water.

We had just time enough to mix a couple cups of our own ho hum run of the mill instant coffee which we mixed with a little Siberian 7.5% high octane coffee mixing milk. We barely had enough time to pour two of those cups back before the train was hissing and squeaking it’s arrival at the station.

The Ulaanbaatar station was very impressive, blocky and imposing. It was a cool morning outside and still felt kind of like Siberia. As we were strapping things down, Buryat looking women who spoke perfect English were coming up to us and offering us guesthouses for 4 dollars a night per person. It wasn’t Siberia, but seemed at least that hotels would be cheap here. What a strange phenomenon, this pining for Siberia. We pulled on the leather jackets and hopped on the bikes.

Scott had lost his lock again. This one had been a really great one too, purchased in Turkey right before we left, but regardless we were in the market for a replacement, so we scanned the streets for bike shops as we rode. This did not look like a city that purchased many bikes, however… at least not bikes for the people.

It was touristy. The most touristy place we’d been in months, I’d say, since perhaps Istanbul. The city was full of Irish pubs, night clubs, tour agencies, and all the other less savory businesses that cater to vagrant backpacker riff raff. Many of the signs included English as well.  How did we all of a sudden arrive from Siberia into Phuket?

The Mongolians use the Cyrillic alphabet (more or less) so I was stuck in a loop of trying to access the Russian sector of my memory banks as we rode by signs and advertisements, but continually coming up empty handed, the words being all in Mongolian. In fact, there was a shockingly small amount of Russian or Chinese on the signs here. For a country wedged between two great powers, both of which spoke not much English, it seemed interesting to me that Mongolia was choosing English as its second language of choice.

It was early, and the streets of Ulaanbaatar were empty, giving us the very incorrect indication that this was a reasonably relaxed city to wheel in. Feeling none to pressed for time, we began to meander through heart of the city, looking for hotels, guest houses, places to eat breakfast, and the like.

We rode by some Australian people, who I feel I can now safely say were Mongol Ralliers, having recently achieved their goal of driving from Europe to Ulaanbaatar. They looked like they’d been out all night, and yelled out to us as we drove by “So you think you can cycle in this city, eh? Have you seen the traffic?”

“What traffic?” we called back gesturing to the empty road around us.

We’d find out soon enough, though, exactly what they were talking about. Just give the maniacs time to wake up…

Speaking of maniacs and breakfast time, it was still having not found a hotel that we pulled into a little local eatery to eat a little breakfast and drink a little more coffee. All they had in the way of coffee, however, was this “American Flavour CoffeeKing” The stuff was really bad, like an old a melted coffee-flavored lozenge blended with Elmer’s glue.

The mug that came with it on the other hand…

We could not read the menu at all, though my mind kept trying to interpret it as Russian, so we just ordered at random. The food was interesting, like a cross between Chinese food and Russian food, without quite the stylistic refinement of either.

We got a very mayonnaisey carrot salad, a large pickled cabbage salad; and a hamburger patty with a fried egg on top, doused in what might have been termed Pace brand mild enchilada sauce, accompanied by two squat gers of rice each sporting a little areola of ketchup.

The women who ran they place were very friendly, though, and while they spoke no English, Russian, or Chinese, they were very kind to us in allowing us to plug our laptops in and to investigate the maps in the Lonely Planet.

So it was with a slightly better idea of where we were that we headed back out on the cycles. This by no means meant that we were out of the woods yet, however, for finding the hotel that we’d selected turned out to be another Irkutsk style venture into the confusing depths of a huge soviet housing block.

Inside the block, we were able to find first an old man who spoke Russian and was able to help get us to the right sub-sector of the gargantuan apartment block complex, then a young boy who was more than happy to lead us right to the door of the French youth hostel that we’d been interested in. They were unfortunately, however, booked solid for that night.

So we followed a Mongolian girl who spoke French but no English across that particular section of the soviet housing block over to the Sunny Motel, which turned out to be quite affordable and very cheap. The husband and wife who ran the place were also stellar folks, learning English, Chinese and Russian, and running a spick and span little operation.

We dropped off our things there, and climbed back on the cycles to head out to the train station. We needed to get from Ulaanbaatar over to Inner Mongolian China sometime in the next week and a half, but we had no idea exactly how often, and where or when the trains ran.

Now free of our packs, wheeling felt good, so nimble and speedy were we. We made short work of the trip to the giant yellow MTZ station.

Inside we found a bewildering number of options, including international trains to Beijing and cities in Inner Mongolia on a bi-weekly basis, and domestic trains much more often which take a traveler to just a few kilometers shy of the Chinese border.

Still not knowing exactly what our plans here in Mongolia would be, but happy to find that we had many options, we headed back out to unlock the cycles, stopping as we did so first at a SIM card kiosk and then at a very cheap Korean powdered coffee machine, which had been retrofitted to take Mongolian Tugrug.  The problem with the retrofitting operation was that the machine was unable to give change, and so cheap was the coffee that our smallest bill was enough for 6 cups. So we made friends and just bought them coffee with the excess change.

Then it was time to do a little wheeling. The traffic was getting very thick as we pulled back onto the roads, and we began to learn that the drivers here are none too perceptive. Ulaanbaatar is filled with giant and expensive SUVs, in part because they are useful during the long and savage Mongolian winters, and in part because of the recent boom in foreign direct investment and development centered on the exploitation of Mongolian mineral resources.

Regardless of petty excuses, this was a highly technical wheeling city. A rider in Ulaanbaatar must be vigilant against maniac drivers, assuming always that the people around you will be breaking the rules, never signaling their intent, and generally ignoring not just lanes, but the border between road and sidewalk as well.

Ulaanbaatar is also full of gers too, the traditional Mongolian nomadic dwelling. Gers are a pretty ingenious structure, resilient against the weather, and adjustable to increase ventilation, store heat, and the like. It might come as no surprise, then, that amidst the blocky soviet structures and new shiny metal and glass buildings of Ulaanbaatar, there are also plenty of gers just set up on open bits of pavement. As far as we could tell, there were no rules about parking, and I would assume this extends to parking of houses as well.

Suddenly, as it always seems to go, we realized we were starving. And so we dropped into a very high concept 1960s plastic shape themed restaurant, which turned out to serve traditional Mongolian food.

We ordered blind again, being unable to interpret the menu, but more or less struck gold with a large plate of red cabbage salad, and a sizzling meat and egg scramble. We also got a dumpling soup which came with a certain kind of white milky looking pork broth, which I’d only up until that point found at Korean restaurants.

We headed north then, past Freedom Night Club (American Soft Power get’s er done), and by a very intriguing Chinese business hotel. We decided to pull an uber lichht and send Scott in to shuo a little and see what he could see. He came out looking very excited. “The place is great. It’s definitely a Chinese business hotel, it’s about 20 bucks a night, it has in-room Ethernet, and there’s a dank looking restaurant downstairs.”

“Excellent.” I replied.

“They’re booked solid right now, but I’ve made some friends in there, and they’ll call us tomorrow.”

Feeling great about that option, we hit the road again, wheeling northwards and taking a right turn, veering slightly down hill now and out into the countryside. We spotted a large grocery store, and locked the bikes outside to go in and buy water and generally gawk at the products.

Here we saw the return of the Kickapoo joy juice that had been such a smash hit with David Miller in Borneo. Meat was moving quickly here, and the shoppers were invited to pick and choose from unpackaged piles of it that just sat in the bottom of the cooling unit.

Anything thing which we could not help but notice inside this and all the other Mongolian grocery stores that were to follow was that absolutely everything here that could be was branded with the name of Chengis Khan. There was Chengis Khan Vodka, energy drinks, crackers, sodas, beer snacks, chewing gum, cigarettes and lord knows what else.

From the grocery store, we headed on further into the countryside, and taking a left to wheel towards the Ger district, the part of town where there are many more gers than permanent structures, and where a family might move for anywhere from 2 months to 5 years to spend some time participating in the largest and only truly developed Urban Economy in Mongolia.

The air in Ulaanbaatar is some of the worst in the world, especially in winter. This happens for two reasons: one is that the local wind paterns and the proximity of certain elevation changes encourage air to local air to hang around the city. The other is that during the winter the poor in the ger district burn lots of coal and dung to heat their homes, while the impoverished burn garbage (we’re talking plastic bags to batteries). All that smoke gets trapped in the same cycle of bad air caused by reason number one, and makes for a truly heinous lungful.

Homes in the ger district are separated out by wooden fences and cordoned off into treeless yards. We rode along by the central giant trench, which seemed to act as a collecting spot for all the refuse of the community, and took it up into the hills, the heart of the ger district.

The people we encountered were generally smiling and seemed happy to see us visiting their neighborhood, which I am sure is not on the normal tourist’s itinerary for Ulaanbaatar. We were riding over the loose gravel roads, cresting the top of the hill when all of a sudden three new riders joined out pack.

They were boys, locals of the ger distric, and out wheeling presumably after school. They stuck with us for the rest our wheel through ger district, constantly challenging us to ride harder, or take turns faster. I was beginning to understand that the wild driving of the people in this city might stem from a more basic biological need for speed…

Back on the main road, we pushed it hard back into town. We were fighting a terrible headwind, and so the going was tough, with cars whipping by us, and the subsequent clouds of dry dirt they threw up ending up cought in the teeth. I would hold my breath as I went threw a cloud of dust, pedaling hard and thinking the heavens for the Maui Jims.

That evening, as we attempted to write, lying in our beds at the hotel, a savage domestic depute broke out. Two people, man and woman, in the room next to us were really having an intense argument. The walls were very thin, so we were the sorry recipients of the entire ordeal. Soon the argument escalated to screaming. Then we began to hear stomping and slamming of doors, then bashing noises and more screaming. Soon, what was almost certainly now a physical fight burst out into the hallway, and we heard a human body smash against the wall.

All the while, Scott and I were in the room, listening to Tom Waits’ album “Alice” wondering what we should do.

Throughout the next few hours, the battle nextdoor would simmer down then heat up again, with more banging, screaming, slamming and similarly violent noises. The Sunny Hotel was nice and all, but we needed to get a new place first thing the next morning.

Give me an ice cream cone and a leather jacket

We woke up the next morning at the Sivir Hotel, none too eager to leave Krasnoyarsk, and headed back to the good old Travelers Coffee for a last bit of internet before striking out to pick up provisions for our next train ride. We were feeling fine, as we walked along eating ice creams on the sunny streets of Krasnoyarsk, and looking even better in our new leather jackets.

It took us a surprising amount of time to find a large grocery store, but when we did, we were able to load up on all our favorite supplies: a couple loaves of black bread, 3 dollar jars of caviar, nutty Siberian cheese, thinly sliced sausages, thick aged pork fat, bags of bacon and scallion flavored chips, and a few cans of Kvas.

I was so excited about our purchases, I accidentally stole the key to the locker that they asked you to place your backpack in while shopping. I laid it on the pavement outside the Hotel Sibir, hoping some good samaritan might return it for me, for we were getting very close to missing our train to Irkutsk.

We did not miss the train, though, and after stowing our cycles, relaxed into our seats to let more of the beautiful Siberian countryside just slide right on by.

We shared our bunk cluster in patzcart with a couple of fantastic people. One of them was a 30-50 year old man who spend the entire train ride slowly drinking giant 2 liter bottles of warm beer, and reading thick Russian history books. The other was a perhaps 50 year old woman from Chita, who had been on the train for three days already and was more than happy to share her vast supply of tomatoes and huge canister of mayonnaise to dowse them with.

After about 5 hours, the train stopped at a particularly busy station and we climbed off to see what was for sale.

The answer was everything.

We wandered around investigating all the options for a while, and ended up buying a bag of salty home made pickles, a few hard boiled eggs, some meat cutlets, and a fried river fish.

We were tempted by this gold mine brand beer, but decided it was probably terrible.

Back in the cabin, we layed into snacking. I found the pickles to be especially out of this world. Scott was a huge fan of the 3 dollar caviar. Oh, heck, I was too. Eating on Russian trains is great.

Soon night fell and we were whipping along through the darkness, blasting through tiny clusters of township and then vast swaths of pitch black forest.

я лублю россию

We landed in Novosibirsk to find it cloudy and threatening rain. We filed off the Air Astana propeller plane and walked down the stairs and onto the runway. The first thing we noticed was that this was a new climate. It was cool and fall-like, new Englandy even. We climbed onto a bus with our fellow travelers, and a ever so slightly grinning fellow wearing a bright white captain’s hat and white gloves piloted the thing across the jet way and over to the terminal.

We had made friends with a fellow on the airplane, another Mongol Rallier, who had suffered a tough accident, in which the entire drive train of their Ford Transit had completely disintegrated somewhere in Western Kazakhstan. He was headed now to Novosibirsk to meet up with some other Mongol Rally participants in hopes of Still making it to Ulaanbaatar.

He spoke no Russian and had never been to the country before, so we accompanied him over to the entry card filling out booth, to tackle the issue of filling out the forms as a team. They were, of course, only in Russian, and I was struggling to figure mine out when a starchy and immaculately uniformed woman came over, demanded to see my Russian visa, and then low and behold, filled out the entire form for me in a few minutes flat, all in beautiful cursive Cyrillic. How’s that for service!

The entry process was completely painless, and performed by a strikingly beautiful woman, who welcomed me to Siberia in Russian before stamping my papers and handing them back to me.

On the other side of passport control, our luggage was already waiting for us. A few men with adorable trained drug sniffing dachshunds were wandering around the place. As I headed over to pick up my bag, one of them came over to me with his dog and gave me a quick solute. “May I?” he asked in Russian. “Of course,” I replied. The little chocolate covered guy then proceeded to stick his nose up under the lip of my pack, tail just whipping around like mad. “Ok. Thank you.” The man said, and flagged me on towards customs, which was also a walk in the park. I put all my luggage through a old Russian-made X-ray scanner with plenty of Dr. Who-esque lights and readouts on it, and then walked directly out the large electric sliding doors, which had been jammed by a piece of triangular wood to be always open.

Outside it was brisk, and overcast. I looked out on a small parking lot, a military base, and some big stretches of pine forest. The air was clean and crisp. My goodness it felt great to be in Siberia. Cab drivers began coming up to me and asking if I needed to get into Novosibirsk. “I’ve got a bicycle, so no need.” I replied.

“And where are you hiding a bicycle?” they asked. I patted the bag slung over my shoulder.

“Just watch this.”

Scott soon exited the facility in similarly high spirits “I feel like I’m in Germany!” he exclaimed and we began to unfold and reassemble the cycles. As we did so, we began to collect a crowd around us of interested cab drivers. My Russian was getting better, and now that we’d spent that day in the Mountains outside of Tashkent with Shoney’s friends, I knew enough Russian swear words to understand what they were saying, and most of it was pretty flattering.

As I worked, I joked around with them and talked about the cycles, where we’d ridden them so far, how the gears and internal hub transmission worked, and about our plans in Siberia. They seemed to be generally not only approving, but dare I say… respectful?

I realized, as I chatted with these guys that it was the first time we had collected a crowd of interested people around us in some time. It was the first time people had showed interest in the cycles since Shymkent, or even back in Uzbekistan. And it felt great. I found myself remembering why I love AsiaWheleing, why I love traveling and why cycling new cities is such an amazing way to see them.

I had been worried for a moment that Siberia would be as grumpy as the northern Kazakh cities had been, but thanks be to Jah this was proving not the case.

And so it was with a chorus of “good lucks” from the gallery of cab drivers that we hopped onto the cycles and headed down the road. We got another small salute from the guard at the gates to the airport. I asked him the way to Novosibirsk city center as we rolled by, and he directed us onwards, calling out “Maladietz,” which means more or less “way to go, man!” or “Good show, old boys!”

And then we were wheeling. And it felt great. It was a totally new climate and a new landscape. After being in either steaming Jungles or dry deserts for the past 8 months, it felt great to be in a temperate zone, like coming home for the holidays.

The roads were decent, but there was no shoulder, and certainly no bike lane. In fact, during the entire 20 km ride into Novosibirsk, we saw perhaps one other fellow on a bike. Wheeling, it seemed, would not be popular pastime here in Russia. Luckily, traffic was not too dense, and the drivers on the road were so surprised to see two fellows in Vietnamese motor cycle helmets riding fully loaded down with packs that they gave us plenty of room.

We stated to hit the outskirts of Novosibirsk and stopped to confirm our trajectory again, this time at a bus stop in one of the more far-flung suburbs. I had an interaction with a local that was far from the Indonesian smile or the cheerful vibes of Laos, but it was not openly hostile and combative the way my interactions had been in Kazakhstan. And it felt great. There is certainly a sheen of grouchiness to the Russians, I wouldn’t dare deny that, but it’s really just superficial, almost a cultural or stylistic choice, and easily broken through with just a few words of conversation.

It began to mist on us, ever so slightly as we made our way into the more gnarly and built up city center. Little droplets of water were clinging to my mustache and wool sweater as we pedaled across a large trestle bridge over the river, Ob. We passed by a couple of young men on the bridge, who’s fantastic leather jackets and completely wild vertical mullets convinced us that we needed to adopt a little Russian style before we left Siberia. They were like the perfect cross between Jack White and David Bowie.

We had, in the depths of our time in Astana, riddled with bed bug bites, and computing in the lobby of the Radisson, decided to just go ahead and splash out a little here in Novosibirsk. We had been advised by Ms. Helen Stuhrrommereim, that our first registration here in Russia was the most important, and that in the future we would only need register in a city that we would be staying in for more than three days. More than a three day stay in a city is rare on AsiaWheeling, and we had read that there was only one Hotel in Novosibirsk that would be guaranteed to both be open to foreigner guests, and be sure to register you, and that was the Hotel Novosibirsk. It was by no means a cheap hotel, not by anyone’s standards, and certainly not by AsiaWheeling’s. But we had booked it. And over the internet no less. We could not even remember the last time we stayed at a hotel that could be booked over the internet (ok… yes we can… it was probably the intercontinental in Muscat with the Illustrious Mr. fu).

We stopped by an ATM on the way to the hotel. It was a Russky Standart ATM. I had, living in Petersburg become familiar with their world famous Russkiy Standart Vodka…

…but I had not yet learned that the vodka company had made a foray into the world of banking!

The rain stopped just as quickly as it had started, and we found ourselves at a large central intersection. We stopped there on the quickly drying streets to ask a pedestrian who was so startled to see us, that he responded to our question of “Do you know where the Hotel Novosibirsk is?” with a simple “yes,” and them some dumbfounded glassy eyed staring at us and our cycles.

“Could you tell me where?”

“Ah yes of course…”

And two blocks later we were looking at one of the ugliest, blockiest concrete hotels we had ever seen, dropped down like a giant alien tombstone, right there in front of us.

The misting rain was started back up again as we wheeled our bikes into the lobby. It was certainly a much more impressive hotel on the inside than the out. We headed up to the gleaming mahogany front desk, and were immediately assigned a few beautiful women, one of whom showed us where to park the bikes, the other of whom pulled up my registration online and took the payment.

They ran a tight ship here. They took our passports from us and registered us right there and then, scanning all the relative paperwork and sending off the completed forms via email, giving our passports back in a matter of minutes.

Feeling just great about this place, we headed up to our room, which was not Chinese business quality, but is was plenty clean. The hot water seemed to be inactive, and the wireless internet network up there didn’t seem to be giving up any data, but our view of the train station across the street was magnificent.

We changed out of our sandals, threw on our pointy Uzbek shoes and sweaters and split to go stroll a little in Russia. Strolling is of course not quite the right term, though. What we really wanted to do was Gulyat. The russians have many words for walk, just as Inuits have many words for snow, and Gulyat is the Russian term for entertaining one’s self by wandering around, chatting and pointing their heads into various shops parks, cafés and the like. Gulyat is about as close to a national sport as Russia has. I mean they like hockey, some of them, but they all love to Gulyat. You could even say that the Gulyat is not unlike wheeling without the bike.

And so Gulyat we did, stopping first at a Blin place, so that Scott could try his first Russian crepe. We chose to get them with smoked salmon and fresh dill and eat them as they walked. They were splendid.

And so we strolled on, through the gentle mist, into a large outdoor market, where they were selling everything from fruit to fish.

From there, we strolled on into one of the large soviet built housing blocks, all of which have a giant interior courtyard, usually sporting a children’s playground and a few small gardening plots.

In Soviet times, the Russians had very few options when it came to brands and types of consumer products. And, though the Soviet Union has been long gone now, there is still a reactionary increase in the selection of products. This cigarette kiosk for instance, has only a typically Russian selection of brands and sub-brands.

We were not interested in cigarettes, so we headed on, past another one of those Kvas tanks that we’d seen so much in Kazakhstan. Here in Novosibirsk they seemed to go with the more subtle blue and white patterning over the louder yellow they’d preferred in Astana.  Continuing to stroll, we inspected the offering of restaurants and pubs in which we might be able to feast.

The sun was just setting as we arrived back at the hotel Novosibirsk. It felt great to be in here. Our hotel made us feel like princes and the city had a fresh and invigorating vibe to it. So we decided to go out and celebrate by purchasing the first glass of ale that we’d been able to find since Hong Kong. It came accompanied by the classic beer Russian beer snacks, a kind of black crouton snack called Grenki.

As we walked back to the Hotel Novosibirsk, we stopped at a Ukrainian Peasant Branded baked potato stand, and got a couple of baked potatoes with cheese and mayonnaisey salads on top. They were heavy and greasy, but also quite satisfying.

Back at the hotel, we continued to strike out on the hot water and the in-room wifi, but all was forgiven when we went downstairs to the second floor lobby to connect. Not only could we easily get on the network, but we were seeing unprecedented speeds. I’m taking four or five hundred kilobytes per second downloads. We were in Russia now, and it was time for AsiaWheeling to get back to being seriously on the Internet.

Almost in Turkmenistan

We woke up our last morning in Samarqand and signed the guest book at the Caravan Sarai Guesthouse. It was really a fantastic place, highly recommended to all you AsiaWheeling readers who are by this point just salivating to go visit the Uze.

From there, we strapped our things down onto the cycles and made our way to the train station. We arrived just in time to catch our train to Bukhara. The ride was short and sweet, and we spent most of the time working tirelessly on correspondence for you, dear reader.

When the train arrived, we climbed off and began to take stock of our surroundings. One of the first things we realized was that we were not in Buhkara. The train, it turns out, actually takes you to the nearby town of Kagan, from which Bukhara is only a 20 km wheel away.

That was all fine and dandy, but if we were about to wheel 20 km fully loaded, we needed to get a little food in our stomachs. So that became the first order of business.

We rode around hungrily for some time before selecting an outdoor shawarma place for lunch. The fellow who ran the place was thrilled to see us arriving, and quickly busied himself attempting to resurrect his wimpy little piece of shawarma. It seems the flame had long been off, and the rotational functionality long out of operation, but after hammering on the gas can, and eventually going inside to boil some water and pour it onto the thing, he was able to coax a small flame and warm the meat a bit.

He produced for us two sandwiches, both of which were scrumptious. By the time they arrived, though, word had spread throughout Kagan that AsiaWheeling was in town, and a crowd was forming around us, including a number of small business owners and a small collection of local children.  We were offered a cool beverage made by boiling dried apricots, and a plate of fresh fruit by one of the fellows who came to see the spectacle. After some more conversation with him, it was disclosed that he owned a nearby butcher shop, and he asked me if I might accompany him for a tour of the operation.

I was, of course, happy to, and accompanied him inside, where he showed me his apparatus for the gutting, bleeding, and slicing up sheep. He also showed me the many cuts of meat that he had for sale, contrasting their qualities and general price performance. And for the coup de gras, he took me around to show me his air conditioning unit, which he explained paid for itself in the rate that it slowed down the rotting of meat in the shop.

I thanked him very much for the tour, and when I reappeared in the sunshine, it was high time for us to get on the road to Bukhara. So we shook hands, took photos with the rest of the team and hit the road. We were about to head onto the main road to Bukhara when we had the thought that it might actually be easier to buy our ticket out of town now, while we were at the station, so we quickly wheeled back to the ticket hall.

With tickets in hand, we hit the road, and started riding hard through Uzbek farmland. The road was relatively new and smooth, the elevation change was negligible, and it felt good to be wheeling. We continued to follow the signs and ask people until we got found ourselves entering the city.

Now it was only a process of asking people where the Hotel Malika was, and riding around in circles for a bit before we were throwing our things down onto two giant beds in our startlingly large room. There was even wifi at this hotel, though its speed was enough to make a level headed AsiaWheeler pull his hair out.

So rather than battle the terrifyingly slow Internet, we decided to go out wheeling. The city of Bukhara proved absolutely excellent for wheeling. It was a quiet town, with very little traffic and plenty to see. The architectural style here was similar to what we’d seen in Samarqand and Tashkent, but less colorful and more brutal.

This city had a violent past, full of maniacal religious rule, and people being sewed into bags and tossed from the highest minaret.  It also had some of the most inviting ancient crumbling streets. We found Bukhara’s wheeling simply irresistible. We continued to pedal on past ancient and monstrous buildings, most of which, in sharp contrast to Samarqand, were locked up tight and not open to visitors.

We wheeled on, eventually passing out of the old city, and came across an old Soviet stadium. We rolled around it a bit, vowing to return when we had more time to explore. For the time being, we were interested in finding something to eat and heading back to the Internet to get some things done.

Unfortunately, finding a restaurant in Bukhara proved easier said than done. We ended up wheeling for some time before, while rolling by a kind of kid’s play land, we spotted a place that looked suitable. It may have been a restaurant designed for parents to relax in while the kids enjoyed the carnival. Whatever the business strategy, it was delicious.

We were served by a very friendly and rather gigantic Uzbek woman. The first waiter who had attempted to help us had spoken only Uzbek (one of the first people we’d met who didn’t speak Russian) and had been quickly replaced by this woman, who obviously held some power in the organization. She wasted no time in ascertaining what we wanted to order, instead just serving up some wicked Manty, Somsas, and Shashlik and trusting that we’d enjoy them.

Right she was.

A second try at leaving Damascus

We ate our second last breakfast, once again at the good old Al Negma. The food was just as incredible and affordable as we remembered it, and the owner was just as willing to give us directions to the bus station.

Except this time we were not headed up the giant booze-shop-lined hill toward the Ante-Lebanese bus station. This time we were headed on a domestic trip, to the fabled city of Latakia.

It was yet another near tearful checkout from the Ziad Al Khabir.

It was beginning to join the ranks of Steve’s Room and Motta’s apartment in terms of hosting AsiaWheeling for extended periods of glory. We said one last goodbye to its welcoming staff, endearing grunge, and Sudanese spiced onion-scented halls.  And with that, we wheeled to bus station.

The ride was pleasant. We had no idea of the schedule of the buses leaving, so we were in no rush. Damascus was as beautiful, dry, and sun-drenched as ever. As we were riding, a car pulled up next to us and called out: ”AsiaWheeling!” We looked over and it was none other than the man who had taken us under his wing on our first day in Damascus, helping us to repair Scott’s sandals and taking us for a tour of the covered market. We pedaled next to his cab, chatting for a bit, and in the end wishing him safe travels.

Once we directed our attention back to wheeling, we realized that we had missed a turn. Not to worry, though, for we were able to pull over in front of a giant military compound where we were quickly surrounded by fellows in all black with giant machine guns. The guys seemed mostly excited to see us and especially interested in talking with Claudia. She was happy to oblige them and was able to secure some very good directions for us. A quiet jaunt on a rather busy highway later, we arrived at the bus station.

I set up shop watching our things while Scott and Claudia headed out to compare buses. It seemed that all the buses to Latakia were selling out as we spoke, and their mission quickly dissolved into a frantic dash to secure tickets. But secure them we did, and soon we were relaxing in the blood red seats of a giant lumbering bus crawling its way across the desert towards Latakia.

The bus stopped halfway through the ride at an Arabic sweets shop, and we decided to buy some to keep us going. The sweets were particularly interesting, featuring the usual baklava-esque variants coupled with a new one, which  consisted of a large flat noodle stuffed with a sweetened cheese and chopped pistachio. Normally I am not too into sweets, but these were just too interesting to hold back on.

While we enjoyed the plate of sweets, Scott went to the counter to acquire diet cola.  While doing so, he struck up a conversation with a fashionably dressed young woman named Hiba who hailed from Malmö, Sweden. She was on her way to visit family in Latakia.  Originally from Palestine, her extended family had been relocated to Latakia in the mid-twentieth century, with her parents moving to northern Europe later on. Hiba and Scott exchanged Syrian phone numbers, and as they bid farewell, her younger brother sporting Nike dunks, a big purple t-shirt, and a fitted baseball cap came to accompany her back to the bus.

When we arrived in Latakia, we unfolded the cycles, and climbed out into the cool desert night. We were immediately befriended by a military officer on his way back to his home town for a little R&R. He led us from the station over to one of the main streets, from which he gave us directions to the city center. We wheeled on from there, noticing that our Syrian flashlights had, despite our charging them all the last night, somehow either failed to store energy, or had broken.

Fair enough. Latakia was lit plenty well enough, and soon we began to spot hotels around us. The first few we wandered into were a bit too pricey, but eventually we stumbled into a Tintin-themed place, by the name of the Hotel Safwan.

From there, we headed out in search of more of that amazing garlic mayonnaise-soaked shawarma, and wiled away the rest of the evening playing whist at a local hookah and ice cream joint.

You Can’t Get to Amman from Here

We awoke the next morning, bid Sid a very fond farewell, heaving our packs onto our backs, the cycles, folded in their bags on our shoulders, and teetered our way downstairs.

There was no problem finding a large van-taxi to load all our stuff into, and with one last tip of the Panama hat to our dear friend Sid, we were off. Our driver was, of course, Pakistani, and he made small talk with us in very entertaining English as we raced along the brand new highways of Dubai, toward an airport-shaped shadow that loomed in the distance, enshrouded in dust.

Our cab dropped us off outside the Jazeera Airways terminal, and we headed to check-in for our flight. Jazeera Airways is a low-cost Kuwaiti airline. As a low-cost airline, they have a reduced luggage limit. We had encountered such things in the past. We consider reduced luggage limits to be one of the main enemies of AsiaWheeling Global Enterprises, but generally a little bit of sweet talking paired with perhaps a small fee gets us through, and gets the bikes onto the airplane.

Unfortunately, it seemed this time would be different. We were a fair bit over the (dare I say skimpy) 15 kg per person luggage limit, and the charge for the extra luggage was going to be huge. I’m talking hundreds of dollars. So we began pleading, begging, presenting business cards, explaining AsiaWheeling and our mission of peace, complimenting the airline’s graphic identity, the check-in counter attendant’s uniform, and Kuwait in general. Eventually, the attendant got on the phone with her manager and, low and behold, all extra luggage fees were forgiven.

“You are very lucky, you know that?” she said to us in English.  We know. We thanked her again and again, praising the glory of Jazeera Airways, in their infinite mercy. And with the bags and cycles headed down the conveyor toward Kuwait, we strolled on through security, and got our passports stamped by men in flowing robes who earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year; we were leaving the UAE.

With this stamp, Scott and I would be retiring our passports for a while, switching over to our second passports, which we had begun to affectionately refer to as the “moon” passports. So I took my slightly fatter 10-year “sun” passport out of my Hong Kong fake leather cover and replaced it with our totally blank “moon” book.

The departures terminal of the Dubai airport was just as expansive and luxurious as our arrivals terminal had been. In particular, we were impressed with the duty free time planner they had posted.  It let the duty free shopper time his or her shopping adventures down to the minute, while still ensuring an on-time departure. Why doesn’t every airport have this?

We purchased a couple of drastically overpriced cups of coffee and falafel sandwiches from a Starbucks clone in the terminal and climbed on the flight.

The flight to Kuwait was all too short, but we were able to make good use of it, oscillating between looking out the window, and getting a little work done in the AsiaWheeling mobile offices, Jazeera Airways edition.

Soon the sprawling capital of Kuwait City began to loom below us, a uniform dust colored grid-work, smack dab in the middle of the uniform dust colored desert. As the plane flew lower, the city began to take on slightly more color, and we felt an almost uncontrollable urge to wheel it.

While hard at work in Sid’s apartment, we had already tried to convince Jazeera airways to let us spend a night or two in Kuwait, but it had proven dreadfully expensive to change the ticket. So in the end we had to resign ourselves to spend just a few hours in the international terminal of the Kuwait International Airport. When we finally unloaded into the airport, we found we had even less than the two hours we had coveted. We were quickly ushered by Jazeera staff through the airport to the ticket counter, where our connecting tickets were issued to us by a man who looked uncannily like a friend of mine named Max Strasser. We moved on toward our gate, just bubbling with curiosity about this place.

The flowing dishdash robe was definitely alive and well here, as was the female Islamic outfit, in all iterations from simple hijab to full burka. There also were a fair number of white and Arab fellows in military fatigues roaming around as well. We wanted so badly to learn more about this place, to wheel its streets, but we could not. So we reluctantly joined the line to board our flight.

We landed in Jordon and filed off the airplane and into the customs room. We changed our Omani Reils and UAE Dirhams into Jordanian Dinars at a large glass booth and then got in line to purchase visa’s upon entry.  The Jordanian Dinar is actually linked one-to-one with the British Pound, so calculating prices would be slightly easier than usual.

I must admit, part of me was worried that my entering this country on a completely virgin two-year passport might cause a red flag, even encourage some detainment or interrogation. Luckily this was quite far from the case. The man who sold me the 10-pound visa barely even looked at me or my passport. His counterpart asked me a number of questions in a very thickly accented English including whether or not I had a Jordanian phone number. I explained to him that I did not, but he just stared blankly back at me, made a face like he had just discovered a bit of sand in his mouth, puffed out his cheeks and lips, making an noise like a mare, and stamped my passport violently.

Claudia and Scott got through with even less hassle.

We collected our cycles, and headed outside the airport, where we unwrapped and began to re-assemble them.  There we attracted the usual crowd of baggage handlers, fellow travelers, and security personnel, all interested in witnessing the majesty of a Dahon folding cycle. We indulged them happily.

From our previous research, the airport should have been positioned about 25 kilometers outside the capital city of Amman. This seemed doable. So after some discussion, we decided to wheel into the city fully loaded. Armed with some directions from members of the crowd, we hit the road.

The countryside was beautiful. It was arid, but not as striking a desert as we had found in the Gulf. The farther we rode, the more we began to notice quite a large amount of agricultural activity. Also, for much of the way, there was a wide sidewalk that ran next to the road. This was especially nice, since it saved us from having to ride in the fast and sometimes reckless Jordanian highway traffic.

Unfortunately, the sidewalk was also littered with a hitherto unprecedented amount of broken glass. It seems the practice of throwing glass bottles out of your moving vehicle is quite common in Jordan, though I don’t know if we ever spotted someone in the act… it could also be that for one reason or another all the broken glass from the surrounding area is swept by some municipal team over to the sidewalk. Stranger things have certainly happened.

After riding for what must have been 25 kilometers, we reached an exit indicating it was headed toward Amman. Amman was, however, far from visible from our current junction. So we flagged down a cab and Claudia asked in Arabic how far we were. The man said 20 or 25 more kilometers. This was perplexing, but the day was relatively young, so we kept on. A few kilometers later, with still no signs of increasing urbanity, the hunger hit and we pulled over to a roadside shop to buy some shapes.

As we were purchasing food, the call to prayer began to sound from all the surrounding mosques. The owner of the shop kindly asked us to hurry up so he could close down the operation and go pray. We quickly threw some bottles of water, a couple bags of potato chips, and a jar of halva onto the counter, purchasing them with haste, and heading out to sit on the curb and feast.

While we were eating, we noticed a particularly haunting child, portrayed on the sign above us. Any speculation as to its relevance is welcomed in the comments. Just as everyone was arriving back from praying, we climbed back on the cycles.

We were riding now on a smaller road, running parallel to the highway. It had been quite a while since we’d stopped to snack, and there was still no sign of Amman. What had we done wrong? We must have arrived in a different (perhaps low-cost carrier related?) airport. Regardless, we had been riding for a while and there was no sign of Amman, though we did continue to be reassured by signs and traffic obviously directed toward the capital. Eventually, we came upon a restaurant, poised on hill in the middle of semi-arid agricultural Jordan.

We decided to head in and ask why we seemed unable to reach the capital. Scott and Claudia headed in while I watched the cycles. They were taking quite some time, so I took out the ukulele and began to play. Soon a group of restaurant employees emerged from the kitchen to investigate what I was doing. They were all jovial fellows, and by the time Scott emerged with news of our location, we had a little dance party going.

It turns out that we were at least another 30 or 40 kilometers away from the capital, and that we would probably need to get a cab. Luckily, the owner of the restaurant knew of an unlicensed cab driver, who drove a large car or truck, easily able to fit our three cycles and all our bags. We decided to pull the trigger on the cab, even though the price was high enough that it would use most of our remaining money. We took stock of our remaining cash and decided that, though we were hungry, we did not have quite enough to eat at the restaurant. When we explained this to the owner, he insisted that we eat there for free, bringing out three pizzas and three bottles of water.

This unexpected generosity was going to be a theme of our travels in the Middle East, but especially then, it being so new, the action made me uncomfortable. What was the man looking for in return? What was the catch? Of course, there was none. I was just unprepared for Arab culture. We thanked him again and again, and hungrily enjoyed the pizzas.

The restaurant was nice, filled with flat screen TVs, sporting a large hard wood walled and floored interior, full of solid oak tables. How could this essentially depopulated bit of irrigation-dependent Jordanian farmland support such a swinging place? Thoughts of money laundering did cross our minds…

When the cab finally came, we were able to establish a price that was 30% lower than what had been quoted, allowing us to pay the man after all. In what Claudia assured us would be a “very Arab” way to do it, we thanked him again for the food and hid the full amount of the bill been under a napkin on the table, being sure to let the waiter see us doing it.

We climbed into the cab, which turned out to be one of those half-pickup/half-SUV  vehicles. There was indeed plenty of room for us and all the stuff, and with a few more goodbyes and waves out the back window, we drove off toward Amman. The sky was already becoming orange with sunset by the time we arrived. We felt giddy with our good fortune, and enjoyed the ride,  chatting with our driver in pantomime and through Claudia’s Arabic, and speculating as to what kind of illegal business might be laundering money through the pizza joint where we had just eaten.

Our man had quite the driving style. I felt surprisingly safe in the car, given that he drifted between lanes without signaling, chain-smoked cigarettes, and had wedged his phone in between the prongs of the steering wheel in order to better text while driving.

We unloaded our stuff once we had entered Amman city center, and bid our man goodbye. Amman is a city built in a kind of crater, so that entering it feels somewhat like climbing down from the nosebleed section of a stadium. The architecture and color of all the buildings is also more or less uniform, adding to the unique quality of the view. It is a very old looking city, but with decent roads, and plenty of wild drivers. Now that we were in the center, the city seemed to rise up around us, as though we were sitting right at home plate looking out into the stands.

The hotel that we had selected from our pirated copy of the Jordanian Lonely Planet PDF turned out to have been turned into a hospital of sorts, for when we arrived there, though the sign was still affixed more or less to the wall of the building, we were greeted by a large crowd of people in wheelchairs, on crutches, and sporting terrible scars and burns. They were very smiley and quite entertained by us, but also sorry to inform us that we could only stay there if we first got injured in some way.  This comment, made by one of the ringleaders, a large man of perhaps 50 years, in wheelchair and cast, was met with roaring applause and laughter by the rest of the patients. We smiled nervously and bid them adieu.

Luckily nearby we located another hotel by the name of the “Hotel Asia.” The place was only moderately filthy, not too expensive, and the owner spoke splendid English, having worked for some time with the U.S. forces in Iraq. So we decided to go with this one, paying for a few nights, and hauling our stuff upstairs.

It was certainly time to eat again, so we headed out into the Amman night, finding a large and very popular looking shawarma stand not far down the street. The owners turned out to be Egyptian and instantly took a liking to Claudia, who not only spoke their language, and had exotic and beautiful blond hair, but also had spent quite some time living and studying in Egypt.

Needless to say, she was a hit. The shawarma wraps were also delicious.

From there we wandered through the night to a rooftop café, where we wiled away a few hours playing whist. It had been some time since whist had played a role in AsiaWheeling. It was good to have it back in the mix.

It was good to be in Amman. It was a fascinating town, and despite the fact that the rooftop café charged us what we later learned was about %800 the normal price for tea, I was quickly becoming a fan of Jordanian people as well.

Curry Lemons and Sand Dunes

It was a sad moment, that next morning when we realized we would need to leave the comfortable womb of the Intercontinental Hotel in Muscat.

As a decent conciliation, we would be climbing back into the Previa and racing across the desert back to Dubai, where we could look forward to another couple days in the pleasant company of our dear friend Sid.

As I walked out of the hotel with my filthy yellow technology bag, my ukulele, and my weathered Panama hat, I wondered what they must think of us. How often does a guest as strange as AsiaWheeling’s team Prevlaunch show up at this kind of place?

We sat down in the giant expanse of the lobby and considered ordering coffee, but further scrutiny of the price and the recollection that we were still very long on Red Bull, brought us back to our senses.

I sat in the lobby, sipping a Red Bull and watching the other guests, most of whom were very well dressed western and Omani businessmen.  I opened my computer and did a little work, while Scott and Claudia took a last tour of the grounds. Meanwhile, Jackson, in his infinite kindness, was handling the luggage (or at least directing the operations of the hotel’s luggage handlers).

With the Previa loaded, we said our goodbyes to this palace, and headed into the city of Muscat, with the goal of finding food. Unfortunately, not far into our stroll, we started to realize that most of the businesses were, for one reason or another closed (perhaps a mid-day napping break?).

So with an eye on the watch, knowing that we needed to make it back to Dubai that night, we hit the road, relying on the Red Bull and raw willpower to push through the hunger until the next restaurant opportunity.

We had some fruit left from our in-room picnic, so we munched on that as we drove. One of the stranger purchases that Claudia and I had made the day before was a type of citrus fruit called the curry lemon. We wanted to cut up the fruit, but the vibration of the road was increasing the risk of Claudia cutting off her fingers. So we pulled over.

They looked and smelled like grapefruits at the time of purchase, but upon dissection, the name proved to be more apt than we’d hoped. They were, in fact inedible, perhaps they were good for making juice, but they could not be comfortably eaten straight. And we had these fruits, opened and reeking… what to do? In the end, jettisoning them in the desert seemed the best move.

It was good to be driving through that beautiful landscape again listening to John Zorn’s Dreamers. We stopped for gas not far outside good old Sohar and purchased some startlingly cheap shawarma pockets to go with our startlingly cheap tank of gas. We attempted to recreate the glory of our original Ras Al Khaima avocado drinks, but were sorely disappointed to find that the similarly named items at the roadside shawarma stand were just green McDonald’s style milkshakes. Too sweet for me.

Despite the milkshakes, our love for Sohar welled up inside of us. Being so close to that fine place once again, we could not help ourselves. We climbed back into the Previa and designed this “Sohar So Good” T-Shirt.

We crossed back into the UAE, this time at a new boarder. As always, the experience was streamlined and friendly.  Our fellow travelers were well dressed Germans, who appeared to be living the lifestyle depicted in Louis Vuitton luggage advertisements.

We were happy to allow them to cut in front of us, just to get the chance to study them further.

Not far into the UAE, we found ourselves suddenly in a region of giant sand dunes. The sun was just setting, and it was simply too beautiful not to stop, so once again we called a waypoint.

We took off our shoes and ran into the dunes, feeling the hot sand underneath our feet.

We spent the next hour or so playing in the sand, shooting photos of one another, and generally reveling in the desert landscape.

We took the opportunity to give some love to our underwear sponsor, Exofficio.

When the sun had sunk too low to photograph any more, we headed back over the barbed wire fence that we’d hopped to get off the highway and into the dunes, and piled back into the Previa.

By the time we got back to Dubai, the in-town EuropeCar had closed, so our best choice was to head to the airport. Sid was so kind as to offer to drive us back from the airport, even in the face of all the sand that we inadvertently dragged into his apartment.  What a chap.

She’s a Lady

We had at least another day of waiting for Claudia’s luggage, but unfortunately time was getting scarce. We needed to start exploring. So cycle or no cycle, we decided to take our newly rented Toyota Innova on a mission to the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi. But first we had a meeting to attend.

As you, dear reader, no doubt already know, AsiaWheeling is proudly partnered with Red Bull, and has, until this point, been supported in the lucidity department by Red Bull energy shots, which have not a few times, saved us from a situation in which an under-caffeinated zombie state might have taken hold, with possibly drastic consequences. We were, however, now long depleted of all save our last two in-case-of-emergency-only shots.

So we were going to meet with the team at Redbull about replenishing our supply, which would be especially useful here in the Middle East, where we would be driving for long stretches through what we had heard can be hypnotically monotonous desert roads. As we had read, cross-country drivers in the Gulf must be vigilant, quite seriously, against the very real hazard of hitting a wandering camel, or encountering a night-time driver who feels that headlights are not necessary.

Also we learned in our research that in the UAE and Oman it is actually illegal to have too dirty a car, and that when driving a truly filthy automobile, one can expect to be politely stopped by the police and fined. What an interesting land we had entered!

So while Jackson and I loaded the team’s three Speed TRs into the Innova, breathing a quiet prayer for Claudia’s lost D7’s safe return, Scott and Claudia headed out in search of coffee and shapes. They immerged from a nearby Starbucks just as I pulled around in the Innova, air conditioning already blasting in its struggle against the blazing heat. I steered with one hand and drank hot coffee or ate crumbled bits of ice cold cheese croissant with the other. Meanwhile, cars tore by us, the sun blazed, and the desert wind whipped up a froth of dust while we tried to navigate the city. Dubai was not an easy place to get around. Signage was present, but rarely it seemed, when you needed it, and in all but the luckiest of cases, determining the name of road on which you were driving was impossible.

In addition, the drivers were mildly insane. Fabulously expensive vehicles regularly whipped and soared by me at what must have been over 100 miles per hour. Luckily the road was huge, and traffic was light enough that we were able to make it to the airport with only minimal difficulty.

Back at the airport we found our way into a kind of import/export office park. We rolled in, the Innova chock full of cycles and AsiaWheeling personelle, past a number of security gates, all of which happily let us in, no questions asked.

Inside Red Bull’s Dubai headquarters, we were met by a strikingly beautiful receptionist, who directed us toward an energetic young man approaching from the depths of the offices.

His name was Roger, and he stuck out his hand, asking “normal or sugar free?”

“Sugar free,” we all replied.

The team sat with Roger for some time discussing Red Bull’s business in the middle east, AsiaWheeling, and the future of our two great enterprises. He was from Lebabnon it turned out, and we allowed the conversation to deviate for some time, as Roger explained to us his favorite waypoints in that country.  Soon we were joined by Elie, another member of the local team, with whom we had exchanged a few e-mails. The six of us headed across the street to a small pasta joint where our new friends most graciously treated us to a delicious lunch. With full stomachs, and  feeling plenty alert from all the Red Bull, we stood up to leave. I took this opportunity to dash away from the group to go pull the Innova around for energy drink on-boarding.

Of course the back of the thing was chock full of bicycles for our upcoming wheel in Abu Dhabi. This seemed a perfect opportunity for us to show off the Speed TRs.

We unloaded the things and everyone took a short wheel around the Dubai Airport free trade zone lot.

From there we loaded our stash of Red Bull into the Innova and bid farewell to our new friends in the energy drink business.

After a few wrong turns and some heavy use of the constantly visble Burj Khalifa as a tool for dead reckoning, we pulled onto what we had been told by Sid’s friends last night around Hookahs at the Palace Hotel was the most dangerous road in the region, the infamous E11.

E11 UAE Logo

Why you ask? In my opinion, there are a few reasons, and if you’ll allow me to speculate, I’d like to list them.

1. Driver Mentality – Drivers in the UAE are generally rather wealthy and somewhat immune to things like traffic fines. Basically, they can do as they please behind the wheel. This creates a culture of speeding, lane entitlement issues, and rare signaling of intent.

2. Fancy Cars – Emiratis drive fancy cars. And fancy cars also tend to be quite fast. With so much capability at one’s fingertips, who could be blamed for driving like life is a video game?

3. Poor Highway Design – Sleeping Policemen, as the Indonesians refer to speed bumps, are placed quite liberally in the middle of the highway to indicate an upcoming round about. Rather than building overpasses and on-ramps, all intersections on this highway are giant five-lane round-abouts that create all kinds of confusion, not to mention occasional airborne moments due to the occasional unexpectedly early arrival of a sleeping policeman.

Despite the purported danger, I was getting the hang of being behind the wheel, and the more I drove in the Gulf, the more confident I became about my maneuvers. Though no matter how many times it happened, I never got over the fantastically expensive vehicles that would pull up behind me and flash their lights for me to change lanes. Ferraris, Bentleys, Bugattis, Maybachs, those were the only cars that could stand out against a constant backdrop of BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis. The Gulf was a wild place indeed.

While we drove, Jackson received a call from his dear friend and our dear host, Sid. It seems there had been a problem with our car insurance. Despite the previous estimations of the car rental agency, due to the fact that I was under 25, they would not be able to issue insurance for Oman… only for the UAE. This was certainly a problem. We wanted to leave for Oman as soon as we got Claudia’s cycle, but for now it seemed we would need to go back to the drawing board transportation-wise. Plus pay at least a day’s rental for this vehicle.

We decided to table the can of worms, due to our arrival in Abu Dhabi.

We decided instead to focus on finding one of the two bicycle rental joints in the town to get a little bit of inaugural four-person Gulf wheeling under our belts.

This proved easier said than done, and once we entered the city, we spent about three  hours driving around, calling various business, and receiving confused no after confused no to our queries.

It seemed that bikes could only be rented by patrons of certain hotels, or that the bike rental places had gone under. Furthermore, the owners of Abu Dhabi’s few cycling shops were merciless, and had no interest in renting us even their most dilapidated cycle for the afternoon.

Finally, in frustrated desperation, we decided to stroll over to the seaside path, where we had planned to wheel, thinking at least we might take in the view. The sun was setting now, and a golden glow was spreading across the sky. Soon it would be too dark for safe wheeling anyway.

We had been, of course, drinking Red Bull all afternoon, and as you might imagine, dear reader, we were all spectacularly vigilant, and not a few of us needed to take a leak. As we walked toward the beach, we spotted, of all places, a EuropeCar rental agency directly in our path. This immediately struck us as a good place to use the rest room, and it was only after the sober light of a released bladder began to set in that we realized, maybe, just maybe, they might be able to save us from the aforementioned Oman insurance problem.

The gentlemen at the front desk were superbly friendly, and as we chatted with them about rentals, we found that we were indeed in supreme luck. We had been looking for months for the illusive beauty of a Toyota Previa, but all that we had found had been either extraordinarily expensive or unavailable for a lad of only 24 years.

But, low and behold, not only did this Abu Dhabi Europcar offer us a Previa, but they provided us with insurance on the spot, notarized before our very eyes by a woman in the back, and stamped with a resounding smack. Then, in case you thought our fortune could not get any better, Europcar undercut the price we had been quoted at Stellar by almost 15%. It was becoming quite a successful day indeed.

We strolled out of the lot to find that our Previa had already been pulled up and was getting a quick wax-down by a team of Pakistani gentlemen. I ran down the block to get the Innova where we had parked her (parking in Abu Dhabi, by the way, is an incredible exercise in spatial thinking, not unlike a cross between origami and Tetris). And as I jogged, amped up on Red Bull and the electric thrill of a problem vanquished, I found myself singing a certain joyous tune. Not more than three bars into the song, I realized why I was singing….

Allow me for a moment, dear reader, to pause the story and slip into a bit of a flashback to the AsiaWheeling planning process.

The place: Grinnell, Iowa.

The time: 7:48 am, October 24th 2009.

The weather: cool fall morning, misty, crisp.

Scott had recently been operated on by the AsiaWheeling surgical team at Surgical Associates of Grinnell in order to remove a number of nasty shapes from his body. He was still recovering from a particularly deep incision on his foot, and another on his back, and had mostly been on the couch, working diligently on the redesign of AsiaWheeling for you, dear reader. He had taken up the habit of wearing a certain black velvet smoking jacket of mine, cursing grumpily, taking prescription painkillers, and walking with a viciously gyrating hobble.

I was late for an appointment to have some apparatus or another on my car repaired and I had asked Scott to drive behind me in my mother’s partner, John’s, Toyota Previa. Scott had been gingerly struggling to get a sock over his still somewhat openly wounded toe, while I had been struggling to get John’s Previa out of the patch of grass just off the driveway where it had been parked for some time. Having recently bought a new car, you see, the Previa had not been driven in months and had, among other things, become totally coated in wet fallen leaves, and sunk deeply into the mud of our front lawn.

I pried the driver’s door open with a viscous squeak and climbed in. It smelled like a thousand cups of spilled coffee inside. Kind of a comforting scent, actually. I put in the key and turned the engine. The dash blinked to life and she started quickly, but moaned and whined once she was running. I tried to clear the windshield of leaves with the wipers, but it seemed only effective in smearing a kind of brownish tannin goo all over the glass. Who needs to see? The road will be empty anyway, I thought, and tried to reverse onto the gravel drive. I pushed the gas and the wheels just spun in the mud. I tried to rock the car back and forth, forward then reverse, and began to make some headway, spinning huge chunks of mud into the air. Finally the tire caught a grip, but unfortunately, on the forward lunge rather than the backward.

And with that, the Previa plunged part way into a bush, sinking even deeper into a mixture of dead leaves and thick black Iowa mud.

Scott chose this point to hobble out of the house, wearing the black smoking jacket, hunched over slightly against the cold and the pain in his back, and cursing at the amount of time it was taking for his morning painkillers to hit his system.

“Sorry brother,” I explained, “but you’re going to need to help me push.”

And so with plenty of grunting and swearing, and for Scott, bless him, probably a shoe full of blood, we got the Previa out of the muddy bush and onto the gravel of the driveway. With that I climbed in my car and Scott climbed into the Previa.

We arrived a few miles away at the service station, and Scott climbed out of the Previa a few spots down from where I had parked at the opening to the service garage. I looked at him in the gray cold light, and was startled to see him standing up straight, possibly even grinning… then suddenly he started dancing. As I drew closer I could hear him singing as well.

“She’s a lady! Oh oh oh, she’s a lady! I’m taking about my little lady”

[audio:http://asiawheeling.com/music/Tom_Jones_-_Shes_A_Lady.mp3]

It was a strange powerful vehicle this Toyota Previa.  And now we were about to drive one to Oman!

And in honor of our great fortune, and what will from hereforth be referred to as “Prevlaunch 2010,” we would like to proudly introduce a new item in the AsiaWheeling trading post: the “She’s a Lady” Previa lover’s tee-shirt. Enjoy.

I pulled around the corner in the Innova and Scott pulled behind me in the Previa. We certainly were supporting the rental car industry in the Gulf.

I kept humming “She’s a Lady,” as Jackson got on the phone with his friend Brian, who we would be meeting for dinner. He was only a few blocks away, and we pulled around the corner to meet him.

Brian is a relatively fresh Harvard grad who picked up a job working for the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, one of the biggest pools of invested capital in the world. On this info alone, I was already interested to meet the chap. And then, when he walked up wearing of all things a Panama hat! Well, you could say he had already won the hearts of the AsiaWheeling team before even saying hello.

We ate Lebanese food, quite tasty and affordable, at a nearby joint, then climbed back into our two cars. We decided we should probably investigate the Emerates Palace Hotel before leaving the city of Abu Dhabi.

So we pulled back onto the highway and headed for the giant glowing dome of the hotel. First a few things to introduce this particular hotel: The total cost of building the thing came in at just over 3 billion dollars, and so high are its operating costs that if some estimates are correct, it could run at full capacity for over a hundred years without breaking even.

At some point during the drive, Scott passed me, and then immediately began calling me asking me to slow down and wait for him. The end result of this was that he arrived at the hotel well before me, while I cruised slowly along the shoulder scanning the horizon for our beautiful white Previa.

In the end, we finally figured out what had happened, and I sped up toward the hotel. As I pulled in, the guard looked down at Jackson’s shorts and explained to him that he would let us into the complex to take pictures, but that we were asked not to enter the bar with shorts on. We agreed, and finally met up with the rest of our team, briefly considering just leaving the place. Finally, we decided to pay the valet to park our two Toyota vans, and head inside.

We pulled up the entrance next to Hummers and Lexi, and parted with our rental car keys. We headed from there inside. And I will have to hand it to them; the place was impressive.

Totally and completely impressive.

We spent a while wandering around, sitting on one of the many imperial sofas, perusing an exhibit of Islamic calligraphy.

We also spent a fair bit of time gawking at the gold bar vending machine in the place too. While the exact purpose of such a device still somewhat alludes me, I am certain it is at the very least of much use to money launderers.

Soon exhaustion began to lay in, and we decided that heading back to Dubai would be prudent.

On our way back, we noticed that the gas tanks on both cars were beginning to get strikingly low.  But we were in the UAE, we thought, certainly we would be able to find a gas station… So we drove on. We dropped Brian off without seeing a station, and began to head back to the main road toward Dubai. Still no station. The low fuel warning light in the Innova had been on for quite a while, and while Jackson, who was at that point providing an unending source of positive vibes and moral support, assured me that we would find gas, I was beginning to get worried.

There was a lot of desert out there, and we were quickly leaving a zone of human settlement. As a last-ditch effort, I headed out in search of a town some seven km away from the main road. When we reached it we found all sources of petrol to be either closed or out of business.

Finally, after driving around for a bit, we pulled over for a conference. All concerned climbed out of their Toyotas. We suddenly found ourselves bursting into uncontrollable laughter. Here we were in the Persian Gulf and unable to find gasoline.

We finally gained control over our emotions and climbed back in the vans. We headed along a road that ran parallel to the main road to Dubai, and eventually a gas station appeared. Thank goodness. The line there was immense, but we were happy to wait. And even happier to purchase gas at the price of 35 cents a liter (about a $1.30 a gallon). With tanks freshly filled, we made our way back toward Dubai, Scott and Claudia in the Previa, and Jackson and I in the Innova.

From there, the two teams broke up, as Scott and Claudia headed toward the airport to pick up Claudia’s bags, and Jackson and I proceeded to get hopelessly lost in a do-loop on one-way roads, which somehow after 45 minutes of terrible looping around, spat us out right at the foot of the Burj Khalifa and Sid’s house.

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