As it did during the pilot study, Hong Kong played the role of refueling station, a place for breathing, recouping, and preparing for the second half of the trip. And, as was the case during the pilot study, it rained most of our time there.

Though if I were to use the rain as an excuse for the fact that our cycles spent most of their time rusting on the balcony of our gorgeous apartment, I would be lying.  Most of our time was spent on foot, in fact, and much of it even apart, as I wandered the city with my mother and John, and Scott caught up with his many friends in the old British Colony.

So please forgive your humble correspondents for fast forwarding through a few days spent wandering through rainy city streets, folding and unfolding umbrellas, dashing in and out of shops, purchasing much-needed goods, and generally replenishing body and spirit. Though perhaps during the fast forward, it might behoove me to mention a certain mission.

Hong Kong has long been famous for its tailors, and AsiaWheeling happens to subscribe to a certain Mr. William Cheng (and Sons). When not traipsing across the globe, sweating profusely, or bargaining over provisions, even your humble correspondents at times need to look sharp. And for that we look to Mr. Cheng. My mother and John had been somewhat impressed with the shirts I had procured from the man during the pilot study, and had decided to have some items of their own made. For John, a few shirts and a jacket, for my mother replicas of her favorite shirts and blouses. The mission was an eleventh hour success, culminating in Mr. Cheng sending one of his minions to our apartment to do some final measurements and last minute alterations to the garments.

And then, quite unexpectedly, it was our last night in Hong Kong.

We made reservations at a certain hot pot restaurant, which had been recommended by Scott’s friend, Rob. The place was jam-packed with people when we walked in, and a table with a large hole in the center was waiting for us. Inside the hole in the table was a burner,  and onto the burner, of course, would go a large bowl of boiling broth. We chose a split broth, half pear and fish, and half spicy Sichuan. This meant that the boiling reservoir would be split by a metal divider into two separate sections, each of which would be filled with a separate broth. We also ordered a vast array of meats and vegetables to plunge into the soup.

With the ordering done,  we headed over to a section of the restaurant where diners were encouraged to create their own dipping sauces. Here, you could choose from a wide array of oils and sauces, chopped herbs and spices, and unknown pastes. We dove in.

As is the case with most Chinese restaurants, the food came fast, and it seemed we were no sooner back from the sauce-concocting table, than the hot pot arrived, already nearly boiling. Another thing about hot pot that is particularly enjoyable is that it takes quite a bit of time to eat. We enjoyed a few hours of slowly working our way through the vegetables and meats, burning our tongues plenty on the boiling broth, and managing to splatter bits of hot oil everywhere.

As the hot pot boiled, the spicy Sichuan section began to grow increasingly intolerable. It consisted of what I believe was a pork or chicken broth with a great many floating hot peppers, and a startling kind of numbing peppercorn called Ma La (麻辣 – literally meaning numbing and spicy). It seemed that as the peppers boiled, they released an increasing amount of truly corrosive chemicals into the soup. Now, dear reader, I would be the first to challenge a fellow world traveler to a spicy food eating competition, but this soup began to get the better of even me. My stomach became a boiling furnace of spicy oil, and I too was forced to throw in the towel, switching all focus to the pear and fish broth.

It was my first defeat by a spicy dish on AsiaWheeling, and I considered it a great success. As I rode back in the cab, breathing through my fiery indigestion, I gave a solemn tip of the Panama hat to those who dared concoct such a demonic broth.

The next morning, all was well again in my stomach, and I awoke at the crack of dawn to walk my mom and John to the airport. While John packed the last of his belongings for the flight back to Iowa, my mother helped to clean a heavy coat of rust from the chains of the Speed TRs. Then we were off. As we rolled their suitcases over the uneven pavement and into the metro, I thought back on the supremely comfortable nature of travel in China. Hong Kong seemed to me the epitome of a manageable city: well-organized, predictable, easy to navigate, well stocked. And in all honesty, mainland China is not so much more difficult, especially for those who speak a little Chinese. What a fine country this was. Hong Kong had been a good introduction, but I felt that next time I needed to take them to the mainland, where the noodles and the price performance easily eclipse the old British colony.

With my mom and John safely on the airport express, I returned to the apartment to find Scott hard at work on the Internet, feasting on the last few hours of megabyte-per-second connection. Our flight was that evening at the somewhat uncivilized hour of 00:05. As a major consolation, however, it was going to be a flight on Emirates, one of AsiaWheeling’s favorite airlines. As the hour of our flight grew nearer, the sun began to sink in the sky. With a fair bit of frantic searching around the apartment to ensure that we were not leaving anything of great value behind, we once again grabbed our bags and the Speed TRs, now with freshly cleaned and lubricated chains, and headed down to the street.

We unfolded the cycles and strapped down our belongings, pulling into traffic. A constellation of one way streets continually pulled us away from our destination: the Hong Kong Central Station. An attempt to ride “subversively” as it is referred to in the latest edition of the AsiaWheeling field commands, resulted in a stern talking to by a Hong Kong police officer. No doubt had this occurred in the post-Soviet world, such an interaction would have terminated in a fine (graft). But here the policeman only politely told us to ride on the roads not the sidewalks, and to obey the same laws the cars did. This seemed reasonable, and he also explained how we could get to the station.

Hong Kong sports a large central tram-line, and it was along this that we rode. The speed of the trams is significantly slower than that of even a fully loaded wheeler, so we were easily able to use these tramways as an effective mainline to the station, ever aware of the danger of putting a wheel into the rut next to the rail.

At the central station, we checked our bags (including the Speed TRs) at a dedicated Emirates counter. The service was complimentary along with the purchase of tickets on the speedy airport express train. So with the bikes folded, padded and bagged, now in the careful hands of the folks at Emirates, we climbed onto the train. All concerned were in high spirits and excited to embark on the next chapter.

We had certainly heard many stories about Dubai. A great city, built in a matter of years out of the desert. It had been called gaudy, unsustainable, reckless, and the epitome of “Nouveau Riche.” It had also been called one of the greatest achievements of human engineering, a fascinating melting pot of cultures, and one of the most breathtaking cities in the world. Certainly, we needed to wheel it.

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.

For some time we had been contemplating a new strategy for wheeling fully loaded. You see, dear reader, up until this point, I had been consolidating my belongings by strapping my technology bag onto the top of my pack and wheeling with the entire thing on my back, while Scott would put one pack on his back and one on his front.  An illustration from Surabaya, Indonesia may be found below.

This system worked fine for short missions, but it had a number of marked drawbacks. We were rather top-heavy and as we rode, blood flow to our heads was painfully restricted at times. In addition to that, the weight of our entire inventory was concentrated on the points where our rear ends made contact with the seats. And as you, dear reader, can no doubt imagine, this develops into a painful situation after extended amounts of wheeling.

Back in Vietnam, we had just awakened and ordered the cheapest coffee in Sa Pa, which was true to advertisement, served at our hotel, followed by another down the block.

In order to get up to Sa Pa, we had taken a winding but steadily uphill road. The road was about 35 kilometers long, and originated in Lao Cai, the Chinese border city.

It was our plan that day, to strap our technology bags onto the rear racks of the speed TRs and ride with only our packs on our backs. This, we hoped, would alleviate much of the strain and top-heaviness. So in the courtyard of our hotel in Sa Pa, we spent some time working on properly strapping technology bags onto the rear racks. We shook the bikes back and forth simulating the g-forces of a downhill ride. It was a pretty smooth road, but based on our preliminary wheel on our first day in Sa Pa, we knew there were a few sections of construction that would test the security of our arrangement.

As we were obsessing over our bikes, a crew of five or six Vietnamese men came by and insisted on taking photos with us and the Speed TRs, trying on the Maui Jims, and generally assessing AsiaWheeling. We did our best to satisfy their appetites for documenting their interaction with foreigners, and stood for photos with each of them individually.

After checking and double checking our setup, we climbed on the bikes and began to coast downhill.

It was glorious. With about half the weight of my gear off my back, I was set free to enjoy the thrill of whipping down the road, drinking in the lush green of the scenery. Traffic was very light, and with the aid of all the potential energy that we had racked up on our ascent, we were wheeling at nearly the speed of the few cars and trucks with which we shared the road.

As we grew nearer and nearer to the border town of Lao Cai, we started to notice fellow wheelers as well, like these two women transporting a startlingly large load. They both greeted us heartily, sharing the camaraderie that only those riding long distances downhill through the mountains of northern Vietnam can.

As we descended, the temperature rose, and the cool thin mountain air was replaced with a thick humidity. As we leveled out into the outskirts of Lao Cai, we began to sweat profusely, and with it came the hunger. We had forgotten to eat, again, and madness quickly ensued.

With little more than knowledge of the general direction of China, we set out searching for a Pho place. And for the first time, it was difficult to find. For one reason or another, we had inserted ourselves into the industrial goods and paint-trading section of town. So it was with sweat pouring, maddening hunger gripping us, and serious delirium setting in, that we wheeled the last four or so kilometers, which brought us to the river that separates the two countries. There we found a restaurant.

It was mostly empty, with only the odd table of Vietnamese men, feasting on very Chinese-looking chicken and greens dishes, and ripping huge lungs-full of thick tobacco smoke from a long bamboo water pipe.

Though we shared no language, the owner of the shop was supremely determined to communicate. He helped us park our bikes and took us into the back of the shop to select our food from the ingredients he had stored back there. The meal was amazing, consisting of roast chicken, cucumber salad, and rice.

As we picked our teeth, the owner, and the rest of the fellows in the restaurant came over to join us and discuss (mostly non-verbally) our mission, the nature of the Speed TRs, and our previous and upcoming waypoints. We ended the interaction by all taking a large rip from the huge water pipe. This induced a giant fit of coughing and a brief period of delirium. After the effects of the rip wore off, it was as though we all were made brothers. Warm regards were exchanged, and directions to the border of China were drawn for us on a napkin.

We wheeled on, with the help of the napkin map, easily finding the border crossing, which was marked by two giant arches on either side of a bridge. We exchanged the last of our Vietnamese Dong for Chinese Reminbi and headed to the border.

Outside passport control, we were accosted by a large group of currency changers who, though we had no interest in their services, insisted on continued interaction and soon encircled me. One of them reached out and removed my Maui Jims from my face, placing them on his own. I prepared for battle, and called over to Scott for reinforcement.

Just then, a customs official exited the building and yelled out to the men in Vietnamese. The group began to disperse, and I grabbed my glasses back off the man’s face. That was twice now, that I had taken those spectacles from a would-be thief.

The border of China and Vietnam is not the friendliest of borders, and I believe very few tourists cross at Lao Cai. Officials are strict and gruff, and your fellow travelers are mostly scrubby Chinese and Vietnamese traders, chain smoking cigarettes and shuttling large loads of consumer goods across the bridge on large hand-pulled wooden carriages.

We waited in line for some time, and then even longer, as the customs officials scrutinized every stamp and visa in my passport, before allowing me to exit Vietnam. For Scott, the process was even longer. I was lazily doing laps around a large flagpole in the middle of no-man’s land when Scott emerged from Vietnamese passport control. “What was that about?” he asked.

“No idea.” Speculation, however, is invited in the comments.

On to China! We climbed on the Speed TRs and, with a great deal of gusto and excitement, wheeled toward the rather Klingon-looking archway that symbolized the entrance to China. Our attempts to wheel across the bridge, however, were foiled by a Vietnamese official who forbade riding into China. So it was with slightly less billowing sails that we crossed under the great angular concrete archway into China.

One thing was obvious from the very beginning: the Chinese run a very tight ship. We were immediately, and respectfully greeted (in Chinese) by a starched and uniformed official who showed us where we could park our bikes in order to enter the customs building, which was a large and brutally unassuming structure. Inside the customs building, we were greeted by two more immaculately put together chaps, who greeted us in polite and formal, though heavily accented, snippets of English. After seeing the many Chinese visas and entry and exit stamps in Scott’s passport, he was waved on to passport control. Mine, on the other hand, was carefully inspected, detected, and scanned stamp by stamp, presumably to confirm the authenticity of my documentation. Though it took some time, it was done with the utmost professionalism and politeness. Finally, I was ushered over to passport control, past a large door labeled in large English type “Further Interrogation Room.” It seemed their discussions with Scott had alleviated all skepticism of AsiaWheeling, and I was flagged through with no further problem. Meanwhile, Scott’s bags were being carefully inspected, at the culmination of which, the customs official removed a certain bottle of Burmese smelling salts, which we had acquired in Sanklaburi, Thailand. They seemed to pass inspection as well.

We were in China, but the bikes were still in no man’s land. We were beginning to confer about how to best retrieve them when the Chinese officials once again proved their organization and foresight, by showing us back through the customs and allowing us to ride our cycles around and out into China through the same entrance that large cargo trucks use.

And we were in, bikes and all. The city was called Hekou, and so far it appeared to be the usual AsiaWheeling border town. It was a jungle of import-export businesses, and bustled with small-scale international trade. Women who appeared to be prostitutes roamed the streets in short skirts and high heels, strolling in packs. We poured out of the customs building into traffic, wheeling our way through an immense gridlock of Chinese men and women, transporting all nature of goods.

There were a few important missions we needed to complete: we needed Chinese SIM cards; we needed to find a hotel; and we needed to wheel the city of Hekou. We were still in the jungle of import-export businesses, so we headed on toward the interior of the city. On our way, we passed a bus station. We had spoken to the honorable Stewart Motta since our encounter with him in Lao, and at his recommendation, our next waypoint in China was to be a predominantly museum town by the name of Jianshui. Jianshui was also positioned conveniently between the border town of Hekou and Stew’s current residence in Kunming.

Inside the bus station, Scott demonstrated his Chinese skills, quickly manifesting for us a couple of tickets for early the next morning to Jianshui.

We declined a number of offers from fellows at the bus station to provide us with professional female companionship, and climbed back on the cycles. We soon found our way to the riverside, where we called a waypoint at a roadside juice stand, where the owner came to join us at our plastic table, explaining to Scott in Chinese where we might find a cheap hotel, what price we should pay, and how to find SIM cards. We thanked him, and after finishing our freshly blended mango juices, headed off toward the hotel and SIM card district.

All around us China was just churning with activity. Men strolled the streets yakking away on cell phones while wearing no shirts. Construction workers furiously bent and welded metal in the streets. Beautiful women zipped around on silent electric mopeds, and everywhere things were growing, being improved, remodeled, or torn down to make room for the future. Acquiring SIM cards was easy, and the staff at China mobile was exceedingly patient and helpful.

Armed with newly active phones, we headed down the street where we saw a giant gleaming Chinese business hotel.

Scott went inside, and firmly bargained them down to the price that had been communicated by our juice-making friend. It worked, and after declining more offers for paid companionship from a woman who had set up shop with a large placard of optional women at the base of the elevator, we headed up to our room.

The room was stupendous and cheap. For about US$20.00 dollars per night we were enjoying a spotlessly clean room, with new shiny fixtures, and the solid kind of furniture one expects at a place like the Westin. We had free in-room Internet (Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter were, of course, blocked by the Chinese government). We took only the time to pound a little water from the in-room water bubbler, and change into our Speed Matrix biking jerseys, before heading back out for a wheel.

The staff of the hotel, which was no doubt used to Chinese businessmen and international traders who were mostly interested in feasting and paid companionship, seemed baffled that we would head back out into the heat of the day, after just arriving sweaty and disheveled from the savage wheel. But thus is the habit of the AsiaWheeler. China was just too new and fascinating for us to separate ourselves from it by a pane of spotlessly clean hotel window glass.

We wheeled down the road, stopping briefly to purchase refreshingly affordable water at a brand new giant supermarket, and then headed down the road that skirted the riverside. On one side was China, on the other was Vietnam. The Chinese side was clean, orderly, and marked by gigantic blocky, brutalist structures. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese side was mostly undeveloped, covered with mineral extraction operations and tent cities. It’s true that Vietnam has one of the fastest growing GDPs in the world, but China was the clear winner in this race. We wheeled on past another large border crossing, this one for rail only. On the Chinese side, there was a huge brand new facility, imposingly constructed from concrete and glass, which dwarfed its modest Vietnamese counterpart.

On we wheeled, the opportunity to explore the wide smooth roads that connected the brand new housing and administrative developments of Hekou was too tempting not to. The sun sank low and hunger took hold. We had just made it back into the neighborhood of our hotel when we wheeled by a street filled with restaurants, and the glorious smells coaxed us in. We dismounted and walked the Speed TRs, scanning for a place to eat.

We finally selected a restaurant at the end of the row. It was one of the standard kind of Chinese joints, with no menu, instead just a giant bank of ingredients in an open cooler. We were invited inside to select from the ingredients, and once we had selected some, were expected to enter into an involved discussion of how we would like them to be prepared. This, we unfortunately lacked the vocabulary to execute, so we just asked the waitress to choose for us, and headed over to the table.

The meal that arrived was amazing, a truly emotional experience.

As I leaned back from my feasting, I was overcome with the delightfully new vibrations of China. The traffic, the food, the attitude of the people, it was somehow perfect for AsiaWheeling. This was a decidedly new chapter, and I could tell already it was going to be a glorious one.

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.

We awoke on our last morning at the Blue River Inn in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Scott was not feeling well. Wheeling, it seemed, would be out of the question. He was unable to eat much, and felt too delirious to mount a cycle. We lounged around our room giving Scott as much time to rest as we could; then it was checkout time.

We moved our stuff downstairs and stashed it behind the front desk. From there, we set out on foot, in hopes that a bit of gentle strolling would help Scott’s condition. We wandered around slowly, getting fairly lost, wandering into shops, eating more Pho, and eventually finding ourselves once again in a giant grocery store. There is something about being a foreigner in a grocery store that I find monumentally engrossing. Time just slips by you. Given this strange phenomenon, you would be not surprised to find that we exited the grocery store quite some time after entering.

We were laden with a great bag of snacks to eat on that night’s Reunification Express. We would be in the train for the next few days, so plenty of food seemed appropriate.

We were just sitting down to a cup of overly sweetened coffee at a little shop outside the grocery store when I decided to take a trip to the bathroom. As I walked toward the john, I found myself suddenly walking within a group of Vietnamese police officers. I looked around, but they all had very stern expressions on, and refused to make eye contact. I briefly considered aborting the mission to the bathroom, but such a mid-swing reversal seemed, perhaps, a suspicious move. After all, I had nothing to hide.

So I made my way inside and settled my business. I was about halfway back to Scott at the coffee shop when I heard a bunch of screaming. I snapped my head around to see a bunch of cops screaming and running. One of them knocked over a display advertising crock pots, and as it clattered onto the ground I felt the electric shock of adrenaline pour into my system. Was there a bomb? A man with a weapon? I dashed around a corner and sought cover behind a large display about exercise machines. I whirled my head around.

The people inside the shop were confused and looking around. The cops were running out the door. It seemed calm was returning. I called over to Scott, “What just happened?”

“A guy just ran out of the shop with something he’d stolen. The cops are after him.” A crowd had formed outside the shopping complex. People were now smiling, joking around, enjoying the return of a feeling of safety. I certainly didn’t need another cup of coffee, so we headed back toward the hotel.

We got there, and had about three hours to kill. Scott was drifting in and out of consciousness in a chair in the lobby, when the woman at the front desk offered him a free room to sleep in for a bit. If the Blue River had not already been in seal-of-approval territory, it certainly was now. Going for a bit of a stroll, we came across a Banh Mi sandwich stand and indulged in some quick dinner.

I worked on correspondence for you, dear reader, while fireworks went off all around us. It was Independence Day here in Vietnam, and the people of the city had poured into the streets to sing patriotic songs and celebrate the reunification of Vietnam. I took a break to watch the fireworks on the lobby television. Just as they were getting into the grand finale, a thunderstorm broke out in the city.

The rain kept falling, and was still doing so when it was time for us to head to the train station. Because of the rain, we decided to take a cab. It was our first time experiencing the streets of Saigon in a car. It certainly hammered home my previous observation that the automobile is merely tolerated, and not quite welcome here in Saigon. Motorcycles poured around us, cutting us off, and generally making our traversal difficult. Multiple times, our cab driver stopped to yell insults at the motorcyclists. They generally paid him no heed.

At the train station, we were forced to wait for some time as the train was late. This, we were told by the locals who were waiting with us on the platform is actually quite abnormal. By the time the train arrived, I had been standing for quite some time with my pack on and must have been quite the sweaty mess.

We finally got onto the sleeper, and I threw my bags down on the bed. We had gotten two opposing bottom bunks. The train was set up with three levels of bunks, separated by thin walls into six-person compartments. The cycles just barely fit under the beds, which were presumably communal luggage space. We were quite glad to find that our bunk mates arrived with minimal luggage and did not need the space. They were quite friendly, and spoke a tiny bit of English. The six of us chatted for a bit before turning off the light and letting the rhythm of the rails lull us to sleep.

Ah, trains. It had been so long since we had ridden one.

What a fine way to travel.

While the Red Shirts were doing their best to bring the city of Bangkok to its knees, Dane, Scott and I had been enjoying the finer points of the expatriate lifestyle. And time was flying. Life was good. Life was easy. And, thanks to Steve, may his beard grow ever longer, even somewhat affordable. However, our list of things to see in Thailand was growing shorter at an almost imperceptible pace. Meanwhile, Dane Weschler had been elaborating at great length about his love for the north of Siam, about his times in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, the beauty of that part of the country, and its magnificent food.

“This is nothing,” Dane would explain to us over a steaming bowl of succulent curried noodles. “The Khao Soi in Chiang Rai will blow this out of the water.” All that aside, despite the strange time warp that was Bangkok, we were beginning to near the end of our time in the country. And we were well overdue for some more exploring outside the capital.

It was with all this in mind that we sat down with Dane Weschler in yet another of the many delightful, but rather aristocratic, coffee shops in the city to plan our next adventures. Dane immediately began to counsel us against bringing the Speed TRs. My first reaction was sputtering indignation.

“But this is AsiaWheeling,” I attempted to explain… “To travel without the cycles would leave us feeling naked, helpless and alone.” Dane didn’t look convinced. “And who would we be, stripped of our precious steeds? What would we be doing? This is not AsiaTaxi-Cabbing, or AsiaWandering-the-Streets-til-Your-Feet-Hurt.”

“Oh, you’ll get your wheeling,” Dane assured us. And he was right.

We arrived in Chiang Rai after an overnight bus ride, and as the anti-anxiety medications wore off, we found ourselves riding in a little red pickup truck, into the back of which had been installed two long wooden benches.

It was taking us from the bus station to the center of town, where our mission was to rent motorcycles.

Once in the center of town, we quickly found that Dane was even more of a master of this city than of Bangkok.

He led us first to a place where we could purchase a couple of cups of fragrant, strong espresso, laced with plenty of thick golden cream.

And with the caffeination problem out of the way,  we followed Dane around the corner to a motorcycle rental shop.

My experience riding motorcycles added up to the few odd times that I was allowed to putt around on someone’s dirt bike during social gatherings in the farmlands of Iowa. Needless to say, the current situation was quite different. With judicious use of Dane’s formidable Thai bargaining skills, and some minor leveraging of the AsiaWheeling brand (I believe three matching business cards, one of which was in Thai, helped), we were riding off on three brand new Honda Wave 110’s, putting along and struggling to re-wire neural pathways long burned in by wheeling in order to operate these new terrifyingly powerful machines.

I’ll have to be honest with you, dear reader, I am quite conflicted in my views on the motorcycle. It is certainly a scary and monstrously powerful machine. However, on the back of the thing, I found myself somewhat drunk on the sheer power that lay between my legs. And these were by no means large motorcycles.

The more I rode, the more I began to enjoy the feeling of whipping along on this beast, leaning into the turns, and watching the scenery go by.

I let the whip of the wind and the hum of the motor fill my ears, as we tore through the beautiful countryside.

We had little time to get used to these new beastly wheels. It seemed no sooner had we begun to get comfortable with using the transmission and properly signaling and braking than it was time to take our first long cross-country ride.  We were going to ride north, up into the mountains toward a city called Doi Maesalong, once again on the Burmese border. It was tea and opium county, though many of the old opium farmers had been encouraged by the Thai government to switch over to coffee production.

Before joining the AsiaWheeling team, Dane had worked for the international coffee magazine, Coffee T&I, and so was bubbling with data about the local coffee world.

There is little time to chat, though, when motorcycling. Most communications require a fair bit of screaming over the road, engine, and wind. So I just let my head nest into visions from films like Easy Rider, while bits of 70s rock songs swam through my head, and I thought about how I got so close to finishing “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” That was a good book…

Dane can always be counted on to call waypoints for expensive and delectable coffee, and this ride was no exception. We stopped at a place called “Parabola.”

They provided us with a refreshing sip of free WiFi, and also some delightfully rich and potent coffee drinks, and a startling view of the countryside. It was smokey here too, if anything even more smokey than it had been in Sangklaburi, lending that strange unrealness to the environment, for which I must admit to you dear reader, I was growing a taste.

As the sun began to lower into the sky, the amount of smoke through which it must be filtered increased exponentially, reducing it quickly to a red ball that hung so dimly that it could be observed comfortably by the unaided eye.

As the sun became a different star, we climbed on the cycles up into the mountains, at times finding ourselves climbing mountain roads so steep that we needed to shift down into first gear. The addition of the smoke made the mountains feel unbelievably high, as though we were floating in an infinity of cloud. Once we had made it to the top, we began to work our way along the crest of the mountains, whipping down the startlingly smooth and new Thai country road, past a number of security checkpoints designed to address the rampant problem of Burmese drugs crossing into Thailand. The security guards were neither interested in us, or, as far as I know, effective in stopping the drug traffickers. From my understanding they mostly serve to hassle the local hill tribes, many of which lack proper identification.

The sun was finally giving way to darkness as we pulled into the town of Doi Maesalong, where the road wound way even more tightly and steeply by little shops, restaurants, and, most surprisingly, a giant 7-11. Thailand, in case I have not already emphasized this, is deep in the throes of a love affair with 7-11, and with branches spreading all the way to this remote outpost, who knows what can pull it out of that spiral.

Our hotel was the site of an old Taiwanese military base. The Taiwanese had been in this region fighting against China. As you no doubt already know, dear reader, Taiwan broke away from China in 1949 when the Republic of China (now called Taiwan) lost to the communist Chinese forces. As part of the war between the two factions, Republic of China troops called Guo Min Dang had been placed here, in the north of Thailand and had built the base that later became our guest house.

There were many classes of rooms at the base turned resort, but ours, being one of the least expensive was a wooden shed, with cold running water, three firm futon-esque mattresses on the floor, a gnarly roach problem, and a stunning view of the smoke enshrouded mountains amongst which Doi Maesalong finds itself.  A rustic, yet very comfortable setup.

By then it was high time for eating. We were starving, despite the fact that we had spent most of the day sitting on vibrating metal beasts.

I thought back to how hungry the characters always seemed to be in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and also back to a study about rats that I once came across, which suggested that merely vibrating the rats bodies stimulated their metabolisms in a way almost akin to actual exercise. I’d be the last to draw any conclusions from those two data points, but regardless, we were quite glad to find ourselves feasting at a completely empty Chinese restaurant, laying into some crispy pork and Chinese greens.

We spent the rest of that evening chatting about Thailand, the Red Shirts, AsiaWheeling, and the south-east Asian coffee industry with Dane’s friend and owner of a local coffee and cake joint called Sweet Maesalong.

Our flight to Goa was not until 3:00 pm, so we were able to indulge once again in the comfort of Win’s apartment, rising late in the day to be greeted by Win’s staff who were quite eager to make us a traditional Indian breakfast, followed by a few cups of that, now oh so familiar, sweet milky Indian coffee. Win had arrived home very late the night before, and though we had done our best to communicate to the servants that it would be okay for them to go home, the entire staff had stayed the night, setting up beds on the kitchen and living room floors. At one point I found myself apologizing profusely when in the middle of the night I had tripped over one of them on the way to find my cell phone charger.

We resisted departure as long as we could, feasting on the abundance of Internet, filtered drinking water, and cups of coffee which Win’s staff so generously gave to us.

When the time came, we hauled the bikes downstairs to the courtyard, where we began to pack them up.

We could not do this, however, until one of the security guards finished taking a ride around the building on the Speed TR. This he did with much gusto and a huge grin, taking quite a few victory laps on Scott’s bike, while I headed out along frontage road looking for a cab.

When I finally made it to the intersection, I found myself confronted with a fuming, deafening gridlock of black and yellow cabs, all honking and screaming at each other. Most of these had fares and were too locked into the mayhem for me to attempt to make contact and initiate bargaining. On the other side of the raging gridlock, I found a number of cabs that all seemed to be lorded over by a central character, a large fellow in the flowing white gown and cap which advertised his religion. He had a number of cabs and rickshaws. The cabs all seemed unable to go to the airport, and a rickshaw was too small to fit ourselves and our luggage. For one reason or another each cab driver I spoke to seemed unwilling to go to the airport. Finally I was able to find a driver in one of the small van taxis they call “Omnis” who seemed interested in driving us to the airport, and though I was making good progress in nonverbal communication with him, the white gowned fellow came over and began to play translator, taking the opportunity to work out some sort of profit-sharing deal with the driver. Soon we had agreed on a price, and our man was jamming the Omni into gear, suspension lurching and belts squealing forward into the steaming gridlock that separated us from Scott and the bikes.

Some 10 minutes of horn honking and traffic jam aggravating later, I pulled up to find Scott smiling at me from behind his sunglasses. All our bags were packed up and piled neatly in a corner. The staff had lined up to shake our hands, as the security guard who had ridden the bike started to give us the hard sell on why we should just leave the Speed TRs with him, since we were, after all, going back to America, where folding bicycles grow on trees.

Wrong on both accounts, we assured him. And with a tip of the Panama hats, we were back on the road. The van had no third gear, so the ride to the airport was very loud. But soon enough we made it. Negotiation of the domestic part of the Mumbai airport proved quite simple. It had been remodeled since we visited it during the pilot study, and it now gleamed with all the new wealth of India.

I went off in search of some Vadas to snack on while Scott waited in a vast and snaking line to take advantage of our free coffee coupons (Thanks Go Air). I was just returning when I heard Scott scream out in pain, “Aye! Aye! Aye!” It seems that just after his long wait was finally over, he was proudly returning with the scalding load when a small portly woman, in an attempt to traverse the massive the line, ducked and wove behind him, scuttling through Scott’s legs and popping up at precisely the right moment to spill boiling hot boiling milky brew all over the two of them. I hustled to grab napkins and Scott and the woman began a fierce bout of apologies.

Later on, Scott was running his arm under cool water. “We just can’t seem to execute a domestic Indian flight without some mishap,” he observed. Would it really be India if we could?

Onboard Go Air’s flight from Mumbai to Goa, we found some subtle increases in the pricing of on-board snacks compared to the Bangalore-to-Mumbai leg, but for the most part were once again quite impressed with the airline. We also had the great pleasure of sitting next to a beautiful young architect from Goa by the name of Anna, who was happy to sit in as a surrogate member of the AsiaWheeling advisory board for the flight, explaining to us that travel back to Bangalore would be much easier by bus, and showing us on a map how we could take a cab to another city in the nearby province of Karnataka, and catch a bus from there to Bangalore.

Very much in Anna’s debt, we exited the airplane into the fresh air of Goa, which we savored for only a second before being herded into a bus and transported to the airport’s interior. Goa is certainly a tourist destination. The airport was like a less organized, less expensive version of the one in Bali, with many tropical potted plants, beach imagery, and figurines depicting men carrying loads of coconuts and scantily clad women whipping their shawls around in the sea air. We couldn’t wait to do the same, so we quickly piled into a taxi and headed south toward our hotel, a place that had come highly recommended by our friends in Mumbai, by the name of Cozy Nook.

It was in a place called Palolem Beach, in the south of Goa. And when our driver finally got there, we were not only quite hungry but surprised to find that our hotel was only reachable by walking down the beach. Rather than deal with that on the cycles, we locked them to a pole with a large “no parking sign,” which was being widely ignored by the locals, and headed down the beach.

It was a bit of a trek, and gave us the chance to take in the world around us. It was a nice white sand beach, covered completely with inns and restaurants.  Everywhere we looked there were white people, mostly in the sort of hippy-esque Indian influenced garb that is oh so common among those post-army-service Israelis who seem to be spread all over India and south-east Asia, spending a little time traveling and relaxing after what was no doubt an extremely intense experience. These made up the majority of the vacationers, but the group was also spiced with large numbers of older, more affluent looking European and Australian types, bathing in the greenish brown opaque sea, playing Frisbee on the beach, or strolling and attempting to fend off the many begging stray dogs which scurried everywhere.

We were almost to the Cozy Nook when my stomach suddenly tensed into knots. I had forgotten my Ukulele back where we parked the bikes! “Sorry, Scott,” I said “You’ll need to haggle for the room and check in alone. I need to run back and see if it’s not too late to save my baby.” So I threw down my pack, took off the Panama hat, and began to sprint down the beach. A couple of stray dogs joined me at first but soon lost interest. My legs began to throb and demanded I slow down, but I refused them. Finally panting and wheezing, I scrambled up off the beach and across the concrete parking area, but my uke was nowhere to be seen.

My heart fell like a stone into a frozen abyss of defeat. How could I have been so stupid? How was I supposed to sit by the beach here in Goa and strum Jimmy Buffet’s Margarittaville without my trusty uke? What an idiot I was… Ah, cruel fate.

Just then I heard a fellow call over to me. It was our cab driver. He was sitting at a nearby Chai stand, sipping tea and in his hands… my ukulele!

I ran over to him with tears in my eyes and took the instrument. I looked down at it. Not so fast, I thought, there are still a few more places we need to go together.