We had lost a few hours of sleep in the air, so three hours of rest would need to be stretched over what our Dubai-time watches seemed an eight-hour gap.

So, dear reader, you might forgive us for being in a somewhat haggard state upon arrival in Dubai.  We were badly in need of coffee and water, but it seemed that would need to wait. The sun was still not up in Dubai as we followed a crowd of our fellow passengers through a brightly lit, glaringly clean and seemingly brand new airport. Despite this, I knew from the Economist article I had been reading on the plane, that this very airport was scheduled soon to be torn down, renovated, and expanded to serve millions more passengers per day.

Due to its strategic location as a connector between east and west, the Gulf airlines have been expanding and stealing market share of late. And with a seemingly endless appetite for new aircraft and new routes, they showed no sign of stopping.

We looked at one of the many large shiny clocks on the wall (made by Rolex, I dare add). It was about 5:00 am. We took a sparkling staircase that wound around a bank of glass elevators down to an impossibly large hall. The interior design conjured images of the interior of the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta, with dozens of large sparkling pillars, very high ceilings, and reflective materials attached to every surface. It was immaculately clean and gleamed with wealth.

The passport control officer, clad in the local standard (a white gown known as the dishdash and a white or red headscarf), glared at me from behind the counter. I handed him my passport, and he flicked through it, glaring back at me.

“Who are you meeting in Dubai?” he asked.

“A friend of mine, by the name of Mr. Jackson Fu,” I replied (honestly).

“Where does he live?”

“London, actually.  He arrives in a few hours. I will meet him.”

“Hmmm… and what will you be doing in Dubai?”

“We’ll be meeting with Red Bull UAE, renting a car, and driving to Oman.”

Bam. He stamped my passport and handed it to me with a shrug. “Welcome.”

On the other side of passport control, I met back up with Scott and we collected our bags and retrieved the bicycles from the fragile luggage counter. The service people were all clad in the same flowing white robes. All were supremely polite, though they never smiled in all my interactions. We flipped open a laptop and logged onto the free airport wifi, in order to make contact with our West Asia cultural liaison, a Ms Claudia Norton. She had arrived a few hours earlier, and had left instructions as to where to find her, and how to contact her in the form of e-mail. We also were intrigued to discover ourselves cc’d on a great many frantic e-mails concerning her luggage. It seemed, that through a constellation of bungled efforts, Claudia’s luggage had been misplaced in transit, and was currently being re-located and sent to Dubai.

This news was of particular interest to us, as one of the items in her lost luggage was a brand new Dahon Speed D7, which she would be needing for the next month and a half of middle eastern wheeling.  In addition, she carried with her a top secret shipment from our friends at Maui Jim: a set of their brand new “Dawn Patrol” models. We had been only able to find a few leaked images of these glasses online, and from what we could tell, they would be incredible. Regardless, we would need to bide our time in Dubai until the luggage and cycle could be located. Only then could we split for the open road, through the desert to Oman.

We used the last bits of credit on our Hong Kong SIM card to touch base with Claudia, and after forming a plan to meet in the city center, we began to prepare ourselves for the wheel into town.

Dubai’s airport is, unlike that of many cities we’ve visited, centrally located. The wheel to the city center did not look far. On the slightly cartoony tourist map we had, it appeared to be a relatively straight shot to the northwest.

Just to be safe, we purchased a SIM card from the du counter. The SIM card was fantastically expensive. At nearly forty dollars, it was more than we had ever paid for a SIM. Talk time was none too cheap either. In just coordinating a meeting place between Ms. Norton and ourselves, we used up half of the initial balance. This country, it seemed, was not going to be cheap.

Outside the glittering, air-conditioned interior of the airport, the sun was rising, and another steaming day was beginning. We dragged our bags out to the curb where a line of taxis patiently waited to take passengers to fantastically expensive, brand new hotels, and unfolded the Speed TRs. The cycles were in perfect shape, devoid of the usual dents and bruises that accompany checking them on an airplane.  What an airline! I thought to myself. As far as I am concerned, let them steal market share all they like.

The presence of the folding bicycles, of course, attracted the attention of a nearby Dutchman. He walked over to us and addressed us in Dutch. While flattered, we had no idea what he was saying, and soon we switched over to English. It turned out the fellow was an artist, brought here to do a special project in Dubai. He was going to do a project in Curacao, he explained, but Dubai ended up tempting him more. The pleasure was, of course, all ours. And we bid a fond farewell and wheeled off into the sun.

Thank goodness for the Maui Jims. It was already quite bright, and the sun had not even completely risen above the low-lying haze of dust, which helped substantially to soften the blaze. The roads were smooth as silk and brand new. Traffic was light, but it whipped by us in the kind of recently waxed, thundering, streak that can only be found in the Gulf. So far, the drivers gave us plenty of room, and a few even slowed down to gawk at the maniacs who chose to wheel from the Dubai Airport into the city.

We wheeled on past a great many one-story, brand new strip malls, selling all kinds of specialty imported goods. From large format printers, to Zamboni machines, we drove by it all. But where was the city? It was hidden from us behind the haze of dust, perhaps. We continued to follow our compass bells, heading northwest. This took us around the back of the airport, where planes soared only a few hundred feet above us while we wheeled. The roads were giant, truly huge, and most interchanges sported a clover-leaf style of over- and under-passes rather than forcing people to stop at a light.

Eventually, it became clear to us that all was not well in the navigation department. All the landmarks we expected to find were nowhere, and the city was not even visible ahead of us. Just then, as though sensing our predicament, Claudia called. She had arrived at our previously determined meeting spot, a certain Ministry of Culture and Tourism. She described the place as “creepy” and informed us that she was changing locations. Fine by us. We would do our best to arrive shortly.

We asked an Indian fellow on the street, in English, where to find the downtown and he pointed in the opposite direction. We took out our map, and he quickly identified our error. North was not, as it is habitually the world round, up. Rather, the map had been tilted some 53 degrees in the counterclockwise direction, leaving us pretty much dead wrong in our bearing. We thanked the man and headed back down the street. Meanwhile, a few more brand new jumbo jets screeched overhead, so low I felt I could have hit the landing gear if I had a chosen to hurl a sandal skyward.

That was to be the first of many interactions with Indian and Pakistani fellows in this interesting new city. The Emirates themselves number surprisingly few, and are all quite wealthy. Therefore, in order to build this new city out of the sand, a fair bit of labor needed to be imported. A great many of the workers came from the Indian peninsula, Pakistan, and other Desi countries.

With our new bearings, we began to see the misty outlines of a great spire in the distance, and soon a great many other buildings appeared dwarfed beneath it. This spire was, of course, the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, recently renamed the Burj Khalifa. We suspect this had something to do with Dubai’s recent credit problems, and the massive bailout of the Emerates by its large and more well-funded neighbor, Abu Dhabi. Khalifa, of course, refers to the Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

We had already seen plenty of the Royal team here. Their faces were everywhere, displayed backed by flattering images of the city from space, or an aircraft, looking on sternly in their dishdashes. The Sultan of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, being always positioned slightly higher than his neighboring counterparts.

Soon, we began to be surrounded by larger, more substantial buildings. We passed a number of Russian fur shops, closed grocery stores, and finally restaurants and hotels. We continued to ask for directions and soon found our way to the meeting spot, or at least what we thought was the meeting spot.

By this point we were explosively thirsty, sapped already of moisture by the plane flight, on which the temptation  to drink those tiny bottles of bourbon had done plenty for our spirits, but little for our hydration levels. All the shops had been closed as we rode,  so it was with mouths like sandpaper that we called Claudia to report our current position. She seemed to be nearby, but we could not identify a mutually visible landmark.  Eventually we settled on a nearby, giant luxurious Sheraton, which looked out onto a blue canal that cut through the city. “I believe they call this ‘the creek’”, Scott mentioned.

A passing Indian man grumpily directed us toward a vending machine near the creek, which only sold one thing: tiny bottles of cold water. There was a mild price gouge, but what can a thirsty man in the desert say to change the mind of a cold robotic dispenser?

We sucked down the water and watched the pedestrian traffic go by. It was the labor force of Dubai, on its way to work. Those who worked in offices, of course, sped by in sparkling cars, while the builders, cleaners, and guards walked or rode rusty Hindustan hero bicycles. The water was gone all too soon, and we headed over to the shade of a set of trees, no doubt imported and watered by the Sheraton and waited for Claudia to arrive.

Soon enough a cab pulled up, and out she climbed, wearing her only pair of clothes, and toting her carry-on luggage. We greeted her warmly, and as if sensing through the collective unconscious our reunified momentum, our phone rang with a call from the illustrious Jackson Fu. He was here as well, and was just loading his Speed TR into the back of a cab, curious as to where we should meet.

We had ridden by a particularly interesting Iranian restaurant on our way to the Sheraton, and we figured that might be a good place for breakfast, so we decided to hang out in the shade and wait for the return of the illustrious Mr. Fu.

This happened in remarkably short order. Another cab pulled up and out climbed a grinning Indonesian-Chinese man, his hands still cool to the touch from the air-conditioned cab, looking ready for anything. We helped to unload his bag and his cycle.

It was a Speed TR, much like our own, but one year newer. It sported a slightly more refined system of protection for the planetary transmission, a new rear rack, and like Mr. Fu himself, a generally sleek demeanor.

So excited were we to be in the presence of the one and only, most debonair and illustrious Mr. Fu, that we could not help introducing this new item to the AsiaWheeling trading post: the “Return of the Fu” T-Shirt.

We all exchanged warm regards, introducing Claudia and Mr. Fu, for their first face-to-face encounter, and unfolded our cycles. We could not wheel, however, due to the absent nature of Claudia’s Speed D7, but we were close. We were four wheelers, soon to united with four Dahons, and there was a whole bunch of Persian Gulf waiting to be explored. But first things first. Coffee and breakfast. We  locked our cycles, and dripping with sweat from the walk over, strolled into the freezingly air-conditioned Iranian restaurant. They were, unfortunately, not serving the full menu, but rather than head out on a starved search for sustenance, we settled for the set breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs. We also were given access to a large table from which we could take our fill of middle eastern flatbread, tomatoes, cucumbers, strange neon pink Halal tinned sausage. We feasted and allowed ourselves to dry slightly. Over this humble Iranian breakfast, we hatched our master plan.

And like any great structure, our plan had certain crucial, load-bearing elements. One of these was a fellow by the name of Sid. Sid was a good friend of the illustrious Mr. Fu, and had most graciously offered to host us during our time in Dubai. What we needed was to touch base with this man. It was Saturday in Dubai, and as such the final day of the weekend. So we were in luck. Sid was not at work, but at home, and would be able to receive us.

So it was with little ado that we paid our bill and hailed a van-taxi. Luckily, a great many of the taxis in Dubai are vans, for no smaller vehicle would fit all four of us and all the luggage. The van began to snake its way through the city, one impressive building, followed by another, even more impressing structure.

As I looked around, I found myself commenting internally, and finally externally on the surprisingly tasteful and beautiful nature of these buildings. The architecture of Dubai is certainly unique, sensational even, and it is executed with a certain attention to detail, a certain ratio of dimension, which was quite pleasing. I was so far overwhelmingly impressed.

As we grew closer to our destination, I began to realize that we were heading directly toward the imposing Burj Khalifa, rising in jagged spires, impossibly high above us. Was it possible that the mysterious Sid lived in the shadow of this magnificently chilling spire?

Indeed he did, in a newly finished housing development that contained a number of apartments and a large hotel. The entire development was themed on the old middle eastern clay cities, but studded with large fountains, palm trees, pools and the like.

We pulled up in the cab and Sid sauntered out to meet us, wearing soccer shorts and flip-flops, the epitome of a gentlemen of leisure. He stuck out his hand and with a large smile introduced himself, welcoming us to his home. We looked up at the stunning surroundings, the towering Burj, flanked by the largest fountain in the world, the palm-lined drives, and immediately realized we would be for some time in this gentleman’s debt.

We made our way inside, to find a splendid lobby, sporting a great number of antique looking urns, and up to Sid’s apartment, which was decorated beautifully with a mixture of Indonesian and other exotic relics. He offered us coffee, which he served in a number of delightful, though nondescript tea cups, and one large red souvenir cup with a camel on it. “I got this one here,” he said with a grin.

After having some coffee and connecting to Sid’s most luscious supply of high-speed Internet, we wandered down to the pool for a little dip. It was hot out, and the sun was now blazing in the sky. It was also unexpectedly humid. It’s true that Dubai is a city in the center of a desert, but perhaps due to the presence of the ocean, it is also quite humid.

“This is actually not bad at all for the summer,” Sid explained. “You’re quite lucky.”

After a dip in the pool, we headed out on foot, across the street to a giant palatial hotel complex. It was gorgeous, truly impressive, sporting an intricate system of fountains and pools. We walked right across the center of the pools, along a little walkway, and as we walked, Sid explained to us about the Burj.

The tower had been designed to be the largest in the world, but during the design and construction project, its original dimensions had been eclipsed by other structures, so it had been refined and heightened mid project. This was in part why it had such a distinctive shape.

Sid continued to lead us through the grounds of this massively luxurious hotel and over a wide bridge, past the largest fountain in the world, and into the largest mall in the world. “In Dubai,” Sid explained, “it either has to be the biggest, or the newest, or the most of some category.”

And with that we walked into the giant gaping interior of the largest mall in the world, complete with a savagely populated indoor salt water aquarium full of sharks and sea turtles.

We wandered around the mall for a bit, noticing in particular the intensely fashionable sunglasses and purses carried by the women, and the glitzy watches worn by the men.

One reason this emphasis on flashy peripherals is the uniformity of dress. Many of the men wore the dishdash, and  an even larger proportion of the women here wore the full hijab. The hijab is generally a dark flowing garment that covers almost all of the body, including much of the head with somewhat obfuscating fabric. With the majority of clothing dictated by religion, peripherals were a chance to show wealth. As far as I’m concerned, however, even the hijabs and dishdashes themselves simply reeked of expense, with barely noticeable but intricate patterns of black on black, or white on white, with tastefully placed folds and cuffs.

We ate in the giant food court.  Though before we settled on a joint, we were sure to take a full circuit, including spending a good few minutes curiously examining the Johnny Rocket’s diner. In the end, we opted for your basic Arabian cafeteria food restaurant.

And with trays piled high with hummus, baba ganouj, tabouli, and other unknown but exciting salads, we enjoyed a meal of astonishing quality and freshness for the “food court” of a mall.

This was, of course, all served with steaming hot flatbread. As we dug into the feast, we realized how hungry we had become since our early morning adventures in Iranian breakfast buffets.

Strolling downstairs, we rounded off the meal with a cup of espresso and some lively conversation.

Strolling back to Sid’s house, we realized that we had been sold on Dubai — or at least were beginning to be sold — and that for all the hype and opulence, Dubai was easy on the eyes and comfortable to stroll around.

That evening, we collapsed exhausted into our beds, sleeping the sleep of one who has traveled many miles and finally found an oasis.

We awoke a little after 7:00 am, in the grungy confines of our room at the Hotel Central in Macau.

We quickly packed our things, piled them in one corner of the room, and walked out the door to find an overcast, quiet morning.

We strolled quickly around the corner to a certain pudding restaurant that we had seen the day before . Forgetting that we weren’t in China, we ordered a healthy selection of puddings, which turned out to be nearly $5.00 apiece. Blissfully unaware of the mighty expensive nature of our breakfast, we chased them down with a couple of very milky and none too caffeinated cups of coffee.

From there, we headed out, strolling in search of more coffee and information about hydrofoil rides to Hong Kong. We would need to reach Hong Kong in time to meet with a certain woman by the name of Rose. She had in her possession the key to an apartment where we would be spending the next week.

You see, dear reader, my mother was on her way to visit AsiaWheeling in the field, if you might condescend enough to consider Hong Kong “the field.” So Scott, my mother, my mother’s partner John, and I would be living in an apartment, as we took a brief pause from the trip in order to recuperate, eat non-local foods, purchase nonsense, and generally behave in an un-AsiaWheeling-esque fashion.

So with stomachs full of pudding, we climbed on the cycles, bidding a none too soon farewell to the Hotel Central. Fully loaded and bounding over the cobblestones, we pedaled off toward the ferry terminal. A slight mist began to fall as we rode, but not so intense as to greatly hamper our progress. We rode away from the casino district, along tree-lined streets, past churches, and brutalist housing projects.

There was a decidedly European feel to this new part of the city, and the farther we got from the casinos, the stronger it was. There were lines of expensive, clean, European cars parked along the side of the street, under the shade of old overhanging trees. Men and women walked their dogs and engaged in your stereotypical western Sunday morning newspaper-reading and coffee-drinking traditions. Moss-covered churches and bronze statues of men in feathered hats seemed to dot every corner.

It was Sunday, which was in this city the typical day of rest for domestic help. This meant that a great many off duty servants were also walking the streets, shopping, or carrying large picnic baskets. Many of the domestic servants in Macau and Hong Kong are from Indonesia or the Philippines, and so we would from time to time smell the delightfully telltale Indonesian clove cigarettes as we rode by parks or ethnic grocery stores.

We exited the mossy residential neighborhood and could see the ferry terminal straight ahead. In order to get there, we needed to wheel briefly against traffic. This was unusual for Macau, I guess, for despite my lack of proximity to any of the oncoming traffic, the maneuver produced a fair bit of horn honking. The terminal was quite large, and made of concrete, glass, and turquoise painted metal. Inside, we were able to buy tickets quite easily from an automated machine, though when we attempted to board we were told that additional bicycle passes were required.

Our boat was leaving in just a few moments, so it was with haste that we rushed around the station trying to find the proper place to purchase such a pass. In our hurry, we almost checked the bikes into the extended storage room, rather than onto the boat, but after a bit of sweating and running in circles, each bike was tagged with a long receipt stapled like prize ribbon onto the handlebar post, and we were admitted to a new waiting room. One of the walls of this waiting room was a giant floor-to-ceiling window, which give us a view of the rain outside.

The sea was choppy and gray. Underneath us, a rather large red hydrofoil bounced empty on the water. Soon, a buzzer indicated that it was time to board, and we joined the jostling crowd as it headed down a long gangway and onto a kind of tugboat that served as an extension of the gangway, and from this onto the hydrofoil itself.

Not many people had brought luggage large enough to require the extra tag along with them, so we had the entire forward luggage space to ourselves. This was good, for it seemed two unfolded Speed TRs and both of our packs pretty much filled it.

The ride was quick and startlingly smooth for the choppy sea. We whiled away our time reading about the history of the hydrofoil on the WikiReader, and soon arrived in Hong Kong. We were, of course, by this point starving. A man can go only so far on pudding alone.

So as we hoisted our cycles onto the many flights of escalators that were required to get up to street level, we began taking stock of our available time and constructing a plan. Before we could call Rose, we needed a SIM card, and before that we needed to eat.

To my great surprise, the street level side of the Hong Kong ferry terminal was not a large station (as one might expect for a giant passenger service), but a huge multistory shopping mall. We began walking our bikes around the mall in search of food. The wheels were wet with seawater and rain, so they made a fair bit of squeaking as we traversed the waxed tile floor, drawing all the more attention to what strange beasts we were here in the Hong Kong ferry terminal mall complex.

We finally settled on a Japanese Ramen restaurant. The workers there were kind enough to allow us to store our cycles near the computer terminal they used to manage seating and orders. We sat down and ordered the two largest bowls of Ramen we could find on the menu. Each bowl was nearly $8.00, more than we had spent on 10 bowls of noodles in China.

I waited hungrily while Scott headed off in search of an ATM. He came back laden with plenty of crisp fresh Hong Kong dollars, and shortly after that our noodles arrived. The Ramen was pretty good, not quite as good as Tan Tan Men, our favorite place in Bangkok, but very good. And even as I write now, I find my mouth watering a fair bit over a certain kind of fried gooey tofu they served in the bowl.

SIM cards were easy to find at the 7-11, though not cheap. The Chinese obsession with lucky numbers was alive and well here, and as we had noticed in the advertisements in the mall, most prices were rounded to the nearest figure that contained many eights. The SIM cards were 88 HKD, which was, by the pricing of the trip up until this point, highway robbery, but connectivity was important, so we purchased a couple.

Rose answered after only one ring. She had obviously been expecting us. She spoke very good English, and explained that she had spoken with my mother and knew all about AsiaWheeling. Her son, she explained, was an avid cyclist himself, and on the phone she offered his services as a cycling guide. We thanked her heartily, and she explained to us that it would be very easy to find the apartment. It was essentially a straight shot from the station. Between her directions and Scott’s mental map of the city (he had spent a semester studying at Hong Kong University), we too felt confident we could complete the ride in half an hour or so.  We started the wheel by the Shun Tak ferry terminal in Sheung Wan, where Scott was able to snap this single photograph during the hectic and high-speed ride down Hong Kong Island’s main thoroughfare.

Woefully wrong we were. We ended up riding for quite some time, through gently sprinkling rain, taking turn after wrong turn. In the end, we must have circumnavigated Rose’s apartment some three or four times. Apart from the fact that we were making Rose wait, the ride was quite enjoyable. Hong Kong is a very interesting city to wheel through. It is one of the least cycle friendly cities that we had encountered so far on the trip. There were no bike lanes or shoulders to be found anywhere. The traffic speed was high, and city streets organically turned into highways and back into city streets with such frequency that it was generally impossible to avoid riding from time to time on highways. The system of one-way roads, and the sidewalks that were positively clogged with umbrella wielding pedestrians forced us time and again to be siphoned off our route in one direction or another.

Eventually, however, we found our way to Rose’s door. To be honest, we actually rode past it, and pulled an Uber-Lichtenstein when we heard Rose calling out to us. As we pulled up, we discovered the situation to be even more embarrassing than we had feared. It was not only Rose that we had kept waiting, but her whole family. Rose, a strong confident, Hong Kong-ese woman strode forward and stuck out her hand, introducing us to her family.

We folded up the Speed TRs, and managed to squeeze all five of us into the lift. It was a tight squeeze, and we were all too aware of our drowned rat-esque scent. After we had risen to the 11^th floor, we climbed off the elevator, removed our shoes and entered the apartment.

It was like heaven. Cooled by multiple air conditioners, clean as a whistle, and sporting a truly fantastic view of the harbor and the city. We placed our cycles outside on the sizable balcony, and Rose explained to us how to connect to the lightning fast Internet. It was splendid, like a breath of fresh air. We were getting Megabytes per second down, and hundreds of kilobytes per second up. Amazing.

We hung around chatting about cycling and Hong Kong for a while, before Rose left us to our own devices.

Hong Kong. The perennial half way point of AsiaWheeling. We’d made it. It was time to take a deep breath before plunging into the middle east.

I woke up in our hotel room in Zhuhai and immediately grabbed our hot water pot from the shelf. I filled it with drinking water from the large bubbler in our room, and set it to boiling. We had by this point become quite accustomed to drinking vast quantities of sticky Nescafe in the mornings, while using the in-room Internet connection, and I saw no reason why today should be any different. While the water began to hum toward a boil, I took out my computer and began the endless journey of booting in safe mode, plugging a ridiculously long Ethernet cable into the machine, which sprung forth from a crumbling gauge in the wall.  I slid open our window and looked out onto the Zhuhai skyline. It was a good view we had, including the snaking coastline and the uphill sprawl of the hotel and brothel district. It was a big city, with an impressive number of uniquely styled hotels. Down below me, the streets were being cleaned by mobs of women with brooms, followed closely behind by men with hoses connected to a slowly driving water truck.

We feasted briefly on the surprisingly fast Internet, and headed downstairs. Our bikes were waiting for us where we had left them in a kind of interior courtyard. In the night, the activity of the hotel’s many air conditioners (which seem to have been concentrated above our small courtyard) had resulted in a fair bit of water falling on the bikes. This had the unintended consequence of us climbing aboard the cleanest set of Speed TRs that we’d ridden in a while. Perhaps five minutes into the ride, we stopped at another crispy duck restaurant for breakfast, and another three minutes later we were at the border of Macau.

We looked at the large entrance for trucks and automobiles and decided it was worth a shot. There was no line, so perhaps they might just let us through. As we approached the border, an official came up to us and requested our passports. He began to question us in English. “Where are you from? How long have you been in China? Have you been working in China?” and, most perplexing, “Are you leaving Macau?”

I felt somewhat like the Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket, wanting to respond “Sir, NEGATIVE, sir! Sir, the private believes any answer he gives will be wrong...” But instead, we politely and studiously explained that we were not leaving Macau, but headed there. With a frown, he continued to inspect our passports, and finally handed them back to us, telling us to go wait in line like everybody else. And so we did, wearing our packs and sweating like pigs.

The queues were cordoned off by large polished metal barriers, and in order to proceed with the Speed TRs, we were forced to push them ahead of us. A Macanese standing in the line next to me called out, explaining that I was doing it wrong. In hopes of not offending during my maiden Macanese encounter, I followed his orders, squeezing myself by my own cycle and pulling it now from the front. It was the wrong move, for now I had to continuously turn around to tend to the cycle, which meant that I was constantly in danger of smashing a nearby traveler with my pack as I swung around. Regardless, I thanked the chap and proceeded forward to get my passport stamped. From there, we walked across a meandering covered concrete walkway, past a number of duty-free shops, a fair number of advertisements for casinos, and then into the Macanese customs hall.

We filled out customs forms, which were available in English, Chinese, and Portuguese, and made our way through with little hassle. We walked out the other side of the immigration hall into a totally new world.

It was a decidedly different city. The wide Chinese cement streets were replaced with narrow, curving European bitumen. The largely undecorated Chinese walls were replaced with ornate European-looking facades. This section of the city consisted of small vertical structures, crowded close to the street, and most of the signs were in either English or Portuguese, with only the occasional Chinese character.

There were certainly no more bike lanes here, and our fellow traffic consisted of delivery men zipping around on motor scooters, and quiet expensive sedans that sailed scentlessly by us. We worked our way farther into the city, and soon began to see ahead of us a massive and far-reaching bridge, which together with a few other, quite majestic causeways, connected this part of the mainland to the nearby island of Taipa. The bridge extended over a futuristic ferry terminal. We were also riding on the left now, something we had not done since we left Thailand.

We began to see the gaudy facades and telltale giant gold windows of casinos, and decided to head toward that part of town, in search of an ATM and a cheap hotel. The ATM was no problem, but cheap hotels seemed few and far between in this gambling paradise. We laid our things down next to the bank of ATMs along a very European looking boulevard and sat down to open up the laptop and begin investigating our lonely planet PDFs. As we sat, we realized that we were strange beasts here in Macau, but for a very different reason than we had been in China or southeast Asia. These people were wealthy, well dressed, and significantly westernized. We were sweaty, filthy, with the beginnings of mustaches, wearing Vietnamese motorcycle helmets, scrutinizing the screen of a MacBook Pro, next to a large pile of all our reeking worldly possessions.

We found evidence in the lonely planet that there were indeed a few cheap hotels in this town, and after making note of the names and addresses proceeded forth, asking for directions in English and receiving cautious, grammatically perfect , and well accented responses.

These studious directions led us rather precisely to the hotel about which we had read, and a few circumnavigations of the steely gray building that housed the place led us eventually to a large, metal, barred door, which opened onto a dingy set of stairs. Scott ran up to investigate while I shepherded our fully loaded cycles. He came down with a frown, and explained that they were booked solid. We continued to ask the locals for recommendations for cheap hotels, and sure enough we found a most studious and helpful response. We rolled this time up to a crumbling behemoth of a hotel, by the name of the Hotel Central.

This place, too, required us to circumnavigate a few times in order to find the proper entrance.  The lobby was large and filthy, so we rolled the cycles inside. We leaned them against the front desk and began to haggle over rooms. There would be no more of that wonderful Chinese value for money, not for a while now. So we decided to get used to paying more than $20.00 a night, and settled on this place. A bellhop-like woman showed us where we could park the cycles, inside a kind of musty storeroom that showed signs of once having been a lavish smoking room, and after cautioning some Russian tourists in line behind us against the cheaper, windowless rooms that we had inspected and found to be too dark and foul even for your humble correspondents, we headed upstairs and threw down our belongings.

The room itself was filthy, but manageable, and most importantly had two windows, one of which was almost completely blocked by a giant inoperable air conditioner. It wasn’t a particularly hospitable environment, but we had no plans to spend much time in the room anyway.

Our last day in Shenzhen was spent, unsurprisingly, wheeling.

We had a number of missions to complete, not least of which was the production of Arabic business cards for Scott’s sister, a Ms. Claudia Norton. She was to be accompanying us for the next chapter of the trip, starting in Dubai and ending in Turkey.  Finding someone to print the business cards on good ivory card stock was not hard, and for just a little less than USD 7.00, we had 200 cards printed on paper that was nicer than the paper we had used in the States.

As two men and one woman traveling in the Middle East, we had been advised by our board that, depending on the city, we could expect difficulty in booking single hotel rooms, because it is technically illegal for unmarried, unrelated, and differently sexed individuals to be in the same room alone together. Therefore, in an effort to save money and maintain team morale, we had begun looking into the option of representing Claudia and me as man and wife (Scott being Claudia’s brother, of course, was in the clear).  At first, it seemed that the best move might be to actually proceed with a full marriage while in the Gulf. Perhaps Jackson Fu could be my best man, and Scott could present the bride…  Then, at the terminus of Claudia’s time with AsiaWheeling, we would use a common law that allows a divorce to take place upon the sending of three text messages. Unfortunately after looking into the process further, it proved prohibitively expensive to execute a valid marriage in the Gulf, as much fun as it would be. Getting married, upon further consideration, might be a rather disrespectful thing to do. So amidst a clamor of jokes between Claudia, Scott, the Illustrious Mr Fu, and myself, we decided to forge a new plan.

(Due to intervention of our better judgment, this document has been removed from AsiaWheeling.com… If you’re particularly interested in viewing it, however, we just might entertain personal requests, which may be made using the contact button to your right.)

You see, dear reader, through the advantageous use of proxies, we were able to find a scan of a marriage license from the fine county of Kent, in Michigan, and, with a small amount of Photoshop work, create a decent looking license, which featured, among other fictitious characters, our own dear Stewart Motta. This, we figured, would aid us in the event that we were denied access to a hotel on the basis of our chromosomes, but we hoped we would never have to use it.

With all our tasks in Shenzhen completed, we relaxed into a day of meandering.  One quick stop in the electronics market proved useful in providing a long-range external WiFi antennae complete with a the BackTrack distribution of Linux, which specializes in network security analysis.

Eventually we settled down to a interesting meal of spicy shrimp bathed in oil, at a favorite restaurant of Scott’s when he resided in Hong Kong.

Complete with lightly fried flatbread, green beans, and an unknown green noodle delicacy, it reminded us of how very much we adore the food of this country.

Wheeling home to our mod-marvelous hotel, we reveled in the mega-city that Shenzhen had become.

The next morning we awoke, feeling well rested and excited to head to the next city. We milked all the time we could out of our luxurious room, and its speedy Internet connection, boiling water with our in-room water heater, and drinking cup after cup of sticky Nescafe. Plenty hopped up on caffeine, and having listened to perhaps one too many late 90s smash hits while working, we checked out, heading for the printer. Halfway there, we realized we were starving and called a waypoint at a crispy duck restaurant.

For about a dollar per person, we were able to fill our bellies with warm and succulent pieces of duck, sticky white rice, and a small pile of wilted greens. Delightful. Back on the cycles, we picked up Claudia’s cards, which looked amazing, and sported our recently approved translation of AsiaWheeling into Arabic, and also a few copies of the fake marriage certificate.

With cards and forged documents, in hand, we headed out of the city, wheeling hard toward a certain port, not far from Shenzhen’s center, by the name of Shekou. It was well marked by the municipal signs, and the sun shone bright. Though the roads on which we traveled were more like large eight-lane highways, they were flat, and traffic was both light and accommodating. The 25 km ride slipped by effortlessly. And soon we were out of Shenzhen proper, and into a kind of seaside industrial netherworld, which might have been chilling were it not so richly foliated and bathed in bright sunlight.

We were, of course, riding once again fully loaded. However, strangely enough, it was not the weight of the baggage that was most uncomfortable, it was the fact that our packs covered our backs, reducing evaporation, and trapping a fair amount of sweat between the luggage and our bodies. This sweat had a way of running down our backs and out from underneath our helmets, stinging the eyes, and running down the back of my legs, drenching my pants. It was, of course, no help that the sun was blasting and the air was thick with humidity.

All in all, it was a positive wheel, though. And we arrived at the Shekou port after only a few wrong turns, a number of very helpful Chinese pedestrians, and no small number of water stops.

The port was large, but the boat to Zhuhai was small. We managed by luck of the draw to arrive there just as the next boat was boarding, so we quickly purchased tickets and folded up the cycles. On board the boat, we finally relaxed, plopping down, sopping with sweat into our seats.

As the sweat began to evaporate, we took a look around the small craft. There were maybe 100 people on the boat, and most were unlike any we had yet seen in China. It was hard to put a finger on what made them different. They were certainly richer and more westernized, broadcasting this with their dress and mannerisms, but also they were segregated by dress and mannerisms in a way that was more pronounced than we had experienced in western China. There were the vacationing families, the businessmen, the dejected teenage rockers, the studious bureaucrat… all quite fascinating, and all slowly turning greenish due to the choppy seas and the tiny boat.

Our dear Mekong Bureau Chief, Stew Motta, had, while we were in Kunming, explained to us how the Chinese had a very impressively incognito way of vomiting. We had, during the 45 minutes of this ride in a small boat on choppy seas, a fine opportunity to study this method ourselves. It was discrete, silent, and precise, a far cry from the noisier and more dramatic American hurl.

While our fellow passengers struggled to contain themselves, we remained unaffected. Perhaps the last six months of travel had hardened us. We decided to purchase a drastically overpriced bag of peanuts from a kind of bar/concession stand at the front of the boat and returned to our seats.

Thanks be to Jah, Scott and I continued to suffer no adverse effects from the motion of the boat, and climbed off in Zhuhai, quite invigorated and excited to continue the journey. We unfolded the Speed TRs, and strapped our technology bags on the rear racks, walking the bikes down the terminal toward this new city.

If you’ll allow me, dear reader, I’d like to take a moment to discuss the city of Zhuhai. Zhuhai was for us a stop en route to Macau. Macau is an old Portuguese trading city, formerly a colony of Portugal, until the year 1999, when it was returned to the Chinese. Macau has since turned into the largest gambling center on the globe, eclipsing Las Vegas, Nevada some time during 2007.

Zhuhai is the Chinese city that nestles up against Macau, in much the same way that Shenzhen nestles up against Hong Kong. And as such, Zhuhai has become somewhat of a tourist city, sporting over a million international tourists a year and almost 4 million Chinese tourists at the same time. Other than its proximity to Macau, Zhuhai is famous for its story of urban renewal. Not long ago, it was a filthy Chinese industrial port town. But in recent years, the streets have been re-paved and it has been developed for waterfront hotels to facilitate tourism to and from Macau.

It would no doubt be an interesting place. We hoisted our cycles onto the escalator and rode up from sea level to the platform above. There, we paused for a moment as Scott discussed our trajectory and possible hotel choices with the women at the Zhuhai tourist desk. They recommended a certain hotel, which would offer us a room, including a sea view for just a little over USD 30.00. After traveling for some time in China, this seemed not only run of the mill, but slightly overpriced, so we headed out on our own, climbing on the Speed TRs to wheel toward the city center. As we rode, it became increasingly clear that this was was a city unlike any we had been to in China. It was startlingly clean, with manicured trees and hedges lining the roads. The large, separated bicycle lanes were clogged with cars and motorcycles, recently unloaded from the ferry. The air was moist and cool, and dark gray clouds had rolled in. We rode on toward the city center, through the fresh sea breeze, doing our best to avoid  the odd car that thought to beat the traffic by riding in the bike lane. We rode on, fully loaded, skirting Zhuhai’s coastline and eventually turning in toward the city.

Our plan was to scan the skyline, find the most Klingon-looking hotel, then ride to it and price its room. In the event that the room was too expensive, even after bargaining, we would head to the next most violent looking piece of hotel architecture and try there. There were certainly plenty of candidate hotels here in Zhuhai. In fact, the only businesses here, it seemed, were hotels, restaurants, bars, and brothels. We made our way into hotel after hotel. All of them were shockingly expensive by Chinese standards, they all also advertised an hourly rate. “It’s the weekend,” the front desk would explain in Chinese, “We can charge this price, because we know we’ll be full by this evening.”

The hourly rates were quite high. Perhaps a third of the nightly rate, suggesting that hourly rental was a lucrative business here. There were also, of course, the prostitutes themselves. One can never be quite sure, but many of the women walking around on the streets, appeared to be there in a professional capacity, and as we rode from hotel to hotel, they would call out to us, inviting us into a restaurant or bar.

The sun began to sink low, and still we had not found a hotel. In desperation, we parked the bikes near a shop and purchased a couple drinks. While we sat on the curb, discussing our next plans, the security guard associated with the nearest hotel came over to us and explained, in quite a humble and apologetic way, that we were making his hotel look shabby and that he wanted us to leave as quickly as possible. This we did, but not without a fair bit of foot dragging and drink finishing. We headed back up the hill toward a new part of town, where, low and behold, we found our algorithm pointing us toward none other than the same hotel that had been recommended at the station.

In we went, and USD 30.00 later we were shown up to room 888. Eight is, of course, a very lucky number and such a room should only be given to valued guest and VIPs. That’s AsiaWheeling, I guess.

With our stuff finally off our backs, we headed out in search of food. We found it not far from our hotel, at a northern Chinese restaurant. We ordered a considerably large quantity of food and relaxed into the meal.

Lingering quite some time after we had already stuffed ourselves, we whiled away quite a few hours, discussing our views on China, on governments in general, on policing, on American immigration policy, and the like. It was a fine last meal, and as we strolled back toward the giant Klingon block that was our hotel, I bid a silent farewell to our first chapter in mainland China. It had been a wild ride. Our next destinations would be much tamer, more expensive, and more westernized. But perhaps that was what we needed.

Our second morning in the glorious town of Jianshui began with a visit to a small Chinese Muslim joint, where we feasted on thick Hui noodles, in spicy tomato broth. Our bowls were served on a table that had been mostly converted into a large barbecue grill. As we sat down to the noodles, the owner of the shop took a seat opposite from us and began to make small talk over the large grill. On the grill were a great number of semi-fermented bits of tofu.

He shoveled a small pile of these over on to the section of the grill that was hot, and they began to slowly sizzle. He continued to chat with us as he poured a mixture of chili oil, vinegar and a salty orange powder in a couple of small bowls.

He handed us the small bowls of spicy dipping sauce and began taking the piping hot bits of tofu off the grill and giving them to us.

So as we ate our soup, we now were able to punctuate the experience with little spicy bits of oily crispy tofu. The meal was stupendous, and it turned out the tofu bits were a free and standard addition to any meal at this restaurant. With full stomachs, we felt compelled to execute a savage wheel.

We began by heading up and out of the old city, toward the western outskirts of town. On our way, we passed a large market at the opening of which was a gigantic crowd of mostly young men in the midst of an even more gigantic crowd of red Honda motorcycles.

After some in-depth investigation, we found that this was not what we had first guessed – some kind of a red Honda rally – but a mixture of bikes for sale, and motorcycle drivers who were offering their services as couriers of goods purchased inside the interior vastness of the Jianshui Sunday market.

We decided that such a hubbub at the entrance to the market certainly warranted some exploration inside. It was, of course, no Kashgar Sunday market, but it was certainly lively and filled with all kinds of interesting goods. We wandered the interior for some time, keeping our eyes peeled for possible project K9 purchases, but eventually settled only on a small 15 cent pair of folding scissors. These scissors would later prove to pay for themselves one thousand fold over the remainder of the journey.

We exited the market and headed farther uphill, cresting the highest point of the city of Jianshui, where we turned left and headed down toward the other side of the fertile valley which surrounded the place. Jianshui itself is on a hill, which rises like a fortress out of the fertile surrounding valley.

We began our descent into the valley, which took us through a large cluster of stonemasons, all of whom seemed to be in the tombstone business. Perhaps because of the proximate availability of stone, or because of elaborate local burial customs or perhaps even because of the centralization of industry by the Chinese government, it seems Jianshui had become a hub for complex and ornate tombstones, sarcophagi, and the like.

We wheeled down an endless street of masons, feeling compelled from time to time to cover our ears against the shrill cry of a circular saw or electric sander. More often than not though, the stonework was done by hand, at great expense of time, simply using a hammer and chisel.

Once we had made it through the street of stonemasons, we came upon a giant snarling traffic jam. The road was small and packed to the brim with buses and cars. All the vehicles seemed to be burning oil like crazy, and try as we might, there was not even room enough for a bicycle to make its way through the mess.

In place of a sidewalk, there was merely a sandy drop-off into an open (though rather dry) sewer. It looked like we were stuck. So we waited and sucked exhaust for about a half hour, as the traffic slowly worked its way along. Then finally there came an opportunity for a lichtenschtein.

We took it, and followed a tiny concrete path, much too small for anything but the tiniest of cars. Our road fell steeply from the main road, and then leveled off as it ran along the wet flat floor of the valley. We wheeled past a group of old women and men seeking shelter from the mid-day sun beneath the canopy of a solitary tree. A man straightened up from his water pipe to bark a greeting as we made our way past.

Now we were alone in a sea of green rice, wheeling along the brilliant white arc of this small concrete road. The colors seemed almost too intense for reality. The complexity of the rice and the blue of the sky all the more brilliant behind polarized lenses.

We could see the traffic still raging in a gridlock to our right, so when the concrete strip turned back toward the main road, we set out once again on the small raised-dirt pathways that separated plots of rice. From these, we found our way to a low-lying thick brick wall that acted as a separator between the rice fields and the stream of rubbish that came from the highway. We hoisted our Speed TRs onto this wall and made our way along it, eventually ducking under the highway.

In the space below the overpass, we encountered two Chinese children. It appeared we had interrupted a romantic encounter, and we apologized, quickly making our way onto a new road. This new road wound by two large swimming complexes, one was a vast and crowded chlorinated pool, complete with diving board and water slide. The price of entry was about 40 cents. The other was a large green pond, which sported a great deal of algal and lily-pad growth. Entrance to this swimming zone was only about 7 cents. However, lacking swimming trunks, we refrained from both of these tempting options.

From there we headed on, out of the greater Jianshui urban block and out into the open tranquility of the rice paddies. We now rode on a large, brand new, completely empty two-lane concrete road, which was suspended over an expanse of deep green agricultural land. The green of the crops was so saturating, and the fragrance of rice so thick in the air, that there was little we could do but allow the beauty of all that was around us to carry us forward.

We came around a corner and could see, nestled in the arid hills ahead of us, an ancient Chinese town. Once spotted, it seemed obvious this was to be our next waypoint. Taking only a few false turns, we successfully made our way into the center of the old quarter of this city. Inside the old quarter, we found a set of giant gates that marked the entrance to some kind of ancient walled compound.

Looked like an interesting wheel… We parked our bikes in the shade of the large wall and began chatting with a group of uniformed fellows to investigate whether or not we might wheel into the ancient walled compound. The answer was resoundingly “no.” Furthermore, we would be charged to enter, even if we followed their rules and did it on foot. Our interest in the ancient citadel diminished rapidly upon hearing this news.

So we took a water break in the shadow of the wall, and headed back out in search of more adventure.

Outside the ancient city, we decided to take a left and strike out on an old road that ran parallel to the highway which had brought us to Jianshui.

We were not sure of our next waypoint, but we were confident  there would be Chinese villages scattered along this road, some of which would contain establishments that were serving up noodles.

So on we rode. The first hamlet that we came to was very small and very poor. There were no restaurants in town, and we saw only two signs of life (apart from livestock). One was a group of old men, smoking water pipes and playing Mahjong, the other was a lone, totally naked, elderly woman, who was wandering the streets in an obviously drugged haze. We rode by her unsure of which way to look, and continued through the remainder of the town, which put us back onto the sun-drenched road, running roughly parallel to the large toll road that had brought us into Jianshui.

By this point we were becoming quite hungry and thirsty. We could see signs on the distant road, which declared to the traffic heading our way that there was another town, by the name of Ba Xin (坝心), not far from us. It would likely take less time to ride on to this city and find more food and water there than to turn around, so we headed on, through a cleft in the mountains. Soon enough, the road we were on swung hard to the right and became very sandy, the concrete mostly crumbled into gravel.

We wheeled under the highway and began traveling parallel to it on the other side now. The reason for the sorry state of the road became apparent as we approached Ba Xin. A large stone harvesting operation was in full swing outside  the city. We wheeled past huge crowds of men, breaking stone by hand using repeated strikes of a sledge hammer. They all had cigarettes clenched in their mouths and frowned into their work. Most of them took a break to scrutinize us as we rode by. Some waved.

A brief uphill section took us into the heart of Ba Xin.

There we found ourselves starving, rather parched, and quite thrilled to have arrived. The first problem we solved was the starving one, though it was initially more of a stop-gap measure. We called a waypoint at a local bakery, and for less than 25 cents purchased five pastries.

These hit our systems with a thrilling burst of blood sugar and lucidity, and propelled us on to the grocery store, where we purchased some similarly priced bottles of drinking water.

At the grocery store, we asked for directions to a street where we might find noodle shops, and armed with that information set out. Our search took us to the center of the city, where there was a vast round-about, in the center of which was what looked like a giant flying saucer skewered by a flagpole. From there, we were able to head up to the street of noodles. There were three or four restaurants to choose from, most of which were empty or contained only one or two people; but a restaurant at the end of the street seemed relatively crowded, so we chose that one. Outside was a small group of old men who appeared to be oscillating between smoking from a large steel water pipe, and engaging in schtick with one another. Inside were a group of school girls slurping huge piles of fried noodles from a plate.

We were warmly greeted by the advance guard of old, water pipe-smoking men. They paused from smoking 50 cent packs of Chinese cigarettes through the giant metal pipe, and smiled at us. They seemed a bit shy, and we were hungry, so we politely acknowledged them and passed on toward the kitchen, from which the tempting smell of fried noodles was emanating. The smell was intoxicating. I did my best to order a couple of the same. In the meantime Scott sought out a table for us.

As we waited for our noodles to arrive, we chatted with the school girls sitting next to us. They seemed interested in practicing their English, and even more interested in blushing, giggling nervously, and pushing each other. We did our best to be amiable, and after a short while, the children departed and our noodles arrived. In my supremely bad attempts at Chinese/pantomime communications, I had failed to order the school-girl special, but had successfully  ordered two totally different dishes of cold spicy peanut noodles. The noodles were delicious and startlingly cheap, likely hand pulled in the back of the shop.

Once we had finished the noodles, we rejoined the gents outside, to chat and do bicycle schtick with them. They were very interested to hear that the Speed TRs were, in fact, made in China, and glad to hear that we enjoyed the local cold noodles. We explained that we had come from Jianshui, and they tut-tutted about city folk, while heartily congratulating us on having made it this far. When the time was ripe, we bid them farewell, and climbed back on the Speed TRs headed for Jianshui.

The ride back was glorious. It was hard and fast, with some very good stretches of long downhill, followed by gnarly climbs. The sun was sinking low and the dry heat of the day was quickly being replaced by the comfortable temperatures of evening in the desert. We encountered a bit of traffic again in the same stretch of road we had on the way out, just before the street of the stonemasons. It was less thick, though, and we were able to take advantage of the small size of our steeds and weave through the traffic, passing hundreds of cars, and capitalizing on the breaks in traffic made by motorcycles. Soon we were through the worst of it, and climbing back up into the city.

We crested the highest point in Jianshui just as the sun was setting. I paused at the top to wait for Scott and watched as a dog that had just killed a chicken walked by with the corpse in its teeth, leaving a trail of blood drips on the pavement. Just then Scott arrived.

There was only one question: where to feast? And the answer seemed pretty straightforward. So we coasted downhill toward the same restaurant where we had eaten the night before. Our friend was thrilled to see us. Once we ventured with him over to the cooler where all the ingredients were on display, he insisted that we get four dishes rather than our usual three. This we were happy to do, since after such an incredible wheel, we were starving. And at the end, the bill was a fraction even of what it had been the night before. We tried our best to pay him more money but he became offended and gruffly refused us.

Once again, as new customers came in, he would show us off as his two American friends who were so Chinese. It felt great to be such a VIP.

We parted with warm regards, and headed back to the hotel for some much deserved sleep.

It was around 4:00 in the morning in Hekou, China, when the Sim City 2000 theme song rang out once again calling us to action. There was a slight mist falling, as we rode the still empty and glistening streets toward the bus station, which lay deep in the heart of the import-export/prostitution part of town. When we got to the station, our half-sized bus to Jianshui (建水) was idling, as though waiting for us. There was no extraction of extra luggage charges here. In China, it seems, people are expected to be transporting large things, and the Speed TRs were treated as a welcome addition to the belly of the bus. We climbed on and immediately fell asleep.

When I awoke, we were driving through wide open country, rocky and arid, with scrubby vegetation clinging to rolling and gravely hills. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and looked around. It looked like Wyoming.

The roads were brand new, wide and inviting. As we rode, the bus passed through a great many tolls, demonstrating that it was also not cheap to drive this route. The cars that rode alongside us were Japanese and European and quite new-looking. This part of Yunnan had money… where it came from though, is perhaps best left to speculation in the comments.

We stopped at a gas station to refuel the bus, and a woman came on board, peddling from a steaming bucket of Chinese-style corn on the cob. I was quite surprised when the majority of people on the bus actually purchased ears, and for the price of about 13 cents an ear, Scott and I were finally tempted to do the same. As we munched away on what I must admit was a chewy and rather distasteful cob (at least by Iowa standards), we humored our fellow passengers who, now that the foreigners had awoken, were very interested in chatting, and in particular to hear whether or not we approved of the corn.

The roads grew larger, and the traffic denser, and soon we were swooping through a great clover-shaped round about, making our way into Jianshui. The bus stopped in the outskirts of town, not at a bus station, but just at the side of the road, in a large intersection. We climbed out, and the dry hot air engulfed us. After so many weeks of humidity, we had come to cherish these dry climates. The sun was exceedingly bright in the cloudless blue sky, and after unloading the cycles from the bottom of the bus, we were quick to put on the Maui Jims and Panama hats.

As the bus pulled away, we were surrounded by an interesting collection of characters, most of them equipped with small three-wheeled goods transportation vehicles. This fellow was particularly dashing.

We strapped our luggage to our cycles and headed toward town. We rode by a number of very tempting giant Chinese business hotels, many of them featuring large KTV centers. We were headed for the older part of town. You see, dear reader, Jianshui is actually a rather old city, known for its large population of the Muslim “Hui” minority.   Once walled and gated against outside attack, some parts of the wall and the great central gate still exist, and it was these that we were looking for. Unfortunately, we were not sure where they were. The city was large, by anything other than Chinese standards, and as far as we could tell it was just giant brand new boulevards and huge (probably mostly empty) business hotels in every direction.

We finally reached an intersection at the top of a long gently sloping hill, and saw a tree-lined street. There had been very little green for the entirety of the ride hitherto, so we decided to take a licht onto this road. It turned out to be serendipitous, for instantly not only were we granted a cool shady thoroughfare, but we began to see the telltale terra-cotta roofs of an old Chinese city. It was then that we realized that other than the corn, we had eaten very little and were seriously lacking in the caffeine department. To rectify this, we called a waypoint at a news stand, where Scott requested a recommendation for a tasty local noodle house. It happened to be that a passing Chinese woman overheard his request and offered to lead us to exactly such a place, if we would follow her on her moped. This we happily agreed to. As an added bonus, she took bishop and led us directly into the old city.

The noodle spot was incredible, specializing in a local delicacy called Mi Xie, which is a tomato-based, spicy pork noodle dish.

We slurped and fell quickly into the mists of noodle ecstasy. Once the mists had cleared, we were free to look at the city of Jianshui with new eyes. This part of town was markedly different from what we had seen earlier. The streets were cobblestone, and few cars dared venture in. The majority of foot traffic consisted of what appeared to be wealthy Chinese women carrying shopping bags. Basically, Jianshui was doing just fine.

Refueled and refreshed, though still drastically under-caffeinated, we headed out into the old city in search of a hotel. We found a great many of them with little difficulty. Most were of a rather distinctive style, which I had not yet had the pleasure of encountering in my travels. The exterior of these hotels was painted and carved with a great many ornate panels, mostly in shades of turquoise, yellow, and red. These panels covered each of the balconies and were removed or folded back once the room was rented. We toured a great many of these, all of which were quite affordable. We were, of course, interested in accessing the Internet from our room, so it took a fair bit longer to find the right place, but when we did, we were so thoroughly ecstatic about it, that the prolonged searching felt more the justified.

The place was of that same exciting new variant that we discussed previously, except with that Chinese business hotel flare that we had come to know and love during our time in Hekou. Our room was immaculately clean, with Internet, in-room water bubbler, startlingly white sheets and bedspreads, a delightful balcony, in-room tea set, a gigantic television, which we were able to hook up via RCA to our computers for broadcast of hi-fidelity American hip hop tunes, and all for about 16.00 USD a night. We threw down our things and wasted little time in climbing back on the cycles.

We headed out into the city in search of coffee. This proved exceptionally difficult, and finally we were forced to settle for a box of Nescafe packets. We headed from the Nescafe to search for a small Chinese restaurant that might be willing to grant us free hot water, or perhaps a cup of hot tea into which we might dissolve the artificial, though necessary, brew. We managed to stumble upon an unassuming little shop, where a tall Chinese man was lounging and reading a newspaper.

We sat down and ordered two teas and two cups of hot water. For the tea, he headed over to a very old and special looking greasy cardboard tube, out of which he pulled two large nuggets of fragrant dry tea. He filled our cups and we began to chat. Soon we had gone through many cups of tea, as the chap guided us through the arc of flavor which one experiences after many soakings of the leaves.

We found ourselves even getting somewhat embarrassed, as the punk Americans who had the audacity to try and drink coffee in Jianshui. We asked him a little bit about the restaurant. It was a very down-home version of one of those Chinese choose-from-the-bank-of-ingredients joints, and this fellow was the proprietor and chef. He had been running the restaurant for over 20 years, and seemed to be somewhat of a local wiseman, evidenced by a number of people who came to him to ask advice on unknown topics during our time there.

When we finally left to continue our wheel, the man refused to take any money from us. It seems he had taken a bit of a shine to AsiaWheeling, and we had certainly taken a shine to him, so we vowed to come back before we left Jian and eat dinner with him. In the meantime there was wheeling to do.  Back on the cycles, we headed north, out of the city into the surrounding countryside.

The natural landscape of this part of China is semi-arid, but the people of the city had dug an elaborate system of irrigation ditches that allowed them to grow rice, in addition to all manner of other plant life. I was very impressed by the massive diversity of crops which were being grown in this small fertile valley, and even more impressed with how heterogeneous were the crops that were being grown: greens, corn, herbs in greenhouses, beans, rice, livestock… they all seemed to be coexisting in this little artificial green zone. It was beautiful.

We were getting a little peckish just as we were wheeling by a group of Chinese gentleman who were harvesting carrots from a large muddy plot. They had a small flatbed auto-rickshaw that they were filling with carrots and we wheeled up to see if they might be interested in selling us a couple to munch on.

When we arrived, they were so delighted to see us wheeling up on the speed TRs that it was all we could to to walk away without a giant bundle of free carrots.

Jianshui was quickly climbing the ladder in terms of favorite places on our journey.

As we were munching carrots, and doing our best to relate to the carrot-pulling chaps, we noticed a large stone obelisk looming in the distance on the top of a hill overlooking Jianshui.

What was this, we asked our new carrot-pulling friends. They seemed to have little interest or knowledge of the place, but Scott and I found it rather intriguing. We decided it would be a good waypoint, and with hearty farewells, headed out in search of a means to climb up to its base for a better investigation.

To reach the obelisk, we had to make our way across the artificially fertile valley into which we had wheeled in search of adventure and carrots.This meant taking the Speed TRs across the web of raised dirt walkways that separated the plots of irrigated land.

Luckily the cycles were more than up to the task.

On the other side of the great irrigated valley, we found ourselves in a much older looking settlement. We took a number of wrong turns, climbing a number of crumbling brick roads, none of which seemed to get us any closer to our goal. We finally called an uberlichtenschtein near a small child defecating in the street, and eventually made our way from there to a dirt road that appeared to be the only remaining option which had any chance of getting us closer to the obelisk. So on we rode, sheltered from the afternoon sun by a canopy of thick, bushy foliage. The obelisk was now looming very close, towering over us in fact, but we had no idea how to get to it, save trespassing across what looked like a large fenced-in grape-growing operation.

It was then that we pulled over to ask a group of women and children about how to access the obelisk. The women seemed thrilled to meet foreigners this far out of town and were more than happy to tell us at great length that one had to circle around to the other side of the hill in order to get up to the obelisk.

And so we did. The dirt road we had been taking eventually became paved, and merged with a larger road, headed toward the other side of the mountain. The main purpose of this road, however, was obviously not to serve traffic to the obelisk. Our fellow travelers were all large mining trucks that lumbered by, clanking and emitting great clouds of smoke and dust.

The drivers of the trucks seemed thrilled to see us working our way down the road, and were more than happy to honk (deafeningly) and wave emphatically at us. We saw a giant unintelligible sign in Chinese and decided this must be the road to the obelisk, so we turned.

Now we were climbing uphill, over a rough rocky path. As we gained elevation, the mining operation began to spread out to our right, and the vastness of the artificial fertile valley on our left. Soon, the road we were riding became too steep, gravely, and hard to follow, and we parked the bikes.

From there we headed forth on foot, climbing up the last bits of rocky soil to find ourselves at the base of a giant obelisk. What exactly the purpose of this strange tower was, we will likely never know, but the feeling of finally reaching it was intoxicating.

We spent some time at the top of the hill, overlooking the valley and the mining operation, studying the tower, which itself turned out to be made of large stone blocks, and exploring the general vicinity.

With the sun beginning to sink low in the sky, we climbed back on the cycles, and headed back to town, cutting once again through the irrigated valley, and climbing back up into Jianshui’s old city.

At the top of the hill, we stumbled upon a large community effort to harvest great bucketfuls of water from the community well, which were carefully transferred into the kind of large plastic vessels that often contain gasoline.

We passed the people drawing water, and headed toward the same small restaurant at which we had enjoyed tea earlier that day.

The owner seemed to be expecting us, and met us at the door with a kind of knowing grin. We spent the rest of that evening feasting on pork and greens, associating with the owner and a few other patrons who trickled into the two-and-a-half-table restaurant as the night went on. The owner seemed quite proud of us, and with a large smile explained to the other patrons how we spoke very good Chinese, used chopsticks well, and could handle spicy food.

It felt great, like we had been invited into a kind of Jianshui secret society. At the end of the meal, the owner quoted us a price for the food that was so small, even by Chinese standards, that we felt compelled to reverse bargain with him to ensure that he was not suffering a loss due to our dining with him.

We parted on the very best of terms, shaking hands warmly with everyone in the restaurant and riding through the warm night air back to the air-conditioned luxury of our hotel.

We awoke hungry  in our comfortable and roomy hotel room in Sa Pa. I guess the dinner of Bia Hoi and unborn chicken had not been quite enough for us. We headed out in search of Pho, and found and ate a fatty bowl of it with very little expenditure of time or money.

Now, escaping the Pho joint without letting everyone in a giant group of local Vietnamese men ride the Speed TRs and try on the Panama hats and sunglasses was a completely different story. It seemed that we spent easily double the amount of time spent on the entire Pho mission just navigating this little gauntlet. Finally, we were free to head out in search of coffee and more wheeling advice.

Both were quite easy to find at a coffee shop just down the road. Here in Sa Pa we were back in high tea country, so unfortunately the locals did not drink coffee as they had in Saigon and Hanoi. This made the black gold a little harder to find and more expensive than than it had been up to this point in Vietnam. As the result, this coffee shop was more of a tourist joint, and in it we met a Vietnamese-American woman, who told us of a certain waterfall, up in the mountains beyond and above Sa Pa. It would be a nice, easy, inclined ride, she explained, over her mocha-caramel-whipped-o-chino. Scott and I looked at each other. “Sounds great,” we agreed.

And we were off again, this time up and out of Sa Pa. And once again, with our departure from the city, the view opened up into a jaw-dropping vista of indescribable grandeur. As we grew farther and farther from the city of Sa Pa, the buildings that clung to the mountainside began to change, and the people who lived in them and worked in the land around us became more unique, less touched by the outside world.  The road simply got more and more beautiful, and the whole time we rode, we passed perhaps only one other vehicle. It was as though we had the mountain to ourselves.

We stopped at a particularly savage vista to take a few glam shots of us and the Speed TRs, when we were approached by a few young lads from the neighboring hamlets. One of them, presumably the leader, carried a small plastic bottle attached to his belt, in which he kept small snakes that he had caught and killed. On his finger he carried two small birds that, despite the fact that he waved them around , appeared to be permanently attached (live) to him. His crew were all younger, and were interested in, but wary of your humble correspondents. They came over to take a look at the camera when it was sitting on the grass photographing us.

We decided that these young lads might be, in fact, budding photographers and encouraged them to try out Scott’s Olympus, but they seemed nervous about the thing, and just getting them to touch it was quite a task.

Soon the leader of the gang began to give us the signal to get out, so we did.

We wheeled off the small road that we had taken out of Sa Pa and onto a large mountain road. Still traffic was very very light, but from time to time on this one we would pass motorcycles, and even the odd small truck. We were getting plenty hungry; our breakfast of Pho long turned into energy for cycling the elevation change, and just when we were starting to think about drastic maneuvers, a roadside fruit stand appeared on the horizon. We wheeled up to it and feasted on a kilogram or so of high country plums. These turned out to be some of the best plums I’d ever had in all my meandering life.

The scenery around us just never ceased to amaze, with a new type of farming taking hold. This consisted of large networks of rope and branches, hammered into the 45º pitch of the mountainside. In the safety of these networks, we saw people growing everything from corn to berries. As we came around the corner, we ran into a woman and her guide (a small girl) walking down the mountain from the waterfall that we were on our way to see. The woman turned out to be from Portland, Oregon, one of the wheeling capitals of the U.S. We talked wheeling for a bit, standing in the middle of the road. No cars came by during our conversation. And soon we warmly parted ways.

When we finally reached the waterfall, we were once again starving. There was a cluster of stands and restaurants around the entrance to the falls, but a price gouge was inevitable. We ate two lackluster and overpriced bowls of noodles at a nearby restaurant, and then bought a couple pieces of grilled purple yam from a woman at a roadside stand. The yam was tasty, and the noodles at least gave us new energy.

We looked at the falls from a distance, and at the cost of entrance from up close, and decided, as we often do: more wheeling.

<<pic of us near the falls>>

We kept climbing, seeking solace in the knowledge that unlike yesterday’s wheel, this one would terminate with a luxurious downhill. Up and up we went, making our way around a vast section of road that curved in on itself as it clung to the edge of a steep ravine.  It reminded me so much of a wheel Scott and I had taken at Colorado National Monument during our pre-AsiaWheeling tour of the U.S., that I found myself, for perhaps the first time on the trip, getting a little sentimental about AmericaWheeling.

And with that we reached the crest of the mountain road, the highest point of our trip to date. It was a glorious view, and positioned in the midst of appropriately post-apocalyptic bits of crumbling settlement and roadside advertising.

And then we had the downhill. Ah, to fly downhill. All that potential energy… more than you could ever use. We whipped down the mountain at the speed the road was built to be driven at. And with the ease of movement, the scenery around us seemed to come alive all the more. As if the parts of my mind that had been preoccupied with humping our way up the mountain could now be free to focus on the pure enjoyment of our enchanting surroundings.

We rolled into Haba, once again with the same thing on our minds: where to find more Pho.  Settling down for a few snacks at the same roadside stand as the night before, we encountered a Frenchman executing a “Tour du Monde,” who took particular interest in the WikiReader.

The air was cool and fresh, slightly thinner due to our high elevation here in Sa Pa, but very comfortable. The first part of the wheel was all to be downhill, which made it very easy, pleasant wheeling. We had both put on our SpeedMatrix jerseys, which added to the airy, fresh feeling. The sun was the brightest it had been since we were in Borneo or Bali, but the addition of the Maui Jims to our lifestyle even kept that cooled off. Basically, we were feeling great.

When we passed a restaurant that sported a big suckling pig, cooling on a spit outside, we decided to stop in for a bite to eat.

Inside, we discovered that this was the policeman’s haunt, and decided, after looking around at tables full of cops eating lunch, just to emulate their behavior, and order by pointing at what they had on the table. We ended up getting a very Chinese plate of crispy pork and greens (delightful though not nearly as good as those we had had in Lijiang during the pilot study), and a large pile of rather crispy French fried potatoes.

With eating out of the way, we climbed back on the Speed TRs and asked a local woman which direction she thought we should wheel in. She pointed down the road up which we had just climbed in the bus.

Okay, more downhill it would be, for now at least. We strapped a bunch of bottles of water to our cycles and headed off.

It is worth pausing to discuss here the strange trends we have observed in Vietnamese bottled water manufacturing. Aquafina, being the market leader, commands a high price for its H2O. So, following suit, all the Vietnamese bottled water companies have re-branded themselves to resemble Aquifina. We saw, among others “Aquaonly, AquahostA AquiMinimax, AquaSpa, ….”

The feeling was wonderful, just soaring down the mountain. As we coasted along, the scene opened up around us to display giant green valleys filled with terraced rice operations, dotted with little farmer’s huts. Morale was supremely high, so we just kept soaring on, stopping, of course, from time to time, to indulge a little of that old vice of ours… timed exposures.

We wheeled on past a large Colorado-esque sign indicating that we were leaving Sa Pa. And down through one valley and then another. On the slopes, everywhere we looked, people were farming various crops, presumably dependent on the availability of water and the quality of the soil. In the very bottom of most of the valleys, there were small streams, around which herds of water buffalo were being tended. Nearby the farmers would churn through the mud of their rice fields with giant devices, seemingly homemade, consisting of engines, connected to openly whirling blades, all mounted on a welded-together framework of metal. Looked like terrifying, but satisfying work.

On we went, farther and farther down, past fellows on mopeds transporting all manner of goods up to Sa Pa, and road crews hard at work maintaining the beautiful curves of bitumen that we so luxuriously rode upon. Finally, we came just to the edge of the clouds we had worked our way through on that morning’s bus. It seemed time to turn around.

And what a change it was. What had been an easy, beautiful, cool, dry wheel, suddenly became a punishing, sweat-drenched test of the human psyche. This mountain, which had once been so kind and open with us, became a cruel beast that had to be tamed. Up and up we rode, stopping from time to time to drink water like lost desert wanderers stumbling upon an oasis. No sooner had we quenched our thirst than we were back in the cycles, hammering up the mountain. We quickly digested all in our stomachs, and drank all our water.

With that came a new kind of challenge. We no longer had the excuse of water breaks. It was just us and the mountain. Even through the haze of struggle, though, from time to time the raw beauty of the landscape would captivate me. I would get lost in the curves of the terraces, or a herd of water buffalo wallowing in the muck at the valley floor.

We neared the top of the mountain and the city of Sa Pa riding a wave of energy. The heat of the moment was over and we were once again in the highest of spirits, and delighted with our recent trajectory, instantly dried and cooled by the mountain air. We wheeled to the edge of the city, where we stopped to take in one more drink of the stunning view. I sat on a tuft of green grass and Scott joined me. What a country this was!

We wheeled back into town past a table where two fried dogs heads advertised the availability of canine meat, and sat down at a hole in the wall Pho joint.

The soup was unsurprisingly delicious, and from there we wheeled slow and easy back to the roomy, Wifi-filled comfort of our hotel room. We spent the rest of the night working on correspondence for you, dear reader, stepping out only briefly to indulge in a small dinner of Bia Hoi and boiled duck eggs, each of which was filled with a deliciously fetal chick.

We awoke at the Liberty Hotel and made our way downstairs for breakfast. Getting coffee proved very difficult, and the resulting brew was manufactured before our eyes from some off-brand instant powder that looked like it had been manufactured around the time of reunification. Next, we headed out to a noodle restaurant for the morning’s sustenance.

The broth had been prepared with a tool for boiling beef bones and scooping noodles, almost identical to a Project K9 request we were about to ship off for our dear reader Laura.

Next we wheeled onward passing various vendors and fruit stalls.

Feeling much refreshed, we climbed on the cycles in search of more adventure. This day we decided to head north, in an attempt to get a perspective on the city not dissimilar from that we had gotten when we simply wheeled west in Saigon.

We took off heading north this time, working our way through the center of town up through an area that was filled with communist statues, large blocky headquarters, and Ho Chi Minh’s tomb (which by the way is rather similar to Lenin’s).  Onward, the architectural styles varied between communist-industrial, to modern, to French colonial in an enjoyable medley of colors under the overcast sky.

We kept working our way north, past a large cemetery, and into the suburban housing projects.

Suburbs don’t work in Hanoi exactly the same way they do in the west. What I’m talking about here is a sort of wasteland of giant concrete apartment complexes connected by giant highways. Like western suburbs, there is little in the way of pedestrian activity or small-scale corner stores. But unlike western suburbs, those around Hanoi are a little closer to the city center. No one has a yard, and the only real roads are giant highways. It was along the side of one of these giant highways that we were riding at the moment we saw a new construction project, which seemed to warrant further inspection. As far as we could tell it was another (slightly more posh) cluster of sky-scraping apartment buildings. This one was still heavily under construction, but it seems before they started any other part of the project, they had to first finish and polish off a giant central gate, which loomed in full monumental glory – something in between a communist monument and the Arc de Triomphe. Of course we were barred from entering, but it was certainly a worthy waypoint.

From there we did our best to keep heading north, though the roads seemed determined to keep siphoning us eastward. Finally, we found ourselves at another great bridge, across the same river that we had traversed the day before. At first we entertained the notion of skipping the bridge, and trying to head down the riverside back toward Hanoi’s city center. But this began to seem impossible as the road turned north once it reached the river rather than south. So we were met with a conundrum: should we…

1. cross the river and head south on the other side in hopes of faplungeoning our way back to Hanoi, or
2. head back south the way we’d come and experience that same ride in reverse

Option 1 seemed the obvious choice, but in order to execute that maneuver, we needed a little more coffee. This we were able to acquire in the form of a couple cans of Thai coffee from a large bulk dry goods shop along the road we were currently riding upon. Refueled by the coffee, we headed up and onto the bridge. This bridge had many large lanes for cars and trucks, and a separate smaller lane for bikes and motorcycles. This is the lane we took.

It was a hard, fast ride in the midst of swarming motorbikes. From time to time we would run up on another bicyclist, but he or she would be riding so slowly, on a cycle so laden down with vegetables or cement, that there was little opportunity for comradeship, and usually the situation necessitated a hair-raising pass during which Scott and I had to put our faith in our fellow drivers and our ability to accelerate into the region of the bridge one might call the fast lane.

On the other side, we pulled over to take a breather. We were badly in need of water, and a little shaken by the high voltage bridge crossing. Once we had caught our breath, we looked around. We were certainly in a new and interesting part of Vietnam. All the buildings here were very narrow and three or four stories tall. All took interesting architectural cues from both the French colonial influence and the blocky metal and concrete communist architecture of China and Russia.

We worked our way around the block, searching for a spot to buy water, and we found one right next to this strange metal device.

Speculation as to its purpose is heartily invited in the comments.

From there we began to wheel hard, right through this little city at the end of the bridge from the Hanoi suburbs and up onto another dike. It seemed so much like the dike that we had ridden on the day before that we thought it might in fact connect. So on we rode, into the wind, through a landscape that was ever-changing and so very different than I had imagined Vietnam to be. Take a look at these pictures and do your best to reconcile them with your views of Vietnam.

We wheeled on and on. The sun was beginning to hang low in the sky, and we were still yet to find that this dike was indeed the one we had wheeled on the day before. To complicate matters, it seemed that we had acquired a new river to our right, which had not been there before. We were now almost certainly separated from the city of Hanoi by two large rivers. We continued to head south hoping against hope that we might find ourselves near something that we recognized, but still all was unfamiliar.

Then we saw it… across the river, a large communist party building we knew we had passed the day before. So the good news was we were close to the road that we had ridden before. The bad news was that we were still separated from that road by a pretty large river, with no bridge in sight, and the spot we could see was still quite a way from Hanoi and our beloved Liberty Hotel.

The sun was sinking low… perhaps two hours left before it was too dark to ride. We pulled over to have a conference. We finished the last of a red bean and fig cake we had purchased at the water stand near the strange metal object.

We decided our only rational choice was to keep wheeling south in hopes of a bridge, and if it got dark before we found one, we’d need to come up with a new plan, most likely involving folding the bikes up and getting in a cab.

So we wheeled on hard, keeping our eyes peeled for a bridge. Not that much farther down the road, we passed a sign indicating that if we kept going forward we would reach Hanoi in 23 kilometers. This was a good sign, and it gave us renewed energy to pour into the Speed TRs. We started really pushing the pavement underneath us, as the road grew larger and more filled with traffic. Finally, this road T-ed into a larger road that almost certainly led to a bridge over the river. We pulled into the traffic and triumphantly rode over the bridge.

On the other end of the bridge, we found ourselves back in the place where we had turned around on the previous day’s wheel. The same woman was there packing up her stand after having sold all her crabs and ducks. We paused for a moment to catch our breath. We were on a giant busy street and staring down the option of taking this huge street directly into Hanoi, which would be faster and might even get us in before darkness had fallen completely, and taking the route we had taken the day before, which would have us on quieter roads, but would certainly have us riding at least half the ride in the dark.

Since our ill-fated misadventures with bearings in Cambodia, Scott was left without the use of his dynamo hub. This meant that he had no headlamp. And we had neglected to bring our Knog Gekko lights with us….

We decided to take the busier, but more direct street, and to do it at highway speeds. We exchanged one last glance and then raged downhill into traffic. Keeping to the right side at first, we pedaled hard along with the stream of motorcycles, joining the throngs and breathing the fumes of burning oil. We tore through the small city that we had encountered the day before, and followed the road onto a larger bridge than the one we had taken yesterday.

Now I was really thriving on the energy of the ride, feeling great, and flying along. I was passing the slower motor bikes, and ringing my bell like a maniac. Old men on motorcycles would turn to me and smile in approval.  If I came up on a cycle burning a lot of oil, I would just lay extra hard into the old Speed TR and pass it. It was amazing – like some kind of drug. I felt great flying along there, safer and more in control than normally. As I crossed the bridge, a motorcycle with two beautiful Vietnamese women on it pulled up alongside me. The one riding on the back turned to me and smiled, giving me a peace symbol, and yelling something in Vietnamese through the wind and engine noise. I felt like a character in Easy Rider, raging through the noise of motors, smiling and interacting with my fellow traffic. I was in a world without cars, where two-wheeled vehicles ruled the road. Ah, Hanoi, one of my favorite cities yet.

On the other side I pulled over to wait for Scott. He pulled up seconds later, looking similarly ecstatic. We were back in Hanoi. There was still light left; we’d made it and we knew where we were.

We wheeled back to our hotel taking only one wrong turn that put us onto this giant street full of even more motorcycles than before. Perhaps the immensity of it is best communicated using video and photography.

Once we finally made our way back to the Hotel Liberty, we decided to stop at a nearby place for a glass of Bia Hoi. It was the perfect beverage for the end of a wheel. Mellow and malty, cool, not too sweet, and not too alcoholic. As soon as we saw it, we knew the place. It was a grubby open-air curbside beer joint. There were about 20 men there already, all Vietnamese and between the ages of 35 and 65.

As soon as we sat down, we made friends with one of them, who insisted not only on buying our beers, but also in introducing us to his extended family, talking to us in English, Chinese, and Russian, and also leading me by the hand to the bathroom.

After finishing our beers and bidding our friend goodbye, we climbed back on the Speed TRs to look for a restaurant. Without needing to wheel too long we came upon a jam-packed restaurant that emitted the most delightful smells.

We sat down to a feast and took special pleasure in engaging in a fair bit of shtick with our surly but adorable waitress.

The elderly Vietnamese family that had shared our compartment on the Reunification Express had already climbed down from its lofty perch by the time that Scott and I awoke. We were in the Hanoi Station, and we were just able to get ourselves vertical in time to help our — well I would not quite call them new friends, but at least new acquaintances, who appeared to tolerate our monopolization of the luggage space — to unload their bags. This appeared to heal at least some wounds, and they bid us a reasonably hearty farewell once we were out on the platform.

Hanoi was cool. Almost chilly by AsiaWheeling’s standards hitherto. In general, we are in places where existence outside air-conditioned environments is by definition sweaty. Here it was cool and breezy and gray. We unfolded the Speed TRs on the platform while a crew of railway workers arrived to wash down the startlingly dirty exterior of our train.

We climbed onto the cycles, and wheeled out of the train station, right by the horde of cab drivers and guesthouse touts who lay in wait. We took a right and headed down the street in search of a little pho and coffee. Instead what we found was stand after stand selling Chaco sandals. Chaco is my (and many other members of the AsiaWheeling team’s) preferred brand.

These were either knock offs or taken straight from the factory, for they were being sold at bargain basement prices. We stopped to further investigate, considering a replacement of Scott’s Sri Lankan faux leather sandals. Unfortunately, the gigantic nature of his feet precluded us from purchasing any sandal in their entire stock.

As we wheeled on, we commented to each other on how gorgeous this city was. Hanoi has a decidedly European feel to it, with large tree-lined promenades, and small side streets with plenty of outdoor cafes. Much of the architecture takes cues from the French, and many of the buildings are built from brick or stone.

It was just starting to sprinkle when we came by a shop that would at least be able to supply us with coffee.

As we parked the Speed TRs and made our way inside, the sky opened and began to soak the city of Hanoi.  While the rain fell in buckets, we ordered cup after cup of absolutely delicious iced coffee.

We had shied away from the Vietnamese coffee these past few days, after our initially terrible sample, but now we were kicking ourselves, so delicious was this shop’s offering.

Let me divert the narrative for a moment to explain this glorious brew. You are given two cups, one filled with ice, and one that has a thin pool of condensed milk in it. Onto the milk cup is placed a kind of aluminum brewing device. The device is filled with coffee and then hot water. The resulting slurry is tamped down with a  kind of of metal cap, and the whole apparatus is covered with a larger cap that is later used as a drip tray. The consumer of the coffee is then encouraged to wait while a thin stream of very strong and fragrant coffee drips through the device and into the cup. This is an opportunity for conversation, answering email, smoking cigarettes, and generally enjoying one’s self. The waiting period is an important part of the coffee consumption event and as such should not be taken lightly.

We were indulging in the email-answering functionality of the waiting period, and as our tab grew from four to eight coffees at this place, we feasted on one of the many free wireless networks that pervade the big cities in Vietnam. After about three hours, the rains finally stopped and we climbed back on the Speed TRs to begin wheeling around in search of a decent hotel.

We soon found ourselves in a delightful little neighborhood, filled with little food markets and spice shops. It seemed reasonably central and would make a great home-base for Hanoi. Unfortunately hotels were few and far between. It took us quite a bit of wheeling before we finally found one that fit our needs and our budget. It sported free fast wireless, and a nice comfortable room for less than we’d paid in a while.

The catch was we had to walk up seven floors to reach the room. But we figured this would be good training for our upcoming stint in Mr. Stew Motta’s apartment in Kunming, so we booked our room at the Liberty Inn. We dropped our stuff and began consulting the front desk as to noodle shop recommendations.

We were, of course, looking for Pho, but the man at the front desk convinced us that we might consider branching out into a new style of noodles. We agreed and followed his directions to a joint down the road that served nearly brothless noodles.

It was an amazing bowl of noodles. First each bowl was filled with a handful of fresh greens, onto which were piled steaming rice noodles, from there a spoonful each of spicy savory beef, deep fried crispy onion, and crushed peanuts were added. The entire bowl was blended with spicy and sweet condiments at the table and stirred relentlessly before eating.

Ah, we felt great after that bowl, ready for anything, and just revving to wheel Saigon. We took off toward the main river in the city, and when we saw a huge group of both motor- and bi-cyclists heading onto an old metal bridge, we took the opportunity to follow.

It was a long, old rusty bridge, which led across the river to the opposing hamlet of Cu Khoi. We wheeled over a number of river beds, some of which showed signs of being low for so long that people had begun to plant them with crops. On the other side of the bridge, we found ourselves in a smaller, slower city, which appeared to be where most of the Bia Hoi was produced.

Let me depart from the narrative once again to discuss Bia Hoi. Bia Hoi is a very weak home-brewed beer that is very popular here in northern Vietnam. It is made in small batches and transported in small plastic kegs all around the city on a daily basis for consumption at small street-side cafes. As we wheeled through this part of town past many small scale breweries, we could detect the warm sour stench of fermenting grains passing over us in waves. We decided we’d need to try some later that day.

The landscape was so different than I had imagined Vietnam to be. It looked more like Scotland, with overcast skies and deep green grassy hills. As we rode along, we had a choice of taking either the high road or the low road. The high road seemed to skirt around and out of the city along a great dike, while the low road snaked its way through the many small structures that made up the city itself.

We took the high road, and began pedaling hard, making our way around and out of the city in record time. The traffic was an interesting combination of cattle, fellows transporting large or oblong pieces of industrial equipment or building materials via motorbike, and dump trucks.

Soon we were riding along a river, and the city had dissolved into farmlands, industrial parks, and Communist Party offices. Finally, the road we were on T’ed into large iron bridge. I looked around the green land, dotted with bits of rust and concrete, which, for a moment, conjured up Pennsylvania coal country.

We stopped for a moment to investigate the wares of a very popular roadside seller, who was hawking crabs, large insects, and live birds. I found myself unable for a time to stop staring at a fellow who had bought two live ducks and strapped them quite violently, by the legs, upside down, to the front of his motorbike. The ducks looked none too excited about their immediate future, as they swung inches above the pavement.

Let me get this straight, though. I eat plenty of meat here on Asiawheeling, and when I am back in The Empire. I am in favor of killing and eating animals, but something about the predicament of these ducks unsettled me. It seemed like they were being tortured, strung up by the legs, being blown by the wind, flailing with their faces just inches above concrete which was whipping by at 40 or 50 kilometers per hour. I am sure that most of the experiences that animals undergo leading up to their consumption by humans could be construed in one way or another as torture. And I would not be surprised if inside the U.S., it is actually a more torturous approach to dinner than here in Asia. So, in the meantime, I am going to chalk this up as one of those cognitive dissonances one must acknowledge and schedule for later consideration. For certainly, I am not about to stop eating meat. Perhaps I’ll come up later with a justification for a more callous view on animal rights. In the meantime I’ll continue to pity my food as it suffers and turn right around and happily ask for seconds while I wipe the grease from my chin.

Back in Vietnam, we wheeled along the same high road, now taking the opportunity to divert our travels to the low road for the way back.

Here the smell of brewing beer was stronger than ever. The Speed TRs were put to a little test, scrambling over piles of garbage, fording deep mud puddles, and navigating a generally unwelcoming road.  They passed with flying colors, bringing us finally back to the bridge, which we crossed, finding ourselves now on the other side, in the midst of a giant kitchen wares market.

We spent some time perusing the market, and purchasing some K9-related kitchen goods.

Back on the cycles, we made our way back toward our hotel, noticing quite suddenly that we were starving. But we were deep in the touristy section of town, which seemed to be filled only with expensive western-style restaurants. We scoffed at these and kept riding, calling random turns until we had made our way out of that district. Finally we found a little roadside outdoor restaurant, where we ordered some dishes with rice, and a couple of Bia Hois.

Another great thing about Bia Hoi… it’s alarmingly cheap. A glass costs about 25 cents, and is served in a very attractive thick green glass, full of tiny bubbles. The glasses generally have a big “H” stamped on the bottom.

We were squatting on tiny wooden chairs enjoying our Bia Hois and snacking on the free peanuts that accompanied them, when a man called over from the table behind us. He spoke very little English but called out to us in what he had, asking where we were from. I said “America” and though he instantly became a little more wary of us, we began to chat. He commented on our Bia Hoi and asked whether we were enjoying it. We were, quite thoroughly, and informed him. He smiled and asked whether they had such a type of beer in the U.S. We explained to him that we did not really have such a system of down-home brewers who sold beer in small batches for widespread consumption. Sure we had micro-breweries, but microbrews are trying to be distinctive, luxury goods, and most were pasteurized and regulated. Here in Vietnam, everyone was just trying to crank out this cheap, unregulated, weak, unpasteurized lager, which was the drink of choice all over the city.

I turned to our new friend, “You know the only other place I’ve heard of this type of beer being produced?” He looked blankly at me — “Russia.”

Suddenly, the man leaned in close to me. “So you’ve been to Russia?” he said. “да,” I answered. And then we were off speaking in Russian. It was so unexpected, it took me quite a while to remember how to say certain things. I explained to him that I had studied in St. Petersburg a few years back, and that we would be visiting Russia later on AsiaWheeling. He explained that he had been sent to Russia as part of his training to fight the Americans in the NVA. Now that we were speaking Russian, his whole demeanor had changed. He congratulated me, and complimented my filthy broken Russian.

“So few Americans can speak Russian,” he said, “Did you study Russian to spy on them? Are you a soldier?”

I did my best to explain that I was just a curious fellow, hated war, and had no interest soldiering. I did my best to communicate that just like Vietnam, Russia was an enemy of the U.S. at one time, but now I am hoping that friendship can replace animosity.

He really seemed to like this, and began to go on at length about Vietnam today, comparing it with Vietnam during the war. My ability to understand him was severely hampered by my poor grasp of the Russian language, but I was able to ascertain that much of what he was saying was about how much better off they are now, mostly due to the fact that Ho Chi Minh was able to re-unify the country. He also spoke at length about the Cuban Embassy, as well, which he showed me was just visible down the street. He knew that the U.S. did not have one, and commented on the proliferation of affordable Cuban cigarettes and cigars in Vietnam as highlighting one of the great drawbacks to our embargo. I agreed with him heartily.

It was then that he started talking about vodka. I think there is something about speaking Russian with another non-native speaker that gets one or both of the parties thinking about that old Russian vice. He spoke at great length about the way that Vietnam has learned from the Russians to make very good vodka. It was still somewhat early in the day, and we had quite a few kilometers yet to wheel before we arrived back in the neighborhood of our hotel, so I declined his repeated offers to drink.

The Bia Hoi is a very weak sauce. A cup varies between 2% and 3% alcohol, but I knew that if we started drinking vodka with this fellow, we would soon be in a rather compromised state. In fact, if my estimates were right, after such a hard wheel, and under the kind of peer pressure which Russian-style vodka drinking generally encourages, we would soon be more beasts than men. So I had to stick to my guns.

Despite my refusal to drink, he ordered a bottle of the Vietnamese vodka to the table, simply to prove to me that here, like in Russia, the vodka is kept in the freezer and served cold. “This is the only proper way,” he explained.

He then shook my hand repeatedly and returned to his little table. Throughout the rest of the meal, he came by from time to time to say something congratulatory and shake our hands.

Once we had paid the bill, I bid him farewell, and we climbed back on the cycles.

We had just enough time to get hopelessly lost on our way back to the hotel before night fell on this most fascinating city.