And then we arrived in Almaty. It was the morning and the sun was blazing outside the window of our train car. Scott and I hustled to collect our things and grab the Speed TRs to get of the train before it headed to its next station.

We were not sure exactly where the station that we had arrived in was relative to the rest of the city, and knowing that there were very few cheap hotels that were authorized to admit foreigners, we figured it would be good to consult a map. The easiest to get to and most useful map we could think of was the one in the Lonely Planet PDFs on Scott’s computer. Unfortunately, his computer had been drained down to the last drop the night before, so we needed some electricity. Thus began our journey around the station looking for an outlet. We found one, upstairs, behind the lip of what looked like an out-of-service wine bar concept.

We plugged in and were just booting up when we were apprehended by the railway police. They explained to me in Russian that what we had just done was in violation of the code of the railways, and therefore against Kazakh law. The police officer looked very sternly at the both of us, made a clicking sound in the back of his throat, and demanded to see our papers. We produced them.

“Not registered yet, I see,” he muttered in Russian. “You have only two days left to do your registration…” He reluctantly handed back our documents and gruffly directed us to follow him to the elevator. As we headed over, he also pointed out that we had used the escalator to move our bikes, which it turns out is also against the code. I apologized to him a few more times. He brought us to the center of the railway station’s lobby and told us to wait there for him, which we did.

Then some more time went by, and he was nowhere to be seen. We scanned all around the station… where was he? Finally, we decided to just make a run for it, and walked our bikes out to the exterior of the station, asked another security guard for directions into town, quickly thanked him and raced off into the traffic.

We stopped for lunch at a pizza place we spotted on the way, not because we necessarily wanted pizza, but because we couldn’t find a Kazakh restaurant. They’d been easier to find in Tashkent! While at the restaurant, Scott plugged in his computer to charge and got on the phone with potential hotels. The pizza was okay, and the coffee, I think, was a little better than okay, but never trust an addict getting his first dose in a while.

As we munched pizza and mayonnaisey Russian salads, we commented on how much less of a food culture there was her than in the Uz. In Uzbekistan, there were amazing restaurants everywhere with very unique food. Here, on the other hand, it seemed as though the locals were looking to other cultures to tell them what to eat. Perhaps this was because the culture was nomadic. The Uzbeks had built great cities and had farmed, forged a civilization, and thrived in a sedentary way for the past 5,000 years. The Kazakhs on the other hand had been nomadic until the Russians came a few hundred years ago and began to trap them in cities, forcing them to consider things like restaurants.

All this discussion of the differences between Central Asian cultures was interesting, but we had some work to do. We wheeled hard into the city, and began stopping into hotels and checking the prices. One of the first that we found was actually a Chinese business hotel. The place looked amazing, and Scott was able to speak Chinese with them, but even with brotherhood pricing, it was a far cry from the normal Chinese business value. So we wheeled on.

Soon we were in a dense market, and though all our investigations of maps and questioning of the locals had brought us here, there seemed no way, try as we might, to actually locate the place. At our wits end, and beginning to worry that we would not be able to find a hotel in time to register ourselves, we were suddenly accosted by two young women. “We are studying English,” they said. “We heard you talking and wanted to know if you needed any help.”

Thank goodness. Not only did they know of the hotel we were looking for, but they led us right to the door, commenting as we walked there that is was “the cheapest place to stay in all of Almaty that would not steal from your room.”

Great. We thanked them profusely and checked in. We explained our predicament registration-wise to the front desk as follows: We had entered the Kazakh Republic on a Friday, too late in the day to register in Shymkent. Saturday and Sunday they had been closed, and now we were arriving on a Monday here, with tomorrow being the last day that we were eligible to register. The woman at the front desk commented that usually the registration takes a day or two, so if we were to have any hope of avoiding the $100 fine, we had better head out tout de suite.

And so we did, armed with a few signed and stamped documents that the hotel had prepared for us and a little map leading to the OVIR. Unfortunately, the OVIR proved much harder to find than one might hope. As we continued to strike out on finding the place, we began to walk into more and more random businesses asking for help. A certain travel agency wrote a name, a phone number and some Russian words I did not understand on a yellow scrap of paper. I literally put this in my back pocket, hoping that we could find them without having to negotiate a miscommunication ridden phone conversation with someone whose relationship to the OVIR was in no way clear due to my poor understanding of Russian.

So we kept wheeling around the gently sloping streets of Almaty for hours, feeling the OVIR was always just around the corner, but becoming increasingly worried.

I say gently sloping because the entire city of Almaty is on a hillside and gently slopes down to the north and up to the south — very confusing I know.

We were at our wit’s end when we asked a particularly fabulous looking gentleman in the street for directions.

He was quite cordial with us, and immediately snapped to action. He did not know where the OVIR was, but he was willing to wander into a nearby hair salon, whipping the door open like a western gunslinger, and to get on the phone with the woman, Katya, whose number had been given to us by the travel agent whose office we’d stopped into earlier.

And so we began the process of hailing a cab. Like in Uzbekistan and Russia, all one needs to do is stick out one’s hand, except that here in this city all the cars were actually quite nice, many of them were luxury brands, and it would not be uncommon to actually get a ride in a BMW or Lexus SUV as one was flagging down a cab.

The downside of this fact, we soon learned, is that many of them are unwilling to put folding bicycles into the back seats of their cabs, and that it’s much more expensive. So it took us quite some time to find a cab, and even when we did find one, it was only willing to take us back to the hotel to drop off our bikes and not all the way out to the OVIR… or at least we thought we were going to the OVIR… until I asked our new friend.

“Where are we going?” I asked in Russian. You see, he spoke no English.

“Transavia,” he replied.

I had no idea where Transavia was, but we began piling our cycles into the cab. As we were doing so, a very animated fellow showed up on something that looked not unlike a folding bicycle. “It’s my new invention!” he called out to us, and began stammering in bits of English and Russian. I was interested, mostly because the man was obviously mad, but was forced to apologize, saying that we were in a bit of a hurry. We piled into the cab and sped off.  Today seemed to get only stranger and stranger.

With bikes safely back at the hotel, the cab dropped us off in a giant towering development of mixed residential and corporate office space. All of our cell phones were out of batteries, so I ran over to a convenience store to buy us all some more credit for our SIM cards.

And after a quick call we found the place.

Inside the building it was stark and white and very clean. Desks were lined up against each wall with strikingly similar looking blond women behind them, all typing away on computers. The entire room looked up at us as we came in.

Our friend asked for Katya, which I remembered was the name on the card, and a beautiful woman came out from behind a door. I did my best to explain our situation to her, and our new friend chimed in where need be. Eventually she understood and told us not to worry, that she could help. And so we gave her our passports and left.

It felt great. Another problem vanquished due to AsiaWheeling’s carefully honed radar telling us when to and when not to trust strangers!

Feeling great, we asked our new friend if he might want to go out for a coffee or something on us. He seemed interested. He began to hail a cab, but we explained that we like to walk, and if he was okay with it we’d prefer to move a little.

He seemed mildly pouty, but agreed. And we began to walk on, chatting. He explained to us how he worked as a hair dresser, how he had just saved up enough money to take out a lease on a new Lexus, telling us about his apartment, pointing out the handsome building in the distance. It really sounded like this guy was coming up in the world of men’s hair in Almaty… who knew? He explained to us as we walked that Scott’s shirt was too dirty. It’s fine, we assured him, but he pressed on. “It’s too dirty for my taste,” he said. “I’d like you to get a new one.”

Considering he’d just saved our asses and all, we decided to humor him and we followed the guy into the Silkway City, a posh Almaty mall chain, where we purchased for Scott a tee-shirt with a giant “I love Kazakhstan” on the front.

With that done, we headed out in search of coffee, but ended up instead at what our friend claimed was his favorite place, a joint called the Café Bar Excellent.

It was perhaps 6:30 pm and the place was almost completely empty. Our new friend decided to take bishop ordering for the table some pitchers of beer and a few plates of meat and French fries. It was, we were to learn, a Turkish restaurant, which is the most popular type of restaurant in Kazakh cities. I am not sure where the Turks get all this brand equity, but trust me, at least in Kazakhstan, they have it in spades.

This was fine with us, we were hungry anyway, and so we dug in, and enjoyed the beer. It was Heineken, the expensive stuff, not nearly as tasty as Shymkenskoye but as it is always, consistently not bad.

Communicating with this guy was tough. He spoke no English whatsoever and had very little patience for my poor Russian. But struggle on we did, into the evening, continuing to eat and chat as the sun ducked below the horizon.  When the bill came, our friend made no pretense of paying a cent, but we figured he had helped us today, and so we paid and got ready to leave, explaining to him that we had a lot of work to do.

He then began to get very disgruntled. “Don’t leave!” he pleaded with us. “Why won’t you stay longer with me?” We attempted to explain that we were tired, that we had lots of correspondence to write for you, dear reader, but he was not having it. He was becoming quite upset, and putting his foot down. “No! Stay!”

He then began to explain to us about his friends who he wanted us to meet. He told us about all the beautiful women who would be joining us, along with a photographer from (presumably Russian) Vogue.

Finally, in an exhausted last ditch effort, we were able to leave, but only promising that we would meet back up with him when we were done working. As we parted ways he demanded cab money from us (and quite a lot of money at that… twice as much as our cab fare) to get back to his place. This we gave him as well. As we piled into the cab, I turned back to Scott, letting him know that I was too exhausted by this character to do any more hanging out tonight. “My recommendation is that we just screen his calls,” I said.

Scott felt obliged to spend more time with the guy, and figured it may not be all that bad. “I’d like to meet this photographer from Vogue,” he said. And so it was that I went off to sleep, and Scott headed out to reencounter our fabulous friend…

………………………..

As Woody settled into bed, my phone rang at 10:00 pm on the dot when our purple-shirted and elaborately coiffed friend said he would be calling.  He was outside, and so I descended the stairs and spilled onto the filthy, poorly lit street surrounded by deserted market stalls.

There was no Lexus in sight, so I moved further into the street to peer in both directions.  Just then, a station wagon pulled up and dispensed Mr. Fabulous.  Now began the first extended Russian language practice session I had on my own.

After greetings, I asked him, “Where are you friends?”  He replied with something like “Oh..friends.  Astana.  They’re all in Astana, darling.  Yes, Astana.”

Oh, okay.  Well, do you have none here?  Who are we meeting?

I was told to hush, and decided to be patient and give him the benefit of the doubt.  We walked to find a place to chill.  Oddly enough, despite passing numerous attractive and lively options, we found ourselves back at the overpriced and not-so-great Cafe Bar Excellent.

I decided to bide my time and converse with this fellow as much as possible.  After rudimentary English and Russian lessons, I asked again, “Are you friends coming?  Are we going to meet them?”  He seemed to be assuring me that there would be some further socializing while periodically whipping out his mobile phone and firing off text messages.

Time passed, and we ordered another drink.  I was starting to grow impatient and suspicious, as I could barely think of enough things to mime or express in completely mutilated Russian.  He certainly wasn’t talking about much but seemed to be enjoying himself.

After hours passed, I motioned that we should be leaving, and if we were going to meet someone else we could find another spot.  We asked for the bill, and a waitress, who probably wondered who this odd couple was, brought it to the table.  And there it sat.  I waited for Mr. Fabulous to make a movement.  Maybe toward his wallet or maybe toward the bill.  He did not stir.

I brought it up in pantomime, motioning toward the check, suggesting we go Dutch, or do it the German way as the Turkish say.  He had no money, it seemed.  Exasperated, I paid and got up.

We strolled down the street for a bit and I signaled that I’d be heading home to catch some shuteye.  He brought up his friends once more, and not understanding what he was trying to communicate, I followed him into a park and sat on a bench as he made a call on his phone.  After the phone call, he began to make moves.  Big moves.  And I was not about to make out with a Kazakh guy in a park in the middle of the night.

“Hey man,” I said in Russian, “I like girls.”  Literally translated, I told him, “I have once reveled in a woman.”  It was all I could say.

There were no friends.  He spoke no English.  No photographer from Vogue.  No effort to pay bill.  Where the hell was I?

Had my people sensor somehow gotten warped?  His fragility and helpful nature seemed to suggest that he was not one to be a predator, though he’d been weaving complex webs.  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I resolved.

“Wait!” he exclaimed, and communicated that he had no money for a cab home.  How did he get here in the first place, I wondered?  “Look,” I told him in English, hoping my tone would permeate any language barriers, “I’m not paying your cab fare.  You relied on us for dinner, for cabs, for an entire evening, and you lied to us.  Find your own way home.”

Was this the right thing to do? Or was I being shallow?  Tough love isn’t easy. It’s tough (as the name implies).  I had never said this kind of thing to anyone.  But something compelled me to simultaneously cut my losses and teach this guy a lesson.

So I began walking.  Not wanting to take cab myself for the couple of blocks home, I strolled north down Almaty’s slope back toward the hotel.

As I turned the corner onto the street of our hotel, a police car pulled around me from behind and three officers  alighted from the vehicle.  I was certainly the only thing they were interested in.

“Documenti,” they signaled, “papers.”  I gulped.

My passport was at Transavia for registration, so I produced a photocopy and records of my flight and visa to the country.  This seemed not to interest them.  I was told to empty my pockets on their patrol car.  Keys, wallet, cell phone, some random receipts now laid on their trunk.

“Have you been drinking?” the cop signaled, placing two fingers on his neck, as is the Russian custom.  “A little”, I replied.

“Narcotics?  Drugs?”

“No, none, not at all.”

“Your shoes.  Take off your shoes.  We need to check them.  Unlace them.”

I bent down to untie the shoes, and midway through I was instructed to stop.  “Get out of here,” they motioned.  I put my possessions back in my pockets.  And I was free.

Walking away, I checked my wallet.  It was lighter.  Not the kind of lighter when Kazakh Tenge is missing.  The kind of lighter when the proud greenbacks of Barack Obama have been embezzled and siphoned into the hands of Almaty’s finest.

And right then, at the entrance to our hotel, two men with beers in hand seemed thrilled to see me.  They cheered “I love Kazakhstan,” and insisted we take a photo.  So here I am, in Almaty, at the end of one of the weirdest days of my life, loving Kazakhstan.

We woke up once again in Uzbekistan to a giant feast, laid out on the kitchen table for us by Shoney’s mom. Most of the dishes from yesterday were there, with the addition of a kind of buttery fried gluten, like caramelized roux, which was spread on bread or eaten straight.

Shoney’s sister Luiza came out to join us, and we all goofed around, drinking coffee and trying not to be outsmarted by the little firecracker.  She ate very little that girl, but could certainly throw back the Coca-Cola.

Our first mission for the day was to register. You see, dear reader, it is illegal to be in Uzbekistan for more than 72 hours without registering yourself with the government. So off to the registration and passport office we went, throwing our Speed TRs into a cab so as to be prepared to do a little wheeling later in the day.

When we got to the office, we locked our bikes outside and headed in. It was a two story, cheaply build Soviet structure, with sagging floors, now covered with flattened cardboard boxes, and peeling wallpaper. We began waiting in line, and scrutinizing the info-graphics on the wall explaining how one would be rewarded for turning in criminals.

Unfortunately, after waiting for quite some time in what turned out to be the wrong line, we were ushered to a new line and eventually into a room where a very grumpy woman looked positively crestfallen to see us.

“I am very sick today. I need a nap,” she exclaimed when we entered the room and indicated our intention to do the registration.

Shoney’s mother pressed on. “Fine then. I’ll need the full blueprints for your house detailing where they will be sleeping.” We of course did not have these. Shoney’s mother was not even sure she knew where to find them. So We walked out of the place empty handed. Fair enough.

We walked past the giant line of patiently waiting Uzbeks that had formed behind us, and past the gleaming black Mercedes 600 SEL, which was driven by the head of the office, and climbed back into a cab. We would need to think of a Plan B. One option would be to work with a hotel, who might register us for a cheap rate, given we wanted just the registration and that we weren’t staying with them. We talked about that for a while, but soon were distracted by the city of Tashkent flying by outside our window.

Our next stop was to meet up once again with Shoney’s grandfather, Nazarkulov.

We met him in the large central square where the government put most of its flashiest buildings and monuments. It’s place called Mustaqillik Maydoni, or Independence Square. We locked our bikes to a tree, where a nearby Somsa and drinks vendor had agreed to keep an eye on them.

Then we began strolling, and Nazarkulov began explaining to us the history of the square using this sign as a diagram. The square had first contained a statue of the Tsar. You see, Uzbekistan was first a colony of Imperial Russia. Then when the Soviets took control of the Russian empire it became a state of the CCCP, and the statue was replaced with one of Lenin. Then with the fall of the Soviets, the square was redone a few more times to bring it to its present state.

And what a state it was, with a giant monument showing the globe with Uzbekistan as the only country and a huge field planted with Siberian evergreen trees (each of which required it own shading device in order to keep it from withering in the Uzbek dry heat). We continued on into a nicely manicured and shady park, past old Soviet gardening trucks, to the Uzbek WWII memorial.

It was quite a memorial, and startlingly touching. The Soviets were very successful in the Second World War, but their methods for making war required some of the most reckless losses of human life ever recorded on our planet. In WWII 350,000 Uzbek Soviets died fighting against the Axis.

We wandered through the monument, where the names of each fallen Uzbek were carved onto great copper sheets, and collected like the pages of a book. Shoney and his grandfather struggled to locate the names of their own fallen relatives.

We moved from the monument out into the shadow of a giant pillared archway. On the top of the arch was a giant stork, the symbol, here too, of new birth.

We walked on past a giant fountain which had, in its hayday, blasted over a walkway, allowing visitors to walk through a tunnel of arcing water. It now sputtered weakly next to the walkway.

We sat down with Shoney and Nazarkulov in a special section of another nearby park to discuss Soviet times and this man Sharof Rashidov. Sharof Rashidov was an Uzbek leader during the Soviet times, made famous for his successful execution of an elaborate system of bribes and lies that convinced the Soviet government that Uzbekistan was producing more cotton and wheat than it actually was. This was of vital importance to the Uzbek people at the time, for they were not going to meet the quota that year, and would have suffered harsh consequences had they come up short.

Nazarkulov  was quite the fan of Soviet Uzbekistan, spoke perfect Russian, and spoke passionately about how life was better during Soviet times.

Having toured Independence Square now for some time, we were all ready to eat some more. And so Nazarkulov took us to an chicken restaurant, established during the Soviet times.  The chicken was incredible. It was served with a Bloody-Mary-esque sauce, which came in a little shot glass, and for a few cents more, your table could share a still-warm-from-the-oven loaf of Soviet style bread.

Not believing the reality of the pure volume of bills it took to operate in the Uze, we had attempted to pack our wallets with сум, figuring that we couldn’t spend it all in one day. Wrong we were, for just this cheap lunch took a huge chunk out of our pitiful wallet-sized wads.

Bellies full and wallets empty, we exited the restaurant and took a moment to take in the giant and mostly empty Hotel Uzbekistan, across the street, with its exquisitely filigreed front facade.

We then stuck out our arms, and the next car that passed stopped to pick us up. In case he did not agree to the price Shoney felt was fair, there would inevitably be another queued up behind him, ready to talk to us if we flagged the first one on. This cab system was amazing. We threw the cycles into the back of a black Chevy and headed off toward Shoney’s grandfather’s neighborhood, where a bike was waiting for Shoney.

The frame had been recently painted, and everything tightened up. It looked like a good ride, very 1983. And with some heartfelt thanks and goodbyes to Nazarkulov , we hit the road for a little inaugural Uzbek wheeling.

Traffic was light, and the roads were good, the main ones at least. Like everything else he applies himself to, Shoney wheeled hard and fast, heading on past giant Soviet apartment blocks and in toward the city center. Then, suddenly, Shoney’s tire popped, and the wheel ground to a halt.

We had a patch kit and pumps (in our seat posts), but what we needed was some water so we could see where the puncture was and patch it. The best water we could find was this river.

The river ran through a large Soviet sports club, where Shoney used to box. All the workers there were instantly skeptical of us, and just as instantly sympathetic when we explained the story of the flat. Some of the groundskeepers even offered us the use of one of their buckets.

But once we took the inner tube out, we found that no patch would solve this disaster, and thus no water was needed. The tube was an old cracked monster of a thing, and the flat had occurred because the valve nub itself had just torn free of the inner tube.

We would need a new inner tube, for sure. So we locked the bike inside the sports complex, grabbed the problem tire, and headed back to the streets where we caught a cab to the nearest bike shop. We ended up buying not only a new inner tube, but getting a package deal on a ridiculously cheap Russian-made tire as well. The man at the shop changed the tire and tube, and even pumped the thing up to show us all was legit.

Back in the park, we made short work of the repair, and headed back out to continue the wheel.

It was glorious to be wheeling again, sun bright, air fresh. Then a cop stopped us, and began to yell at Scott in Russian (of which he understood none) using very condescending language (Shoney later explained) and asking him what he thought he was doing. Turns out the cop had thought Scott was Russian and had some bones to pick with the Russkis. Shoney interjected in Uzbek, which surprised the cop a bit, explaining that we were American tourists and eventually he told us to wheel on, but reminded us that in Uzbekistan it was illegal to wheel more than one meter from the right side of the road, which if I am interpreting the law correctly, actually makes left turns illegal.

“They just want to have enough laws so that they can catch you breaking one of them at any time day or night,” Shoney explained. Fair enough.

We wheeled on toward the train station, stopping halfway through to grab some water from this M&Ms branded Produkti, which is the Russian answer to the convenience store.  Or maybe the convenience store is the western answer to the Produkti; speculation is invited in the comments.

We wheeled on past giant new housing developments and old crumbling Soviet structures. Though most of the signs were in Russian, one also saw plenty of Uzbek too, which is these days written in Roman characters and looks like this:

We paused outside a the train station to let one of the many street trams go by.

The city really had some impressive public transit, for the capital of a country with a GDP per capita of just under $4,000. Sporting two metro lines and eight tram lines, it was very impressive. Also, as Shoney explained, traffic was a new thing to the city as well, having only arrived in the past couple years. Traffic jams were still a rarity.

At the Uzbek train station, we entered a terrible do-loop of waiting forever in the wrong line, then switching to a new line, then having it be wrong too. Eventually, we found the right line, though, and bought  two tickets for the day after the next’s train to Samarqand.

On the way back to the house, we stopped by a certain hotel Shoney’s mother knew of, and bargained with them to register us. They were skeptical at first, but soon realized the opportunity to make some cash and agreed.

When we got back to the house, Shoney’s mother had made another giant meal for us, featuring a giant lamb and potato dish which, despite being extremely impressive, was presented to us with an apology!

The next morning I was feeling slightly better as we packed up our things and headed out from the hotel in search of more breakfast. We decided to sample one of the competitors to the simple hummus and flatbread restaurant that Samer had taken us to two days ago. And we were able to find one without much trouble. It was the same basic idea. Maybe not quite as jaw-droppingly amazing, but deserving of a very solidly applied seal of approval. I was unfortunately unable to eat much, but even sickened and without much appetite I was able to appreciate the love that went into those pastes.

We left that place and continued wheeling. It felt good to be back out in the sunshine. My energy levels were low, but pedaling felt good, breathing felt good, and Latakia was beautiful. I found myself swallowing curses at my illness for robbing from me a day of wheeling here.

We spent the afternoon exploring the city, poking our way through spice shops. Claudia had gotten the idea into her head that decorating her dorm room with sprigs of Syrian sun-dried objects would be the move.

And so that became our mission for the day. It brought us into a number of very interesting shops, and interactions with some fascinating members of the Syrian spice retail sector.

As Claudia was running into yet another shop, we stopped another bicycle coffee salesman, in order to procure some more lucidity. The fellow was very old, and nearly unable to speak. There was also a little bit of Popeye in the guy… at least in his hat. His coffee was quite good, though, and we felt confident that we paid a price easily four times the norm per cup, so we hopefully parted ways with him in good spirits.

After meeting back up with Claudia, we all began to make our way toward the Hotel Safwan, where we had stored our things. With all our belongings loaded onto the cycles, we headed back the way we’d come and arrived at the train station just in time to catch Samer, who had somehow figured out which train we were on and arrived there to wish us safe journey. We exchanged the warmest regards with him and climbed onto our train.

The Syrian railway was amazing. It was startlingly cheap, very clean, and luxuriously comfortable. The staff were amazing, and gave us a special place in the children’s play-car to store the bikes.

The children’s play-car was something like a McDonalds Playplace on the train, where your kids could let off a little steam, while you relaxed and watched the countryside fly by. And that was exactly what we did.

We arrived in Aleppo just as the sun was setting, and quickly unfolded our cycles right there on the platform.

We then wheeled right into the city. Our Syrian flashlights had now been determined to be total duds, useful only for a single ride, and long ago jettisoned. So we were once again without substantial lights. Luckily Aleppo too was very well lit.

All our Syrian friends to date had explained that all of their country was warm and hospitable (a fact with which we heartily agree)… except for Aleppo. For one reason or another, Aleppo was not popular with the rest of Syria. Hossam had explained to us that we needed to be careful walking at night there, and that the people would not be honest and would not respect women.

So it was with much interest that we took our inaugural wheel in this city. So far it was none too scary or grimy. In fact it had quite an affluent vibe.

When we saw a restaurant with a large picture of a drugged-looking cartoon bunny on the outside, we decided to stop to eat. It was true we had not found a hotel yet, but it had been way too long since we’d had that breakfast of pastes, and the search for a hotel and subsequent bargaining would be much more palatable on a full stomach.

The staff at the place was thrilled to have us around and busied themselves arranging places for our bags and cycles. We ordered a delightful feast of salads, pastes, and falafel sandwiches, and I did my best to put food in my body while Scott and Claudia ate hungrily.

Having eaten, the task of finding a hotel felt much more manageable, and it was not more than 20 minutes of wheeling later that we found ourselves checking into a very small, very clean, and splendidly affordable hotel in what appeared to be the tires and automotive parts district of town.

The next morning we woke up and began furiously doing laundry in the bathroom of our room at the King George Inn in Jbeil, better know as Byblos, in Lebanon. Claudia was feeling much better, which was a great relief. She seemed glad to be joining in the activities again, scrubbing a pair of jeans furiously in the shower in her bathing suit. After cleaning, rinsing, and hanging up all the clothes that were not currently on our bodies, we began thinking about food and wheeling.

We had, during the great bargaining fiasco of last night, given up our rights to the generally included breakfast at the King George in favor of a reduced rate, so we needed to find something in town.  King George himself strutted around the hotel’s entrance, tending to the garden in the front of the property and producing a nasal murmur into his mobile phone.

We found our bikes outside, where we’d parked and locked them, right in front of the great black Mercedes in the manager’s parking place. Someone had been courteous enough to cover them with a large gray cloth, perhaps to deter thieves.

It was as we were pulling the dusty great cloth off our bikes that I realized I had left my bathing suit in the room (you see, dear reader, we had plans to head to a beach again), so I excused myself to run back up and get it. When I attempted to unlock the door, however, I found myself unable to do so. Either the lock or the key had ceased to cooperate.

So we brought the proprietor’s son, Tony, into the picture, and he too struggled with the door, eventually giving up. We were locked out of our room, with my bathing suit inside, but he assured us he would have the problem solved by the time we got back from our wheel. So we pulled the cloth off the cycles, and figuring I could just buy another suit or go in my ExOfficios, hopped on my Speed TR, whooshing down the hillside and back into the city.

Inside town, we wheeled right by the Librarie Al Jihad. “Jihad,” Claudia explained to us, in reality has a totally different meaning than the whole Alquaida-ized version with which we are familiar in the west.

It refers more to an interior battle for enlightenment, she explained, which sounded good to us, and fit very well with the idea of libraries. So we rode on, giving it the AsiaWheeling-well-named-library seal of approval. As we made our way deeper into town, the call of our growling stomachs began to grow in strength, and we began, with increasing mania, to dash in and out of restaurants in search of food.

We ended up finding it at a sort of down-home snack joint, where we were able to a get a large plate of French fries, some hummus, and a few smoked fish wraps. The food was tasty, but left us feeling very heavy, sluggish, and a little sick.

There is a Lebanese practice of sneaking French fries, as ingredients, into dishes where you wouldn’t find them.  The result is often tasty in the short term, but an uncomfortable belly bomb in the longer term. We figured there was no better cure for the heavy greaseball stomach and sluggishness than wheeling though, so we climbed back on the cycles and continued exploring, albeit at a slightly slower pace.

Soon we came upon the seaside, where just as in Beirut, crystal clear blue Mediterranean water, lapped invitingly against a coastline scattered with hotels, resorts, and clubs. Interested as usual in the people’s beach, we wheeled on, eventually to be rewarded by what looked suspiciously like a public beach.

It was blazingly hot that day, and we were all too happy to spot a small convenience store. Our previous efforts to buy water in this city had been met with Tokyo-esque pricing, and similarly Japanese volumes. But this place looked a little more down home, and to be honest, we were getting so thirsty that we would have paid whatever we had to. We haggled a decent deal on six two-liter bottles, and as we were leaving, we noticed a large system of closed circuit televisions and cameras, which allowed the proprietor to keep an eye on the ice cream cooler outside. When we asked about the elaborate system, she explained that people had been stealing from her ice cream cooler. “So you’re saying the ice cream is not just free?” Scott joked.

“Nothing is free in Lebanon,” she said with a shocking deadpan. And with that, we made awkward goodbyes and climbed back on the cycles.

As we were wheeling down to investigate more closely, we ran into a Lebanese man who lived in Philadelphia. We spent a while chatting with him. He was far from the only foreign Lebanese in this country. Lebanon sports an external population of over 10 million, living in other countries all over the world. And not only do these Lebanese send money home to their families in Lebanon, but many of them come home to visit for the summer.

This might explain, at least in part, why we were finding Lebanon to be so startlingly expensive. During the summers, at least, it was filled with all the affluent Lebanese from foreign countries coming back home to flash a little.

Meanwhile, we had found a good spot at the beach, and Scott and Claudia had used a nearby seafood restaurant as a changing room. I just took my pants off near the water, hoping I was not scandalizing the populace too much. Then, leaving our stuff in a great trusting pile, we headed off into the blue water. We swam out, away from the coast, enjoying the cool of the water. It had been startlingly hot, and it felt amazing to be in the cool blue sea.

Just then a chiseled and well tanned man in a row boat came over. He explained to us that we had better get back to shore, for the water here was filled with jellyfish. Some of them were really big, he explained, throwing his arms out dramatically.

It was then we noticed that, indeed, none of the other beach goers seemed to have ventured out this far. So we began to swim back. And the rumor proved true, for as we swam, I began to notice stings, and then Claudia got struck as well. Then I caught a really bad one on my leg. We all began swimming faster and eventually reached the beach running back to our pile of things, with yelps and hollers.

We were quite happy to be on dry land again, and wiled away the next few hours reading about the Lebanese economy on the wiki reader, and singing songs on the ukulele.

That night, we returned to the hotel, and called a great meeting of the AsiaWheeling field team. We needed to reevaluate our plans. Lebanon was proving startlingly expensive, devastatingly touristy, and for one reason or another, we felt a pull to move on. With the marked exception of our meeting with Mueen and the Red Bull team, our interactions with the locals had been some of the most mediated, most predatory, and least pleasurable of the entire trip. The Lebanese food that we had looked forward to turned out to be a choice between swanky $20-per-plate type places, or cheap greasy street food, which consisted mostly of hidden French fries.

Frankly, I was fed up. I didn’t feel welcome. Furthermore, I felt that the way to be welcomed was to come and spend a lot of money. I thought back to the humble little city of Genshui, in southern  Yunnan, where we had been taken under the wing of that restaurant owner, and continued to return back to his shop for more feasts and long conversations, to meet his friends and family, to be brought into his life. And that fellow didn’t even speak English.

Everyone here spoke English. Despite that, for the first time in six months of rambling, we were consistently unable  to connect with the place in anything more than either the most superficial or most intellectually mediated way. I know, I know, dear reader, this is an atypical stance for your humble correspondents to take. And please don’t get me wrong. Lebanon is a beautiful country, just bursting with natural wonders and rich history. But I just don’t think it’s the place for AsiaWheeling.

It felt artificial, manufactured, and mediated. The men of this country are engaged in a never ending cycle of competition to see who has the fanciest car, who frequents the coolest night clubs, who has the best pair of acid-washed designer jeans, or the newest sunglasses. The women are so painted, so packaged, and so modified as to appear only partially organic life forms.

In an effort to gain Internet access, we inquired with the staff of the King George whether it would be possible to plug in our laptop to their network.  After Scott was shown various dead Ethernet connections on multiple floors of the hotel, Tony, George’s son invited him to sit on the steps outside their personal residence on floor two.  As the Internet trickled wirelessly, syncing emails and uploading posts to AsiaWheeling.com, shouts and hollers of domestic dispute flowed forth from the residence.  Business with family seemed tough, especially the hotel business.

Lebanon was an important place to visit, an awesome cultural and economic spectacle, but after about an hour of discussion, we decided it was time to go back to Syria, where we felt at home.

We woke up the next morning and checked out of the Hotel Ziad Al Khabir in Damascus. We had developed quite a warm relationship with the place, its staff, and its grungy Sudanese vibe. We were none too excited to leave, but we had a whole bunch of Lebanon to visit. We would get a chance to see more Syria on our way back through, heading toward Turkey, but that doesn’t mean that our departure was not without some pulling on the heartstrings.

The owners let us leave our things at the hotel while we went out in search of breakfast. We ended up finding one of the best restaurants of our time in the Middle East. Furthermore, it was right across the street from our hotel, startlingly affordable, and downright luxurious.

The name of the place was the Al Negma, and it comes most highly recommended to any AsiaWheeling readers who find their way into Damascus. We sat down in the Al Negma and ordered a splendid feast of salads, pastes, roast chicken, and pilaf.

We ate and read about the history of Damascus on the wikireader, savoring our last meal in this fine town.

After paying the bill, we chatted with the owner for a while, and he directed us as to how to properly make our way to the bus station. We thanked him and headed back up to the Ziad Al Khabir to get our bags.

In the lobby, as we were saying goodbye to the staff, a particularly talkative old man appeared, and though he spoke no English, vehemently and perhaps drunkenly joined in the conversation. As he spoke, he would emphasize his phrases by reaching out and touching Claudia’s arm or thigh. She would brush his hand away, gently scolding him when he did this, but the behavior continued. The entire experience was becoming decidedly uncomfortable and inappropriate by the time we were happily surprised by the old man’s sudden departure down the stairs toward the street.

Glad to be free of him, we loaded up all our stuff and filed one by one down the few flights of crumbling stairs and hallways that lead from the Ziad Al Khabir out to the street. I was taking the lead and already beginning to sweat, lugging all my things down the ancient and slanting spiral staircase. As I focused on making my way down, I barely noticed the same old man returning up the stairs, passing me on my way down.

Once I got outside, I began to unfold my bike, looking up from my work to see Scott and Claudia appearing as well. Claudia looked upset. It turned out that the same old man had gone at her once again, this time in the stairwell, as she was passing. Hands full of all her stuff, and teetering on the stairs, she could do little to stop him from grabbing at her body. She yelled at him and eventually he stopped.

As she told the story, once again Scott and I found ourselves in a situation in which we were unsure what to do. Should we go track down this old man and give him a talking to in English, Chinese or Russian? The police would certainly be no help. The owners of the hotel also seemed happy to stand by and let this kind of thing happen as well. We also needed to get to the bus station. But the question still stood, at least, as to how we could prevent things like this from happening in the future. Perhaps we just needed to stay more vigilant, stick closer together when we felt things were unsafe. Whether there was a better response or not, we decided to focus on being supportive to Claudia , who while upset, seemed to be shrugging off the entire experience quite valiantly.

And so it was that in a mood somewhere in between anger, befuddlement, and pity, we climbed on the cycles and began to make our way toward the bus station.

We headed back out of town on the same streets that had brought us into the city, pedaling hard through now familiar territory. We were forced to stop, however, when a large red Land Rover pulled over in front of us, and four men in matching white polo shirts climbed out.

They ended up being a group of travelers from Bahrain who were doing their own adventure, Bahrain to England, in this shiny, decal emblazoned, Land Rover, and blogging their adventures on their website www.friendshiparabia.com.

We shared a little of our own tale with them, and had just enough time to pose for a group portrait (scroll to the bottom), before we apologized and explained that we needed to get to the bus station in time to catch a bus that wouldn’t get us into Beirut in the middle of the night.

So off we went, through a large roundabout, which seemed to be centered around a giant, ornate, stained-glass, upside-down cross. Claudia pulled over to ask a taxi driver with some obvious engine problems about how to get to the bus station. He was more than happy to point us in the right direction.

And so we began a long, but gentle incline that took us many kilometers up and out of the city, eventually piping us onto a highway that climbed, long and slow, up to the bus station. We knew we were getting near to the place when street began to be lined on either side with — of all things not stereotypically Middle Eastern — liquor shops.

Now, dear reader, booze is not hard to buy in Syria. It is easier and cheaper, in fact, than in Jordan, and about a thousand times easier and cheaper than in the Gulf. But this retail concentration was unprecedented. The street was just jam packed with booze sellers. It’s true, some of the booze they were selling was from Lebanon, but most of it was local… I just couldn’t fathom why such a strip might be conjured up here, in the middle of the desert outside Damascus. I continued to be startled, as we rode for about a kilometer of just roadside liquor shops. It was nuts.

At the bus station, there was plenty of conflicting signage, and a number of lying cab drivers who were attempting to convince us that the only way to get to Lebanon was by cab. All the red herring information had us riding around in circles for a bit before we finally made our way into the passenger terminal. Inside we were quite quickly approached by a one legged man, who hobbled toward us on a makeshift crutch.

“How the hell are you doing?” he said in what sounded startlingly like a Kansas accent. “Where’re y’all from?”

I’ll have to refrain from the transcription going forward, for his level of obscenity reached such heights that were I to publish it here, AsiaWheel.com might be banned in Singapore. But, to give you the gist, he explained that he was an old Syrian navy man, who had worked closely with the U.S. He learned to speak English and to swear like a sailor from the real thing. He now lived here in Damascus making his money helping English speaking tourists to haggle for bus rates.

He was just enough of an endearing character that we decided to give him some business. He showed us to a bus and haggled dramatically with the guy for a bit. Then Claudia and I loaded the stuff into the car while Scott took everyone’s passports and followed our galumphing one legged guide into the crumbling ticket shop to get the tickets validated.

We were, of course sopping with sweat from the wheel, and before climbing on the bus, we emptied our pockets of all our hot, sweat-coated, Syrian coinage, dumping them into his hands. He made no complaints as to the sweaty nature of the money, and tried only once to convince us that it was not a big enough tip, to which Scott replied, “It’s plenty big.” To which he replied, “You’re right; it’s plenty big.”

And then we were off. The air conditioning system of the bus began to ramp up, and the sweat began to dry off, leaving a salty crust all over our skin. It had been a hell of a wheel getting up here, but now we had nothing to do but watch the Syrian desert go by as we climbed over the Ante-Lebanese mountains toward Beirut.

I awoke from a nap to discover that we were at the Lebanese border. Everyone was climbing off the bus, and in the same way that we had observed in Jordan, rushing frantically to get through customs. Everywhere we looked, there was the Lebanese crest of the cedar tree and heavily armed military. Despite that, the vibe was not too threatening, and people bustled around like crazy, pushing each other in line and waving handfuls of currency around. We were once again some of the last to get through, having to first find an ATM, since the Lebanese border folks did not accept Syrian pounds.

It was my turn to Warbucks, and I stood before the giant red, cedar tree emblazoned ATM, guarded on both sides by men with machine guns, and wondered how much I should get out. We had neglected to consult any sources as to the proper exchange rate, and our questioning of the armed guards around us resulted only in gruff and inconclusive responses. Finally I just chose a number that I knew was significantly larger than the cost to buy visas for all of us. We’d heard Lebanon was expensive, and with Scott having lost his ATM card somewhere in Jordon, we would almost certainly go through all the money and more during our time here.

With newly printed Lebanese visas, entry stamps, and a nice wad of Lebanese Pounds, we climbed back onto the bus and headed into the country. Instantly, things became greener and more American. Signs began to show more English, and the numbers changed back to our familiar Arabic numerals. The sun was just setting as we drove into the outskirts of Beirut, but our way was well lit by long forgotten emblems, like signs for McDonalds and Pizza Hut. Also, the cars around us instantly became much more expensive, and the speed of traffic rose.

The sun had completely set by the time the bus dropped us off in front of a closed flower shop, somewhere in the hilly outskirts of Beirut. We looked around us, at the shining beacons of fast food restaurants and the xenon headlights of BMWs whipping past.

This was certainly a new country. We wheeled a couple blocks downhill to a gas station where we consulted the staff as to how to get to the city center. There were not many cheap hotels in Beirut, according to our research, but we had heard that searching in a neighborhood called Gemmayzeh might yield options, and there was at least one youth hostel there, which we believed to still be in operation.

The workers at the gas station were all dressed like frat brothers, in bright polo shirts, and Abercrombie shorts. They giggled at us when we explained that we were going to ride to Gemmayzeh saying that it was over seven kilometers away. Considering we’d ridden at least 20, uphill, to get to the Damascus bus station, we assured them it would be no big deal. We gave them all a chance to take the Speed TRs for a spin around the gas station before bidding them adieu.

So off we went, climbing uphill toward a large intersection, and following the gas station fellow’s directions, we took a left onto what was probably the most dangerous ride of the entire trip.

We pulled onto a giant unlit highway, and quickly realized that the drivers in Lebanon are unprecedented in their insanity. They soared by us, literally burning rubber, blinding us with ridiculous after-market super bright headlights, and blasting vanity horns that sounded more like police sirens than normal car horns.

As we rolled down this unlit highway, we struggled just to stay on our bikes as giant trucks whipped by us at over 100 kilometers per hour, pushing giant walls of wind, and honking deafeningly. To make matters worse, the advertisements along the roadside contained strobe lights that flashed at you as you rode by, perhaps to produce a paparazzi-like experience, but really just blinding and disorienting the poor wheeler.

Eventually I called a waypoint on what a generous person might have called the shoulder of the highway, and I turned back to the team.

“We need to get off this highway, before we die.” And I meant it with all my heart.

So we backtracked, heading up against the murderous traffic for 200 meters, perhaps, until we saw a spot where we could hoist our bikes over a barrier and into an active construction site. The entire construction site was flooded by some recent water leak, and so there was a kind or bright gray muck everywhere. As we began to climb back onto the Dahons, we were caught in the light of a giant steam shovel that began barreling down on us. Following the headlight beams of the steam shovel, we sloshed our way through the gray muck and made our way back down into the streets.

We pulled over at another a gas station, where the man behind the front desk spoke perfect, American accented English. He was more than happy to draw us a little map to Gemmayzeh, and assured us that we were not far off. He was also more than happy to expound on his views on American-Lebanese policy. He liked America, had even traveled there, but he was no fan of our presence in Lebanon.

“Lebanon is a government-less place,” he explained. “We are a weak country. We are a poor country. We have no oil. America gives us all this money to spy on our own people, but they won’t give our military weapons to defend our land.” It was interesting to hear his views. I don’t consider myself well enough versed in American and Lebanese policy or history to really comment here, but I invite more knowledgeable readers to chime in. I can say, however, that as we pulled back out onto the street, doing our best to dodge BMWs and not be blinded by strobe-covered Prada ads. It certainly did not feel like a poor place.

Indications of poverty continued not to present themselves as we worked our way into Gemmayzeh, which turned out to be a rather swanky, young night club district. After traveling for so long in strictly Muslim places, where most of the women were encouraged to dress quite modestly, it was downright startling to see the Lebanese all dolled up for a night out.

Lebanese women are naturally quite beautiful, but what really sets them apart from women elsewhere in the world is the presentation. They are unafraid to cake on the make-up or to squeeze themselves into startlingly skimpy clothes. The popular style of clothes in that part of town, at least, was pretty uniform, and very much in line with the types of things sold in American malls, at least when I was last at one: tight tee-shirts with names or slogans of businesses that don’t actually exist; tight shorts with brand names on the rear; designer jeans with bits of sequins and glitter; lacy camisoles; clothes that had been industrially distressed to provide a “on their last legs” look to them.

Frankly, the place felt like a strange manifestation of the dreams of American clothing manufacturers. People all dolled up, popping in and out of chain restaurants and swanky night clubs, fancy cars whipping around, lots of strobe lights disorienting people, and not a bicycle in sight.

Well, while this street was interesting, we were exhausted, and we needed to find a place to rest. We poked our heads into one hotel, which, while it looked like a totally shabby flophouse, attempted to charge us a startling amount. We wheeled on, looking for what had been, according to our research, the only cheap hotel in Beirut.

But try as we might, we just couldn’t find it. We finally stopped a couple of night-club goers, sporting quaffed hair, tight jeans, and glittering Dolce and Gabbana tee-shirts. They seemed to know where the place was, and led us down a dark alley and into an unlit building.

Scott ran in to check it out, and sure enough it was the place. Furthermore, by some strange stroke of luck, they had a room for us. The magnitude of our luck became all the more apparent as we made our way upstairs. This hotel had plenty of guests; most of whom, at appeared, did not have rooms.

People were sleeping on couches, on pads on the floor, on balconies and on the roof. Right outside our own window, we found a nest of Scandinavian backpacker women, snoozing on cots. As we threw down our bags in our own very strangely laid out room, we began to realize Lebanon was going to be a very unique chapter.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I found head filled with many more questions than answers.  Hopefully the next day’s wheel would help to settle some of these.

We woke up to a sunny Jordanian morning, light pouring into the somewhat squalid confines of our room at the Hotel Asia.

The first task was, of course, to find coffee. Luckily, we quickly discovered that Amman is a fantastic place to find coffee. All hours of the day and night, the streets of Amman are lined with street coffee stands, sporting giant ornate coffee pots, filled with boiling hot thick black Middle Eastern coffee. Little plastic cups of the stuff can be had for anywhere between 15 to 50 cents.  Not knowing the ins and outs of the coffee ordering system yet, we simply ordered the default brew, which was just this side of undrinkably sweet.

From there we continued to head out on foot in search of breakfast, stopping from time to time to enjoy some of the more unique signage in this city.

We eventually settled on a restaurant a few blocks down from the Hotel Asia. We walked in and were shown upstairs to the “family” dining section.  The downstairs, Claudia explained, we could assume was for men only.

The ceiling in the upstairs dining room was rather, low, but no obstacle is too large to keep AsiaWheeling away from its hummus.

We sat down and ordered what was becoming our standard Middle Eastern meal: salad, hummus, bread, and some type of meat or exotic paste.

The food was fabulous though the fattush salad that we had been eating recently was replaced here by a plate of salty pickled vegetables. For the meat, we chose a plate of pressed ground meat kebabs, all accompanied by more Middle Eastern coffee.

With bellies full, we headed back out into the crowded and sun-soaked streets of Amman. The next waypoint was a repair-job for Scott’s Sri Lankan sandals. They had become rather torn and tattered in the months since we had purchased them in Colombo. Luckily, on our walk back from the hotel we passed an outdoor shoe repair stand. It was run by some serious village elder-types, who quickly took interest in AsiaWheeling.

Tea was ordered and we were asked to sit down while one of the owner’s sons went to town on Scott’s sandal.

The tea was delicious, and served in the classic Jordanian style, plenty sweet and with mint leaves in it.

We sat around chatting, attracting a large and larger crowd, chatting about our take on Jordan, about life in America, about business opportunities in China, and about the relative merit of learning different languages. Soon the shoes were done, but it seemed there was still plenty more chatting that needed to be done. It turns out that another one of the local dons who had arrived to witness the strange Americans ran a bus company. He offered to charter us a free ride on one of his buses to tour the city.

We tried our best to explain that we were all about wheeling, and only mildly about busing, but it was at first misinterpreted as the Middle Eastern practice of refusing any offer two to 13 times before accepting. Eventually, though vehemence and redundancy, we were able to actually communicate that we were cyclists, intending to explore the city by bicycle. This was met with awe and confusion.

We promised to return later to show off the cycles, then excused ourselves. Back at the Hotel Asia, we grabbed the cycles and some bottles of water, and hit the streets. It was hot in Amman, but not nearly as bad as it had been in the Gulf, and we were excited to wheel in this new, more approachable weather.

First thing was first: we needed to replace those bells that the Omani kids had stolen. This city had much too gnarly a flavor of traffic to attempt to wheel with no bell. Since the dastardly theft of our bells and lights, I had been wheeling and ringing a kind of phantom bell, brushing my finger by the empty bit of air where my ringer used to be, and cursing myself and those little scoundrels each time my phantom bell failed to ring.

Luckily, though we saw few wheelers on the road, this city was quite full of bike shops, mostly focused on cheap Chinese-made children’s cycles.

We wheeled over to one near our hotel, and inquired about bells and lights. Lights he did not have, but bells were available. I picked up a Chinese rotary-telephone-style bicycle bell and began to play with it. The owner of the shop came over and explained to me in Arabic and pantomime that this bell was a piece of crap, but that he would give me a very good price. “For you,” he continued in words I did not know, “I would recommend this bell.” It was really an electronic buzzer that attached to the bike and required batteries. The noise it made was frighteningly loud and hair raising. Such a violent alert seemed very unlike AsiaWheeling to me, so we decided to purchase three of the cheap rotary-telephone-style bells. “Fair enough,” the man seemed to say, and lighting a cigarette, he began to help us attach the new bells to the handlebars of our Dahons.

As an added bonus, he insisted on giving us a large plastic bag filled with cucumbers, at no charge. The cukes were delicious, and as evidenced by the giant cardboard box of them that he showed us in the back of the shop, in great supply.

With many thanks and a hearty shaking of hands, we wheeled off, ringing the bells with joy. We continued to wheel downhill, through the thick traffic. We must have been quite a sight, for multiple times cars would pull up alongside us and offer their support with whoops and shrieks, pumping of fists, or sticking of heads out the window.

We pulled off this road onto a nearby one, climbing now up into the hills, onto narrow and ever more crumbling roads, many with very steep inclines. Most of the locals just stared dumbfounded at us, some of them called out offering assistance, or letting us know that we were probably getting lost. Little did they know this was our goal. At the top of the hill, we were rewarded with a splendid view of this neighborhood of Amman. Also at the crest of the hill was a section of railroad that we needed to cross. We were just about to lift up the cycles and portage across the tracks when an old man and a young boy arrived.

They began chatting with us, asking where we were from and what we were doing here. The old man spoke only Arabic, but the young boy spoke a bit of English. We gave them both chances to try out the bikes, and hung out for a while enjoying the view and each other’s company. Eventually the pull of the open road started calling our names, so we headed off. This tiny road connected back onto a more central road near a large mosque. We decided to pull over at a local shop to have a drink and a little snack. We left the bikes outside, unlocked and headed in.

We purchased a few bags of “Mr. Chips” and a small package of hummus to dip them in. While we were snacking, a crowd of children between the ages of five and 18 gathered around us and began to barrage us with questions, and demands to be photographed.

We indulged them, but soon the competition to be in photographs became so great, that some of the larger children started beating the smaller ones with their fists. When one of them picked another up by the neck, kicking and screaming, we decided that this whole experience was getting a little too raw, and we climbed back on the cycles, scolding the older kids, refusing to take any more pictures, and wheeling off.

We started to loop back toward our part of town, wheeling along a street filled with busted cars, most of which seemed to have just been parked and abandoned there, now apparently homes to vagrants. It was then that Claudia got a call from a friend of hers. It looked like we had dinner plans.

Now we needed to get across town. So we cut through a giant bus depot, and headed toward an overpass. We needed to figure out exactly where we were, so we stopped to ask a well dressed, strolling bloke for directions. The fellow turned out to speak passable English and was overwhelmingly helpful. He gave us very articulate directions, followed by a heartfelt invite back to his house for tea. We explained that we needed to wheel to a dinner date. He was understanding. As we left, he put his hand on his heart and bowed slightly. He then raised a finger up to his eyeball, pointing. “My eyes,” he said to us. Then, bowing again, and tapping his finger against his face, he repeated, “My eyes.” Anyone who knows more about what this saying means, and where it comes from is invited to share in the comments.

We pulled from there onto the large uphill highway known as King Hussein highway. We rode on for a while, but soon the traffic whipping by us became too unnerving, and we decided that taking the glass-littered sidewalk would be better.  As we rode, the three of us became somewhat spatially separated. During a moment when Claudia was neither particularly proximate to either Scott or I, a gang of young Jordanian youth appeared from the gravelly fall-off to our right. They grabbed at her water bottle, eventually tearing it off her rear rack, then began grabbing at her body, eventually running off with the water. I was in the front, and hearing some commotion, stopped, turning around. By this point I could see Scott and Claudia riding together, some ways behind me. I waited for them to catch up.

When I heard the story I was flabbergasted. “This is, unfortunately, quite common,” Claudia explained, startlingly cool and collected after such an occurrence, “especially for western women.” Scott and I were significantly more taken aback. What is one to do in such a situation, as a respectful traveler? Is it acceptable now to run back and grab the kids by the scruffs of their necks, lifting them off the ground and scolding them, pouring the remainder of the stolen water down the back of their shirts? Your guess is as good as ours, and most welcomed in the comments.

In any event, that was not what we did. Instead we kept wheeling, sticking more closely together. Soon we reached the top of the hill, and quite thankfully turned off the giant King Hussein Road, onto a more manageable side road. There we asked once more for directions, this time from a group of loitering youth. They too spoke passable English and directed us onward in sometimes hilariously compiled sentences, indicating a few directives simultaneously. In the end, being only slightly surer of where we were headed, we wheeled on, down a steep hill , and back up the other side, where we found ourselves at a large hospital complex.

The sun was now beginning to sink low behind a nearby mosque, and the temperature was falling to a cooler and quite comfortable dry Arabian night. Claudia was feeling winded and exhausted from previous events, and decided to take a break on a shady bench in the vicinity of the hospital, while Scott and I headed in to check it out.

We were soon accosted by a yelling and grumpy security guard, who seemed mostly interested in keeping us off the sidewalks. We apologized and headed back to collect Claudia. As we wheeled back toward the gate, another security guard came running up to us. “Uh-oh,” I thought, “now we’re in for it.” But it turned out this fellow was simply running out to direct us to where we had left our white woman alone, giving us a quick tongue-in-cheek scolding.

We continued to wheel upward, cresting the hill, just as the sun was setting. The uniform beige buildings all around us began to glow orange with the sunset.

From the top of the hill we wheeled down, flying through the cool wind into the night, and  into a new part of town.  Part way down the hill, Claudia’s phone rang again. It was our dinner date, calling to modify our plans from dinner to a mere after-dinner sheesha hour. This was fine by us. We refined our plans, beginning to scan the area for restaurants.

We were having trouble locating one that seemed a good fit, when Claudia spotted an old and rather well dressed man walking on the side of the road. She pulled over and began to chat with him. He turned out to be an Iraqi gentleman, and was just bubbling with restaurant recommendations. At the top of the list, of course, was a local Iraqi joint. It sounded good to us, so we followed his directions there, and locked out cycles outside.

The Iraqi restaurant was obviously a local institution, and was fantastically crowded, with a long line of people. They appeared to do mostly take out business, but we were able to locate a few plastic tables in a kind of side lot, where we threw down our helmets to reserve a spot.

We ordered a huge pile of pastes, a whole chicken, a large plate of salad, and some fried appetizers.  While Scott and Claudia executed the ordering process, I headed out in search of a place to wash my hands and use the restroom. I pulled back a piece of curtain and popped my head into a room where about 10 people were all lined up, standing on small carpets, and praying towards Mecca. I decided to wait to ask where I could find the loo.

The food was unsurprisingly incredible, and we feasted hungrily. It had been a long day of wheeling.

Soon Claudia’s friend, a Jordanian Brown University student arrived in a large Chevy SUV, thumping pop music. We loaded our cycles into the back, and drove off.

The Extremes of Experience Indeed.

We woke up bright and early on our first full day in Phnom Penh. We began the day by enjoying the delightful in-room coffee service at the Amari Watergate, and with the beginnings of a proper caffeination well underway, we headed out onto the brightly sunlit and bustling streets of Phnom Penh.

We headed first in the direction of a local market called the Russian Market, so named because (rumor has it) back in the day, it was where all the Soviet expatriates used to shop. We stopped on the way at a rather down-home little street corner Cambodian diner.

We ordered a bowl of rice noodle soup, a bowl of nice salty, thick rice porridge, and a Vietnamese dish of what looked like raw ground pork, pickled in a kind of sweet soy sauce. This was accompanied by a couple of crispy pieces of baguette. All in all, a magnificent breakfast.

From there we managed to somewhat circuitously find our way to the Russian Market, by way of a great many similarly gigantic markets, all specializing in everything from automotive components to vegetables.

When we finally found ourselves at the Russian Market, we did our best to lock the cycles securely to a nearby lamp post, and headed in. We were completely blown away by the things we encountered inside.

A vile of cobra liquor proved enticing, though we opted to pass at the moment.

And while we did find some interesting decommissioned Cambodian currency that we could not resist throwing into the K9 purchase, we were unable to locate any Cambodian military surplus. We stopped in the middle of the market at a sign advertising the best coffee in Phnom Penh and had another cup before getting back on the cycles to explore deeper.

The next place we found ourselves was Orussey Market. Orussey is a giant sprawling complex of goods sellers, spanning many floors of a giant warehouse that was once part of the Khmer Rouge’s feeble attempt at organized industry.

We made our way inside and were instantly immersed in a world of color, smell and sound that was so saturated and engrossing that it threatened to completely erase our current mission to find Cambodian military surplus from our minds. For what must have been close to an hour we wandered endless tiny walkways between giant market stalls.

While this market had proven once again quite the fascinating waypoint, we had yet to see even one piece of Cambodian military equipment. Finally, in the middle of one of the giant textile sections (this one was I believe dedicated to brand-name-knock-off duffle bags), we decided to elicit some help from the locals. You see, dear reader, since we speak no Khmer, and are traveling in a country with quite the war-torn past, we had been reluctant to delve into a pantomime about military surplus. But it was past noon now, and we needed to get this show on the road. After communicating with one shopkeeper who called over another, who called over his daughter, who spoke a bit of English, we were finally able to get the point across. One of the shopkeepers wrote down the name of a market for us on a piece of paper where he assured us we would be able to find the treasure.

We asked him to show us on the free tourist map we had procured thanks to Vicious Cycle. He shrugged. Another shopkeeper then came over to us to try to assist, but her communications too were just vague waves at the map. We decided this likely meant it was too far away to be shown on our map of central Phnom Penh, and bid everyone our very best regards before venturing back out into the world.

We headed toward the market, initially missing a turn that brought us to a giant round-about. In the center of the round-about was a great statue of a revolver pistol, with the barrel of the pistol tied in a knot.

From there, we backtracked a bit past the French and Cuban embassies, and got back on the correct road. We took this road for quite a while, stopping from time to time to show the piece of paper on which the shop-keep had written the name of the market, confirming the validity of our trajectory. Except, as you are no doubt already aware, proof of validity is only as good as the mouth that spits it. And it seems some of the people who we talked to were either in cahoots to send us deep into the middle of rural Cambodia, or of a mind to save face and just wave us on our current trajectory rather than admit they did not know the way.

Regardless, we found ourselves quite suddenly ravenously hungry in the middle of nowhere near a long stretch of used truck lots on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Food was nowhere to be found. Then suddenly we passed a frighteningly American looking gas station complete with a little convenience store inside. We decided that this would just have to be lunch. So we selected from the puzzling assortment of overpriced snack food, and sat down to eat.

It was not the tastiest meal of AsiaWheeling, not by a long shot. But it did the trick, and for that we were both quite grateful. Not another customer came in the entire time we spent there selecting foods and eating them. So in the process, we became quite close with the man running the cash register. He was a young Cambodian fellow, and appeared to be quite proud of and dedicated to his job. The amount of care and effort that he put into microwaving our individually wrapped hot dogs, and artfully dressing them with mayonnaise and chili sauce, was quite touching.

Such an experience really highlights the emerging view of AsiaWheeling that Cambodian people share a fair amount with the people of Lao in the kindness-in-the-face-of-historical-hardship-and-mistreatment department. I dare say most Cambodians have quite a few decent reasons to dislike outsiders and avoid connecting with them. However, we experienced quite unreserved kindness in the vast majority of our encounters with strangers. A fine type indeed.

We loaded up on more water before bidding our dear convenience store worker goodbye, and heading back onto the road. This time we asked a cluster of traffic police for directions. They were most helpful, and lead us back a few kilometers where we found a somewhat hidden market off a side street.

The mall was mostly full of small tailoring operations. We parked the Speed TRs outside of one of these, and a beautiful young woman speaking excellent English emerged from the shop and offered to watch them for us. We thanked her, and headed into the market.

The interior consisted of a great many small winding crumbling streets lined with many small shops. Most of them were a few tables with sewing machines on them, backed by a crew of Cambodian men and women, cranking out military and police uniforms. Behind the sewers were examples of the types of clothes they could make, reams of blue and green fabrics, and giant boxes of patches.

It seemed that Cambodian military and police units had to have their own uniforms made, rather being issued them from a central source like in the U.S., for all around us were police officers and military types selecting garments, packs and satchels, belts, patches, hats, equipment and the like.

We wandered on through the market, taking out time to inspect various goods. What was perhaps most amazing was that fact that most of the military-type clothing was actually made with little (obviously fake) tags and labels indicating it was the property of the U.S. army. For one reason or another (and I would invite speculation in the comments), the Cambodian military was outfitting itself with a fair amount of fake U.S. military equipment. Perhaps the fake U.S. military labeling would be removed when the Cambodian patch or embroidery was selected?

As we walked along, a woman caught my eye as I was inspecting a number of belts she had on display. She was removing something that looked like a early 2000s brick cell phone from a black canvas carrying case. As she removed it and brought it toward me, I became more interested. Was it a cell phone? Or perhaps a rechargeable battery of some kind? I put my face a little closer. She then pressed a button on the side and a giant arc of electricity burst between two metal contacts on one side. Along with the arc came a haunting sizzling noise that sent a rush of chills up and down my spine. I hopped back in surprise and fright. It was a very large and scary taser.

She giggled at my response and apologized for scaring me. She explained that I could buy it for $20 if I liked. I declined, attempting to be both polite and to indicate that I completely abhorred such devices.

Finally, we selected a number of items from the market (a small, cell phone-sized equipment pouch, a kind of military fanny pack, a belt, a mosquito hammock, and an embroidered military hat) and a number of patches. With these we returned to our friend, who had so kindly watched the Speed TRs for us while we were shopping.

We asked her whether her shop could apply these patches and embroider the top of the fanny pack to customize them for Project K9.

This she arranged for us at great speed and astonishingly tiny expense.

Thanking her most heartily, we took our belongings and headed for the post office. Part way through the ride, we noticed the sun was sinking low, and realized the post office would most certainly be closed by this point.

So instead we wheeled Phnom Penh aimlessly until we found a street restaurant full of people squatting on tiny red plastic stools and eating what looked like garlic bread, fried meat and cole slaw.

And sure enough, this was more or less what the restaurant served. There was no menu, but we were able to communicate our wishes pretty easily, since everyone was eating the exact same thing. It was delicious and markedly different from anything we had eaten to date. There was even a kind of baked-beans-esque condiment that accompanied the bread. I might even dare say this meal shared more in common with down-home Iowa cooking than any we had hitherto discovered in Southeast Asia.

Quite satisfied, we headed back to the Hotel Amari Watergate to get a little rest. Having not yet sent the package off for K9, we were still behind schedule for Phnom Penh, and tomorrow would need to be a sprint to the finish line. Phnom Penh was treating us well though, and we had every reason to believe the pieces would fall right into place.

The red shirts were planning to initiate a huge demonstration that weekend, and Dane looked up at us, through the steam coming off of his perfectly prepared latte.

He swallowed the last of his mouthful of chocolate cake and said, “It could be the end of Thailand as we know it. I’m talking revolution; war in the streets.”

Scott pulled off his headphones, which could just barely be heard pumping out distant strains of trance music. “Bombs are planned for all over the city. I really think we should get out of here for that weekend.”

Scott and I are usually not ones to argue with a Bureau Chief’s suggestions, especially when they are offered under the pretenses of avoiding being wounded or maimed. And with that Dane began a furious Facebook campaign to get his Thai friends together for an outing to the north. Sangklaburi was the name of the place. It lies on the shores of a giant man-made lake, nestled in the northwest of Thailand along the Burmese border.

And it was because of this that we came to be waking up at 5:30 am, to the strains of SIM City 2000. For the first time in the trip, we were stripping down our luggage to the bare minimum. No large packs, no cycles. We would rent them there. In the dark and the confusion, I forgot to pack a swim suit, shorts, sunscreen or my phone charger, but appeared at the elevator right at 6:00, ready to accompany Dane and Karona down to a cab. Scott, on the other hand, remembered most everything important, but was quite late getting out the door, leaving Dane huffing and puffing in the elevator about missing our ferry. You may intuit, dear reader, how the AsiaWheeling team members complement each other.

Next ensued a series of missteps, miscommunications, mistimed bathroom runs and clueless cab drivers that resulted in our group finally convening just after the train to Kanchanaburi had left the station. Drat. Some consolation was to be had in that our group of nine people was finally together, and that coffee and grilled pork and sticky rice were easily purchased on the street.

After a number of ideas were thrown around, we finally selected a bus as the next best option. The fates would have it that, once we arrived at the bus station, a bus would be idling, as if waiting for us, all set to leave for Kanchanaburi. We climbed on, and I promptly fell asleep, only to wake up when the bus came to a halt at our destination.

This was only half way to Sangklaburi, and there would be a little time before we boarded the van that would take us the rest of the way north and up into the mountains.

It was high time for some noodles.

The van ride was tough, with lots of elevation changes and a twisting mountain road. The interior was hot, and we were jostled from side to side bumping sweatily against our fellow passengers. Scott and I were quite thankful for the Panama hats. While in the upright position, the hats provide protection from the sun, and loss of one’s fellow wheeler in a crowd, but when tilted down over the eyes, they provide a virtually impenetrable field of sleepiness, allowing the AsiaWheeling team to doze in even the most hectic situations.

Finally, we arrived at Sangklaburi, where we found our guest house, the P. Guesthouse, to be welcoming, frighteningly affordable, and gorgeous.

It was made mostly from dark wood, with giant granite tables expanding along a deck overlooking the lake.

Devastatingly idyllic.  The guesthouse itself looked like it belonged in Whitefish, Montana.

Dinner was Burmese-Thai food.

Very different from that which we’d had so far in Bangkok.

We tried the local tom yum soup, which was so spicy that most at the table could not have more than a small taste.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing on the deck and swimming in the lake.

When night fell, we began strolling the streets of the tiny town, which sported hundreds of brand new looking golden rooster lamp posts, and more than its fair share of loud and none too shy stray dogs.

Our flight was not too early, but further and diligent study of the toast and coffee at the Rucksack Inn resulted in a somewhat hurried departure from the establishment, necessitating a cab ride to the airport.

The cab driver explained local construction projects to us in curt snippets as we drove, most interestingly a large building that looked something like triplet towers with an aircraft carrier/surfboard mashed on top. The structure was gaudy and huge, and was going to cost at least 6 billion dollars to erect (and probably much more).  It was a casino.

Still humming with architectural discourse, David, Scott, and I arrived at the AirAsia counter. Once again, we found ourselves in a situation in which AirAsia demonstrated its poor communication skills.

In this instance, our check-in clerk solemnly explained to us that the presence of a local air show would delay our flight for at least one hour. Had we taken his advice at face value, however, and gone to the swimming pool (yes, dear reader, there is a swimming pool in the Singapore Airport), we would have completely missed our flight to Borneo. Luckily, we decided to check in at the gate, where they informed us that our flight was indeed on time. This communique unfortunately also proved false, when the flight was actually some 25 minutes late, though there was no talk of an airshow.

As usual, we got off the airplane starving, and discussing whether or not the food that was served on board was real or just a miscommunication as well.

The Tawau airport was petite, not air conditioned, moderately grungy, and mostly empty.

Malaysian immigration and customs was a breeze, and after some large smiles and plenty of vehement stamping, we were soon standing outside the sleepy Tawau airport, discussing cab fares with the local touts, and struggling with some head-scarved women in an attempt to purchase Malay SIM cards.

My suspicion was that something was malfunctioning with the digital registration system, which explained the blushing faces, school girl laughter, and marked inability to produce working SIM cards for us. After some 20 minutes of struggling against this blushing, giggling, silk enshrouded brick wall, David had identified the cheapest cab option and grown tired of waiting, so we took off empty handed.

The drive to Semporna was gorgeous and interesting, as we raced along in a white Proton van through endless sprawling monocultures of oil palms, dotted with garbage dumps, mangrove swamps, smoke-belching cooking oil refineries, and crystal blue ocean views.

In the car, David quickly began to prove his logistical mettle (though it was never in doubt) by interviewing our fellow passengers and beginning to build a framework for operating in the Semporna’s SCUBA scene. We were to be asking something rather complex and irregular of the local dive operators. Namely, to allow David to train Scott and me with their equipment and boats, but with little or no additional involvement on their part. By the time we arrived in the crumbling and hardscrabble town of Semporna, we had already identified our first choice to be an operation by the name of Scuba Junkie. They were quickly growing, and focused on a western backpacker clientele. We had also booked a room at the attached hostel, which would diminish in price by 50% in the event that we chose to dive with them.

We paid the van driver, deposited our belongings in the clean and refreshingly windowed room of the Scuba Junkie hostel, and decisively dealt with our starving problem at the hotel pub. David continued to chat with the locals, gaining more information, and once satisfied with the caliber of the place, and armed with the name of the owner, we strolled across the street to begin negotiations.. The owner of Scuba Junkie was a thin, shirtless, well tanned German. After some explanation of the project and our specific needs, he adjourned to his office to consult his business partners on the correct course of action.

When he returned, the terms seamed reasonable: we would be able to dive more or less on our own schedule, using their equipment, and would pay for the price of a normal dive. It was certainly not going to be cheap, but also not prohibitively expensive. With the specter of darkness and exhaustion looming, and the prospect of being able to begin the diving portion of AsiaWheeling first thing the next morning, we pulled the trigger, and surrendered our passports to Scuba Junkie.

David found this practice of surrendering the passports somewhat unsettling. Not from the standpoint of losing the things, but from the standpoint that if we were to have some disagreement down the road with Scuba Junkie, we might find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, unable to leave the country. Here, dear reader, we had our first inklings that David’s capacity on the AsiaWheeling team would prove much more all encompassing than simply that which he could do underwater. His experience with risk management, emergency management, and field medicine suggested we had better reconsider the role he currently played on the advisory board.  In short, a promotion was in order.

But that was an agenda item for another day. We needed to size our SCUBA equipment, and get back to the room. David had a couple of lectures planned for that night, and Scott and I were eager to lay into some of the theory behind SCUBA diving.

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We awoke our last morning at the Beautiful Kalepa Mas, free of mosquito bites, due a late night investment in a “coil” – a locally popular type of mosquito repellent. The sun was shining beautifully, and it was not without some pulling of the heartstrings that we departed from our luxurious and most affordable accommodations.

But depart we did, and loaded the speed TRs into the back of a shiny Kijiang bound for the unknown land of Uluwatu. What did we know of this place? It was a mecca for surfers, renowned for its beaches and waves. Scott was interested in surfing, and an investigation of maps suggested a hotel that was well positioned in the midst of a number of well known surfing beaches.

As the sun beamed outside, we snacked on Indonesian crackers, watching the signs for the many places we had already seen fly by outside. Soon, the city dissolved into farmland, and we turned off the main road onto a smaller, quite winding, and notably hillier bit of road. Then, quite unexpectedly, the driver pulled off the road, and announced we had reached our destination.

It turned out that Uluwatu was not a town, per se, but just a region of beaches, farms, and scattered hotels. Our hotel was quite beautiful, though, and had an expansive view of the ocean. The rooms were spacious and the hotel had a very clean and new-looking infinity pool.

The place was called Rocky Bungalows, as we later learned not for the rocky nature of the landscape, but for the owner, a simultaneously friendly and rather tattooed fellow by the name of Rocky. At $20 a night, we decided it would do for the next two nights, so we unloaded our belongings and took to the streets.  The hotel also featured a fearsome creature caged for security in the drive up roundabout.  We call him killer.

The subsequent wheel was good but hard. The destination was a beach known as Dreamland. Once a secret, it was now well known and rumored to be quite stunning. Not long into the wheel we found ourselves tackling one of the most difficult uphills of our lives. My ears popped and my legs burned as we struggled up and over a mountain. The sun burned hot and bright and in the stifling humidity the sweat poured out of us. Lack of blood sugar and water whipped our backs like a cat o’ nine tails. Finally after one false positive after another, the hill ended, and we descended into the cooling breeze. The beautiful west coast of Bali was laid out before us. And from the summit, it seemed it might all be accessible now without even pedaling.

The hunger hit as we were entering the first established city of the ride. And we passed a place by the name of de X-treme Culinare,  and something about it called to us (besides from the brilliance of the name). We feasted there on fried noodles, chicken satay, and fish stew, while chatting with the owner, who had made his fortune as a cook on a cruise liner.

In addition to the grub, he gave us much needed directions to Dreamland, which we had inadvertently passed on our way to de X-treme. You see, however, we had passed it because we assumed it to be either a resort hotel or a posh housing development. And it turned out to be both, so it was a more complicated kind of mis-navigation that caused the error. Now on the correct road, we found the approach to be a long, wide, and newly paved downhill, with opposing lanes of traffic separated by a wide and grassy median, lined with palm trees.

After a number of long and fast descents (thank goodness for the modification to the Panama hats), we arrived at the entrance to a number of compounds. One of these, we knew, must be the beach, but which one? We were turned back from our first two attempts, one of them proving to be a nightclub, and another a golf course. Finally we found the right entrance, and locked the bikes to a telephone pole.

We strolled down a steep and crumbling approach, across a newly built concrete walkway, and out into a scene of pure post-apocalyptic glory.

The tide was in, and waves were breaking right at the shore. Only a thin strip of sand separated the breaking surf from the steep rocky cliffs that backed the beach. From time to time, a large wave would close the gap completely and crash against the cliffside. A large group of souvenir and apparel merchants had been forced to erect their umbrellas on the small bit of land that was protected from the unpredictable surf, and the beach goers were trapped in a decision between enduring the harangues of the hyper-concentrated souvenir merchants, or braving the dangers of the frothing and angry sea.

Despite large flags proclaiming the deadliness of choosing the sea, most beach goers decided it to be the lesser of two evils, and were picking their way carefully down the beach. The water was blue, but littered with both sea plants torn loose by the violence of the surf and garbage deposited there by humans. The sand was littered with wrappers, bottles, and rotting seaweed. We spotted enough broken glass to cause us to re-don our shoes.

All in all, it proved a fascinating waypoint, and after climbing back over the hill toward  Rocky Bungalows, we were quite exhausted. We relaxed part way back at another local surfing beach, by the name of Padang Padang beach, still quite dirty but not nearly as dramatic as Dreamland.

It proved good for relaxing and playing the ukulele, but after the virgin beach we had so much enjoyed in Candidasa, we were beginning to develop a bit of a discerning taste for these places, and before the osmotic pressure to purchase sarongs for project K9 became too great, we departed for home.