The sun was shining brightly, indicating that we had slept significantly into the morning. It was good, though, it had been very late indeed when we had arrived at that lonely public beach in Sohar. The beach was now much less lonely; in fact, it seemed we had collected a small audience outside the idling Previa, scrutinizing the cycles and peering through the condensation-soaked windows at us sleeping.

So we rolled out of our seats, greeted our audience, thanked them for their attention, and with a Billy Shears type introduction, presented them with Jackson, who performed an epic rendition of Speed TR  unfolding, followed by a rousing bit of wheeling.

With the car locked tight and fading into the distance behind us, we struck out in search of the secrets of Sohar. It was a sweaty place, though the moist seaside breeze was not so much hot as it was oppressively sticky. It also became apparent that we were not only far from the city center, but also quite a way from the nearest source of breakfast. So we headed back to the Previa, performed reverse rendition of the bike-folding act, and to the great chagrin of our fellow beach goers, disappeared into the hazy day, headed for the city center.

Scott had an insatiable urge that morning for Internet, and we drove for quite some time, Scott with his laptop open, searching for wireless networks. We found quite a few, but they were without fail either red herrings with no data behind them, or secured against us. Finally, after spending a fair bit of time attempting to sweet talk a local business into letting us onto their network, we finally gave up and chose a new tack: shopping malls.

So we asked for directions to the largest local shopping mall and parked our car outside. Inside, we were initially unable to find a source of wireless Internet, but Scott was intrepid. On the upside there was another sprawling super market. This seemed the perfect place to buy the breakfast foods we so very much needed to maintain sanity. So Scott and Jackson headed off in one direction, and Claudia and I in another, one team determined to find some way to access the Internet, the other to procure foodstuffs. We met up and feasted at a table outside one of the many coffee shops. Scott had great success in his search for Internet, finally syncing his email in the back office of a children’s fun center on the fourth floor.

So with stomachs full and sync’ed of emails completed, we unfolded the cycles and headed out to the road. Sohar turned out to be great for wheeling. Very nice, smooth roads, low traffic levels, and starkly uniform Islamic architecture. From time to time, as we continued to explore, the wheeling became mildly technical. You see, the city was bisected by a number of large highways, on which, while traffic density was still quite low, the speed and recklessness increased greatly, requiring some gnarly portaging in order to get from one street to another.

As we headed farther from the city center, we began to feel a change from the stark white buildings and giant sparkling mosques to a more rural vibe. The roads began to crumble into gravel and packed earth, and soon animals were roaming around us. Our goal was to get to the ocean; as far as our compasses and understanding of the local terrain were concerned, it couldn’t be much farther. We had even begin to smell that salty fishy musk, but the road refused to take us consistently in the right direction, instead meandering this way and that, and all the time growing ever worse. We stopped to take stock. and I climbed onto a nearby wall to scout things out. Up ahead, we could see the road connected with another in a T-style junction. And the other road, it seemed, might take us right out of the salt marsh agricultural zone through which we rose, and directly to the beach.

And sure enough it did. That same sweltering humidity that had made the car sweat so profusely overnight washed over us as we came upon the coast, which was dotted with overturned fishing boats. We took a left onto the first paved road we encountered, and headed down it along the beach. Soon we were joined by a group of young local wheelers, who were absolutely thrilled to see us in the neighborhood.

They were, unfortunately also quite reckless with their cycles, and possessed a nasty penchant for littering and challenging each other to races. We rode along with them for a while, but were quite glad to be free of them once they finally lost interest.

We also found this interesting piece of Omani graffiti, which we would love one of you Oman-savvy readers to unpack in the comments.

A few kilometers up the road, moving away from the water, we called a waypoint at a local grocery shop to buy water and Japanese sports drinks, to be mixed into a healing kind of dilute tonic.

Claudia pulled over and used her Arabic to ask a couple of Omani teenagers who were walking and smoking cigarettes by the side of the road how to get back to the Safeer Mall, where we had parked the Previa.  They gave us very good directions, and feeling just peachy, we pulled off the road onto a 500 meter section of packed dirt that  would let us get over to the mall parking lot.

As we rode, a couple of women called out to us, giving their support in Arabic. Oman… what a place.

We pulled back onto the road and drove on, cracking Red Bulls and listening to more trivia podcasts. We drove for hours through the desert, and eventually the sun began to set into the rugged tree-less terrain. It was then that we realized it was time to eat again. Perhaps something about all the Red Bull was suppressing our appetites, for we had now a few times during our drive accidentally gone way too long without sustenance.

We pulled off at the next exit, which turned out to bring us to a fascinating town by the name of Al Suwaiq. We pulled into the brightly lit city center, which was really nothing more than a maze of very narrow streets and single story concrete buildings. At least 60% of the businesses here were ladies’ tailoring shops, a ratio that was so unbelievably high, that to this day we wonder how so much ladies’ tailoring business became centralized in this region.

It was, I dare say, not a majority Omani city. In fact we were to learn that most of the people here were immigrants or temporary laborers from Bangladesh.

Claudia needed to take a leak, and being rightfully somewhat wary of heading out into this city on her own, I decided to accompany her in the search. Just as we were asking at our second restroom-less ladies tailoring shop, a man in a giant flowing white robe came over and asked us in Arabic what we needed. Claudia began to explain to him who we were and what we wanted in his city. He asked us to follow him, and we did, past a giant pile of demolished buildings, down a set of stairs, and into a pitch black cul-de-sac. I was a bit worried, but Claudia seemed confident in this guy’s good intentions, so I trusted her. Our new friend fumbled noisily with a large lock and opened a door, spilling out a pool of dim yellow light.

Inside his house, he showed Claudia to the bathroom and as she got down to business, began to change out of his robes and into a lungi and the kind of white undershirt one might uncouthly call a “wife-beater.” Claudia exited the john, and while I took my turn, she began asking the chap for restaurant recommendations.

And so it was that we discovered that his house was, in fact, also a restaurant, specializing in Bangladeshi cuisine. This seemed like an interesting opportunity, and we hurried back out to find Scott and Jackson.

When I got outside, I found that there was some confusion going on with the car. It seemed that two fellows were trying to extract some kind of parking fee from our friends, who remained quite skeptical as to the official capacity of the gent attempting to monetize the section of crumbling asphalt on which we’d docked the Previa. Luckily a passer by explained to us, in no language any of us spoke, that we had better ignore the chaps, and so we did, heading back into the house/restaurant for a little food, but not before assuring ourselves repeatedly that the van was securely locked.

Inside, the Bangladeshi house/restaurant , our host was already hard at work rustling up a number of dishes. It seems that he kept them all ready to go, covered by bits of greasy cloth and requiring only the addition of a bit of flame from his very impressive and heavily modified propane stove. He ran the stove much like the way people pilot rental jet skis: aggressively, loudly, and with a large amount of jerking the apparatus around.

Soon plates of rice appeared before us, and then dishes of meat and freshly cut vegetables, as he prepared them, one by one.  There was certainly plenty of meat in this meal, and a number of delectable complex spices, the likes of which we had not tasted since… perhaps Sri Lanka?

Also, it seems, the fellow had called a number of his friends over to witness the group of foreigners who had chosen to visit his restaurant/home. And so it was that as we began to eat, a small audience formed around us, asking questions from time to time, and generally transmitting good energy.

Once we had finished the food (it was a splendid and rather large meal), we decided to all pose together for a few timed exposures.

So excited were our new friends when viewing the images we had taken, that we decided to head down the block and have a copy printed and framed for them to hang on the wall.

On our way to the photo printing shop, we were joined by a very uncomfortable character in a flowing white robe and head scarf. I believe he was looking for a ride and had noticed that we had a large van, but his language was as circuitous and difficult to interpret as his mannerisms. Even with Claudia’s Arabic skills, we were never quite sure  what he wanted. We had no room in the car for him, and while we tried to communicate to him that we did not believe we could help, he continued on speaking in strange incantations and waving a fist full of Oman reil in front of us.  Eventually, after a fair bit of uncomfortable conversation, he left.

Jackson turned to us once the man was outside. “That man is practicing black magic. I am sure of it.” Fair enough, Jackson.

We chose a nice gaudy frame for the freshly printed image and headed back to the house/restaurant. And here it is.

We decided it might even be worth taking one more group picture with the picture, if for nothing other than reflexivity’s sake.

We climbed back into the car and began to search for a way back to the main road. This proved easier said than done, and we spent at least 40 minutes wandering the dark and confusing back roads of Al Suwaiq. We were finally able to find the main road though, and once on it we made very short work of the remaining few hundred kilometers to Al Sawadi, a kind of seaside resort town. We were becoming way too fond of the hotel Previa, so upon entering the place, we already had little interest in staying at any of the expensive hotels, but we decided that it might be worth visiting them anyway.

So we parked the car outside the Al Sawadi beach resort and headed inside. It was the first time we had seen a bar in quite some time, and for a moment we considered having a drink. But after seeing the prices, we decided that perhaps just smoking a little Shisha in one of the tents in the back might be more affordable.

So we whiled away the next couple hours smoking hookah and chatting about life, the universe, and everything.

Once we had our fill of sweetly scented tobacco smoke, we paid our bill, which was just slightly more than the cost of one drink at the bar, and headed back to the Previa. That night we set up the hotel on a seemingly remote section of beach, not far from the resort, and relaxed into that air-conditioned, humming womb of dreams that is the Hotel Previa.

We awoke the next morning as the bright Omani sun began to heat up the interior of the car. It had been a hot night on that gravely beach, especially since we had decided to leave the windows closed for fear of being eaten by insects.

Despite the heat and some moderate sweating, I slept quite well, and as we stretched and took stock of our surroundings, we were already working on improvements to the Hotel Previa algorithm.

We began the day by taking a quick dip in the sea and drinking a few Red Bulls. The water was the same crystal clear blue that we had remembered, and as we swam, wearing the Dawn Patrols, I could look down and see the bottom, tens of feet below my kicking legs. Much refreshed by the dip, we loaded the bikes back into the Previa and set out in search of breakfast. We spotted a roadside Yemeni café, near a gas station and decided to check it out. It smelled good inside, so we sat down, ordering coffee, hummus, salads, and a large plate of fish.

The food was splendid, and the owners of the shop were quite entertained when, after paying the bill, we proceeded to unload four bicycles from our beloved Previa.

It was time to wheel this city, but for one reason or another, Jackson felt that parking a couple kilometers up, in the town proper, would be superior to parking here at the station. Fair enough, we thought. So Scott, Claudia, and I hopped on our Dahons and Jackson took the wheel of the Prev to meet us in town.

Having spent plenty of time in Indonesia, Hong Kong, and the UK, Jackson naturally pulled onto the left side of the road, where he proceeded to, as an unlicensed driver, take the rental car around a blind cliff-side turn directly into oncoming traffic. We screamed at him, but the windows were up.

We decided that either we were all in a world of trouble, or Jackson would figure it out and we would meet in town. Traffic was light here…maybe he would even make it all the way to town without seeing another car?

Regardless, there was only one choice at this point: wheeling.

And with that, we headed out onto the road. We met up with Jackson in central Khasab; he had come through the experience unscathed, and the four of us headed out to explore the city. The landscape was savagely gorgeous, with almost no plants, just rock, sand, and sea.

The buildings were mostly small, many of them crumbing, some of them lavishly expensive, and other than tea and hookah joints, all the businesses seemed to be import/export companies.

The city, of course, had many, many mosques, with a rather impressive central one in the middle of a great round-about.

We spotted a diving and sporting goods shop as we rode, and decided to buy snorkels. This shop also seemed to be focused more on import/export than retail, but they were happy to sell to us. The water had been so clear and beautiful that morning and the evening before, that we were sure that the underwater view would be to-die-for.  But once we saw how expensive masks and snorkels were at this shop, we decided to wheel on in search of a more affordable option. Sure enough, a few shops later we found it.

For about $6.00 a person, we were able to buy four complete mask and snorkel sets. Sure they were of terrible quality, but we needed them only for the next week or so. So we bought the suckers and strapped them onto the backs of our cycles.

From there we headed back to the beach for another dip. Unfortunately, due to some bizarre change in the currents, the water had become quite cloudy. So, throwing the snorkels into the back of the Previa next to the cycles, we headed out in search of more Oman. There would be more underwater opportunities in the future.

Unfortunately, in order to get more Oman, we actually had to drive back to the UAE. You see, dear reader, Musandam is disconnected from the rest of Oman, as a little autonomous chunk of what would logically be the UAE. Control of the Musandam Peninsula, however, gives Oman partial control over the Straits of Hormuz, which, it seems, is of some strategic interest to them.

So onward we went, back to the border we had crossed the day before, shelling out more cash and heading back into the UAE. We scrutinized the map, and it seemed there was a road that would allow us to move directly to the border, through the mountain range we had driven around the day before.  And so it was toward that mountain range that we drove.

A lack of signage made locating the exact road difficult, but we learned from a passing truck that athough no signs indicated it, we had indeed found the correct road.

We were somewhat surprised, however, when we asked the truck driver for his estimate of the time it would take to reach the second Omani border: four hours. This was more, even, than the time it had taken to drive all the way around the mountains the day before.

The reason for the estimate, however, became apparent as the road soon dissolved into a gravely mountain pass. Then it began to get steep. And soon we had exceeded the capabilities of our beloved Previa.

While the lifeless jagged landscape through which we drove was both beautiful, terrible, and strangely inviting, we decided that we needed to turn back, lest we end up stranded or worse, trapped in a snarl of twisted metal at the bottom of some savage lifeless valley.

We made sure, however, to take a few glam shots of the Previa, of course, in this dramatic landscape.

Back on honest bitumen, we tore on, around the mountains down the same roads on which we’d come, eventually turning toward the UAE.

We drove past a few giant oil-pumping and refining stations, some of which were emitting huge plumes of flame.

We stopped once again in Ras Al Khaima, this time for dinner. We wandered the streets for a while before selecting a Shawarma restaurant. The food was amazing, following our so far golden trend of truly succulent meals consisting always of hummus, salad and some meat dish, this time Shawarma.

We stopped again at a giant night market that sprang up out of the empty, pitch black desert. We wandered around looking for a  rest room, but instead found a sleeping encampment of nomads. I decided to pee elsewhere and we moved on.

Soon we found ourselves in the much larger city of Fujairah, capital of the Emerate of Fujairah, where it was time to eat some more. We spotted a giant LuLu’s hypermarket, and decided to indulge our fascination with foreign grocery stores.

Inside, we found some really fantastic products, which I would like to share with you now:

The selection was truly dizzying.

In the end we settled on a few of those sticky sweet Arabic pastries, the most well known (in America) of which is, of course, Baklava. Jackson also insisted on a certain Arabic ice cream he is quite fond of. It was all delightful.

I purchased a non-alcoholic beer (the only kind you can get in the UAE without some serious paperwork) . It was undrinkable.

And then we were at the border of Oman, once again. A very tall, dark, confident, and pleasantly exotic smelling man in a flowing white gown and intricate Omani hat stamped our passports, charged us another hearty fee, and together with the other three workers at the border warmly welcomed me to Oman, taking my hand and shaking it. So far the best border experience of the entire trip.

We drove on through the night, in search of a city known as Sohar, fabled to be the birthplace of none other than Sinbad the Sailor himself, a character I will not take the time to elaborate on in this post, but whose Wikipedia article is well worth a skim at least.

It took a few hours, and a wrong turn that lead us to a giant oil refinery was emitting multiple plumes of startlingly large flame, but we eventually arrived in Sohar. We immediately headed to the sketchiest outskirts to find a nice empty beach on which to set up the Hotel Previa. Instead we found a large public beach, next to a large public park. We were exhausted though and, trusting our luck, we just unloaded the bikes, locked them to a palm tree, and went to sleep.

This night, we let the engine run, with air conditioning on (albeit at the lowest setting). It was so humid on this beach that as we slept, the cool, air conditioned exterior of the windows began to collect condensation which ran in slow drops down the glass as we slept like babies.

Our alarms went off bright and early,  and for once my SIM city 2000 theme blended in with a cacophony of ringtones that pulled our team into the already blazing sunny morning. We even got the opportunity to catch Sid on his way out of the house for work. He looked well ironed and dapper, and greeted us with a big smile. “Off to Oman today then?”

Right he was. The night before, as Scott and Claudia were bringing up her long lost and finally recovered baggage, we had explained to Sid the rental car swap that we had initiated yesterday and he most graciously offered to assist us in engineering an equitable termination of our deal with Stellar Rent a Car. They were none too eager to take the vehicle back, but in the end, we were able to pay them for about a day and a half of rental, and though some discussion of a petrol fee had occurred earlier during our iteration, none was ever levied.

But before we could head toward the wild desert, we had some exciting gifts to open. First was the Dawn Patrols. We opened the boxes and uncovered two pairs of very attractive spectacles. The new sunglasses had that spotlessly clean warm gleam one finds in showroom automobiles. There were two pairs, one in black, with silver lenses, the other in a kind of tortoise shell, with gold lenses.

We tried them both on, but it seemed obvious from early on that the black ones would best fit Scott and the brown ones me.  I put the glasses on my face and admired the world around me, then admired myself in the  mirror. These were going to be the perfect glasses for Prevlaunch. We also unfolded and inspected Claudia’s new Dahon.

She was a beautiful specimen, also gleaming and new, with a black matte finish, and black matte seat post and folding apparatus, and a set of tasteful beige-wall tires. They were not, however, our beloved Schwalbe big apples, the kevlar lined tires. As you, dear reader, already know, we had not suffered a single flat. “Are these kevlar lined?” I asked.

“So says the man who sold it to me at Providence Cycles.”

Fair enough. With Jackson and Claudia sporting brand new folding cycles, one might suspect Scott and I to look back toward our filthy and beaten up Speed TRs longing for new equipment. This is, however, decidedly not true. Instead, I looked back at my dear Speed TR and thought: just look at what one of these things can do. I reflected on all the places my cycle had been, all the different streets over which it had rolled, and the thousands of kilometers that we had put on them. And they were by no means on their last legs. It is a fine machine, the Dahon folding bicycle, and I was thrilled to see two fresh ones entering the world.

We loaded all the cycles into the only Toyota we had left,locked the car, and headed to an Indian restaurant across the street from the rental agency. The restaurant supplied us with a very large and inexpensive amount of curried mutton and roti, served with a giant platter of fresh onions, tomatoes, and lemon wedges.

Part way through the meal, our Malaysian friend from Stellar ran across the street to explain to me in Indonesian that our new Previa was parked illegally and I needed to feed the meter. I had no idea that we even needed to pay to park. Luckily all was well, and he even spotted me some change to feed the meter. A fine chap indeed.

Back at the restaurant, while we were picking at the last of the food, Jackson and Claudia headed around the corner to an electronics shop. The Previa had only a tape deck, which as any experienced road tripper knows is superior to all except the AUX-in jack, in terms of its ability to pipe audio straight from an iPod or laptop. All we needed was an 8^th inch to cassette cable, of which they had a few in stock.

Without further ado, we headed out into the desert, scanning the road for signs, scrutinizing our maps. Then we were finally on the main road to Musandam, listening to a little of the old Podquiz. Spirits could not be higher, as we drove through the desert completely legally at 140-160 Km per hour, depending on the ever-changing speed limits. The sun was bright, but it was cool and quiet as we blasted along inside the Previa.

It was our dream, turned reality: listening to Nas’ Illmatic, arguing about bits of trivia, drinking Red Bull, and tearing through the beautiful desert at 90 miles per hour. AsiaWheeling strikes again.

Our first stop was in a rather industrial Emirate called Ras Al Khaima.

The capital city is situated on a river, and as such makes it an ideal hub for manufacturing and transporting  materials around the UAE. One of the traditional focuses of Ras Al Khaima, I believe, is cement manufacturing.

We were interested in getting a drink, gasoline, and directions to the border of Oman. So we pulled off the main road and began cruising. The place was sun-drenched, industrial, and fascinating. We spotted a blended drinks shop along the side of another small road, and parked the Previa, heading through the blazing sun and into the cool shade of the interior of the shop.  Inside we found a friendly and large staff, a small restaurant, and an astonishingly succulent 90 cent avocado smoothie with fresh crushed pistachios on top.

Jackson and I had the avocado, while Scott and Claudia chose some kind of pomegranate crème.

We drank our smoothies, across a broken concrete road from the shop and watched the ballet of shipping and industry performing before us.  The smoothies went fast, and after we had tossed the Styrofoam cups, we headed out on foot in search of a rest room. We were not sure whether the laws for public urination involved chopping off  hands or worse, so we headed into an HSBC branch office.  Out of curiosity, we probed the staff there in hopes of acquiring literature on sharia-compliant mortgage loans, though were not able to walk away with anything substantial.

The women inside were very friendly, and though they did not know exactly how to get to Oman, they gave us some general clues. They were the first women in full Burka that I had ever interacted with and I could only see part of each woman’s face, but I must admit, I found both of them quite attractive… something like the allure of  conversing with someone at masked ball.

We followed their directions, across a bridge to a gas station where I took great pleasure in filling up the entire tank for 11 USD.

When we got back on the road, we discovered it was only 10 or 15 kilometers to the border. It had become very dusty, and it was through a kind of dust fog that we made our way to the ocean, and with it, a small but well fortified Emirati customs station.

It was a strict, but very relaxed border experience. We were asked to park our car, then get out and wander over to a window with our passports. The officials spoke good English and were very polite. The politeness continued as well, even as they charged us each a hefty exit fee.

From there, we were flagged by a Emirati soldier onward into no man’s land, which we made short work of, arriving at Omani passport control a few minutes later. There too, we encountered polite workers, in flowing white robes, speaking great English, and charging us plenty of money. We paid in Emirati Dihrams, having not gotten our hands on any Omani Reils yet.

The dust began to clear as we drove on, along a beautiful, brand new, empty road. To our right there were great jagged, completely plant-less cliffs.

To our left was the deep, clear blue of the Straits of Hormuz.

We pulled over at a beach,  and headed down to look more closely at the sea.  It was gorgeous, and made all the more so by the polarized lenses on our brand new Dawn Patrols.

We climbed back in the Previa and drove a few more miles, until we noticed a fellow wheeler heading along the side of the road, and pulled over to give him our hearty support.  We congratulated the chap, giving him a can of Red Bull to aid him on his journey.

Wheel safe brother, wherever you are.

And then we were in Khasab. Khasab is a small hamlet, but the largest in Musandam.

It was an import/export town, and if what we had read was correct, supported itself largely with the business of illegally transporting cigarettes and other taxable goods on super high-speed boats, across the straits of Hormuz to Iran.  And sure enough, as we drove we saw quite a few boats with what looked like a redundant number of giant off-board motors.

We began investigating hotels, but quickly learned that they were all quite expensive.

So we tabled the mission of finding somewhere to sleep, and instead drove to the beach.

It was a gravelly beach, and following the precedent of the locals, we pulled the Previa onto the gravel and ran into some nearby caves to change into our bathing suits.

We quickly discovered that the thing to do here was to cliff jump.

So after swimming around a bit in the rocky beach area, we climbed up the rocks to the top of some nearby cliffs.

We spent the remainder of the sunlight jumping off the rocks, from ever higher outcroppings into the crystal clear blue water.

Ah, life was good.

We climbed back into the Previa after the sun had set and began searching for food. The place we ended up settling on was a kind of outside café. The owner was very opinionated about what we should order, so we let him have his way and soon out came some soups and salads and hummus, followed by roasted fish, and finally tea.  It was all quite delicious, and we ate at the single wooden table, sitting in a pool of fluorescent light that poured out of the kitchen. As we leaned back, savoring the bits of flavor left in our mouths, it seemed once again that a more foolish man might think the deck was full of aces.

After the meal, we headed to a very down-to-earth Sheesha café, where we lounged around smoking water pipes, sitting on plastic chairs outside a crumbling cinder block structure, and drinking tea.

Meanwhile all around us, old men with beards in flowing white robes, discussed very serious sounding topics. Claudia was the only woman in the place, and she explained to us, was probably technically not even allowed inside. “These kinds of places are men only,” she explained, “but we’re just Gaijin smashing this one.”

“Gajin Smashing” is a term from the Japanese expatriate community, for when a foreigner is allowed to do something that is generally not allowed or frowned upon, simply because he or she is a foreigner. It’s an interesting notion, that of women being banned from this place. Were we being disrespectful in coming here, smashing our way in with a woman? Or we were doing some strange kind of God’s work? Speculation is welcomed in the comments.

When we were done with the hookahs, we paid the startlingly small bill, and drove around until we decided we had found the absolute cheapest hotel in town (still a pretty ritzy place), and after haggling over the price, the owners explained to us that it would be strictly against the rules for all four of us to stay in a room, and that we needed to get two rooms at least. This seemed crazy. One room already was nearly 70 dollars. So, in frustration, we decided to just leave and sleep in the car on the beach, in what we dubbed the “Hotel Previa.”

We brushed our teeth in the bathroom of the hotel and then departed crunching back onto the gravel of the beach, and pulled up next to the cliff wall that contained the caves in which we’d changed.

We unloaded the cycles from the back of the car and locked them to the rim of the Previa. We then leaned all the seats back, passed around the bottle of Klonapin, and, after doing a quick 20 minute round of trivia fell into a most delightful and peaceful slumber.

Meanwhile the moon and stars shone brightly, reflecting off the tranquil Straits of Hormuz, and the occasional cigarette-smuggling power boat skimmed off toward Iran.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sugar free,” we all replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The place: Grinnell, Iowa.

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

The weather: cool fall morning, misty, crisp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Totally and completely impressive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We awoke the next morning feeling quite rested and rolled out of bed to find ourselves in a beautifully decorated, sun-bathed apartment in a futuristic housing development somewhere in the Persian gulf. Sid had awoken early that morning and headed off to work. Following his instructions to a T, we made ourselves comfortable, enjoying our ability to relax into the morning.

I plugged my Mac into Sid’s router and began broadcasting wireless through the apartment.  Meanwhile an away team was sent downstairs to the giant in-house shopping complex to acquire materials with which to create breakfast. The away team returned with no-doubt fabulously expensive eggs, bread, and –of all things unholy– bacon.

We put on Deeper Than Rap by Rick Ross, cooked a fabulous breakfast, and generally played house.

The team’s spirits were high, and it was becoming obvious that good team chemistry would propel these four wheelers toward Oman.

The only question now was about the car. Since before our arrival at Motta’s pad in Kunming, we had been working closely with Claudia to contact car rental outfits in the cities of Dubai and Muscat. The optimal choice, of course, would be to rent a Toyota Previa in Dubai somewhere, and drive the thing first to the Musandam Peninsula, a wholly separate part of Oman known for it dramatic desert coastline, and then back down through the UAE to the central parts of Oman, exploring small cities along the way, culminating in a visit to the glorious and ancient city of Muscat.

The only things that stood in our way, however, were price and my age. Jackson, of course, was over 25 and thus fully legal to rent a vehicle all over the world. However, being 24 seemed to produce some mild difficulties or encourage some inflated fees. Jackson, on the other hand, through a set of unique circumstances, was without a license. So that left me as the oldest licensed driver in the group. Unlike gasoline, renting a car is not cheap in this part of the world, no matter how old you are. That was what we had discovered in our efforts to do so remotely. It was our hope, however, through guanxi, or through the power of in-person bargaining, we would be able to find a more reasonably priced rental car.

This task was primarily Claudia’s, and it was not any easy one. She continued to make phone calls, while we spent most of the next day working on correspondence for you, dear reader. In addition to the rental car issue, Claudia spent a fair amount of time fighting with the officials from Air France and Southwest. Her bags, we learned, had been located, and they seemed to be on their way to Dubai. This felt like an easy success, and the successes only seemed to continue, as we met back up with Sid that evening.

We wandered over to the gigantic mall across the street, and spent some time talking with the rental agencies there. Unfortunately, while we were seeing more reasonable pricing, none of the rental agencies seemed to support a Previa or Previa-equivalent option. So Sid pulled out the big guns, calling a company on the other side of town that  his business often rents from. And it was so that we ended up climbing into Sid’s brand new rental car and heading across town in search of Stellar Rent A Car.

The folks at Stellar explained to us on the phone that they too, unfortunately, did not have a Previa, but they did have a slightly smaller Toyota model called an Innova. After some brief calculations, we  concluded that we would be able to fit all of us and our gear into such a vehicle, so we were ready to pull the trigger if the price was reasonable. With four wheelers, we were able to consider much larger expenditures, and we were determined to make our dream of cruising through the Gulf a reality, and frankly, Dubai had given us a bit of an increased appetite for expenditure. We were in luck, for  they also claimed to be able to provide us with the much-needed Omani insurance package. All was falling into place it seemed.

As we drove, Sid chattered away with them in Hindi, which we were quickly discovering was the much more useful language here. Without fail, whenever Sid would roll down his window and question a passer-by as to directions or the like, the fellow would respond in fluent Hindi. And so it was with much excitement that we approached the rental counter at Stellar Rental a Car.

Sid, in his effortlessly exacting manner, worked us a deal and guided us through the insurance purchase process. I was somewhat astonished that all we needed to rent the car was a U.S. driver’s license and a passport. The insurance documentation would be finished the next day, and in the meantime we would be insured to drive in the UAE.  It sounded good to us. So we shook hands, exchanged a down payment, and strolled over to check out the car with one of the employees, who was from, off all places, Indonesia. Jackson, our dear Indonesian Bureau Chief, and the gentleman chatted away in Bahasa Indonesian, which coincidentally Sid knows as well, being an old high school friend of Jackson’s.

Driving home, we enjoyed the local Dubai radio broadcasts and tried our skill at navigating back to the Burj Khalifa, which was not an easy task.

The roads constantly funneled us into alleyways, dead ends, superhighways, and boulevards which seemed to direct us towards the Burj until veering off in the final stretch.  We had been informed that McKinsey & Co. was responsible for much of the conceptual planning of the city, and considered calling one of their local offices on the chance that they would be obliged to help us navigate these byzantine roads over the phone.  Fearing they would charge us with scope-creep, we continued to use our own guesswork to eventually return home.

That evening, Sid introduced us to some of his friends in Dubai. They were all foreigners working in one capacity or another in the city’s finance industry. We chatted late into the night over sheesha smoke and more Arabic pastes, talking about AsiaWheeling, the city of Dubai, and global finance, in the garden of the massively luxurious hotel we had toured the day before.

Near the end of the after-dinner conversation, Claudia excused herself and climbed into a cab bound for the airport.  We chatted for a while longer, and eventually wandered back to Sid’s place. As we strolled back we got a series of SMS messages from Claudia, indicating primarily excitement in her discovery of yet another Johny Rocket’s in this town, this one with a sign in Arabic, and secondarily  that we would need to wait one more day for her cycle and bag. This was fine with us, we were enjoying Sid’s apartment and our relaxed Dubai lifestyle tremendously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where does he live?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hong Kong has built its reputation as a city famous for transacting business.  Both an active market itself, and the great gateway to China,  the city boasts a fantastic cast of commercial characters.  During our time there, I met with a few old friends who are working on various ventures, in capacities ranging from entrepreneurial chief executive to dogged analyst in the largest transactions the global financial markets have ever seen.

Robert Neville – California Wine Supply

Rob, an eminent entrepreneur, rugby player, Brown alum, and childhood friend spends his time developing a business, California Wine Supply. He imports wine from our native California to the Hong Kong market.  Initially planning on selling to mainland China, Rob has chosen to start with the local market as a healthy foundation for the business.  Now his considerations range from logistics (how does one transport 20 cases of temperature-sensitive wine across the Pacific Ocean), to judging local tastes, to engineering price-points palatable for restaurants and retail, and securing available capital.  Luckily, regulations are on his side, as the import taxes on wine in Hong Kong have dropped considerably recently, allowing him a fantastic opportunity to build a new market.  What’s more, the most natural way he saw to market himself – social media – has become the darling medium of the consumer world.

Cool, calm, and collected, Rob serendipitously found himself in the position of the Social Media King of Hong Kong wine by releasing admittedly hilarious wine tasting videos from his time in Hong Kong and Shanghai.  Furthermore his Twitter feed attracts followers of the Hong Kong wine scene, and earned him a spot as an organizer of the Hong Kong Tweetfest and as the social media guru for upcoming wine shows in city.

What kind of an appetite will Hong Kong, and eventually mainland China, have for California wine?  In a market dominated by French vineyards, it will take a bold character like Rob to innovate and produce a product for sophisticated consumers.  Some prototypes now include blended varietals inspired by European tastes from regions in California previously wedded to wines consisting of single grape stocks.  Packaging too, he claims, could use a revamp, as that’s how most buyers, in conjunction with price, choose a wine.  Imagine a single piece of duct tape in place of the front label:  title optional, with only regulatory labeling on the rear.  Whatever the market demands, he’ll no doubt imagine and engender a set of imaginative solutions.

Mr. Josh Z. – Banker Extraordinaire

Mr. Z has quite a different approach to his career than Mr. Neville.  Mr. Z worked tireless summers in New York and Hong Kong during Brown University summer breaks at the finest investment banks in the business.  Upon graduating, he turned down admission to Stanford’s graduate school to take a job with China International Capital Corporation (en – 中文), the Beijing-based state-owned investment bank that co-underwrites IPOs for major Chinese corporations.  There, under a strenuous schedule, he worked on the initial public offering of the Agricultural Bank of China, which, if the bank chooses to exercise their full offering of shares, will be the largest IPO in history.

Completing that, he was poached by a global top-tier investment bank to work in Hong Kong under a senior advisor responsible for taking some of the most venerable firms in Silicon Valley (like Amazon, Google, and Cisco) public.  At this new bank, he takes responsibility for a swath of clients in the technology and media space, most of which are Chinese variants of western Internet super-phenomenons.  Curiously, these firms choose to go public as the successful firms of Web 1.0 did, while the largest western players in Web 2.0 tend to get acquired or stay private.

We met at his offices in Central and hustled over to a street of Lan Kwai Fong.  There, we sat down at the Luk Yu Tea House, one of the last surviving in Hong Kong with interiors ornately decorated in the Old Shanghai style.

After ordering an array of mouth-watering dishes, he began to describe the professional life that was now his own.

His schedule:

• Monday to Wednesday: Work in office from 10:00 am to 5:00 am
• Thursday: Fly early morning to Beijing to meet with clients; fly to Shanghai in evening.
• Thursday night: No sleep – prepare meeting materials for the clients in Shanghai.
• Friday: Meet with Shanghai client; fly to Hong Kong in evening
• Saturday and Sunday: In the office from 1:00 pm to midnight, catching up on sleep while not at work

What exactly does he do during these many working hours?  Model financial statements, produce pitch books, proofread, prepare filings with regulators, and author massive investment prospectuses.  As we spoke, he punched away on his Blackberry, communicating with high-quality, highly confidential printers in Hong Kong and on the mainland whom the firm would pay $100,000 to print 10,000 three fingers books.  Some of these IPOs, he mentions, generate $1,000,000 in fees for printers alone.  “I should be in the printing business,” he quips.  Quite amazingly, these printers will reprint the prospectuses again and again for the bank if any changes need to be made in the text.

He admits that it’s putting a tremendous amount of stress on him, letting his body and social life deteriorate.  He flies first class on Cathay Pacific every week, and stays at the nicest five-star hotels in the cities where he travels, but he couldn’t care less about those perks.  Without much entrepreneurial freedom, and mostly fighting exhaustion, he quizzes me on start-up life and on getting involved with high-tech ventures.  While tense to witness, Mr. Z is admittedly making history, taking gigantic Chinese banks public and participating in the IPOs of the most notable Chinese tech companies.  It’s bankers like Mr. Z who empower entrepreneurs, their customers, and their users by providing providing the ultimate liquidity of a public stock offering.  China needs people like him, supporting these entrepreneurs in high-technology, high risk ventures.  Where he will go next? To the start-up side, or to the investment buy-side? It is yet to be seen, though we will no doubt revisit him on AsiaWheeling 3.0 as he continues to seize his destiny.

Ben Rudick – Doing Good and Doing Well

I originally met Mr. Ben Rudick by inviting him and Mr. Nathan Wyeth to join Woody and me for dinner in Tokyo at the delicious Korean yakiniku restaurant Ton Ton Tezi.  At this restaurant, the plate that fries the meat is slanted, with meat upstream and cabbage at the bottom of slant, thus coating the vegetable in delicious fatty oil.  In Hong Kong, we met for lunch, and I snapped this portrait of him outside his office in central, joking that he needed a photo for the back of his book cover.

At the time, Ben and Nathan were working for the Shoenfeld Foundation identifying projects for investment in the social enterprise space.  Now in Hong Kong, Ben is focusing much of his effort on being director of the program for “Empowering Chinese Social Enterprise Leaders” (ECSEL) This fantastic program provides full scholarships in the U.S. for young Chinese social entrepreneurs to develop their businesses and engender positive change.  The program was launched at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2009. Pictured below are two of the 30 scholarship winners, Jingji Zhang and Wang Jun, next to Ben Rudick, Bill Clinton, and Bill Shoenfeld (of his eponymous foundation).

Ben’s efforts continue to grow in the social enterprise space, with future possibilities for investment and further cultivation of Chinese social entrepreneurs.  Graciously, Ben provided some invaluable advice for my own ketchup business over don-katsu lunch from the delicious cafeteria in ThreeSixty (more below), and for this I am forever grateful.

Beyond these fascinating characters, there are a few other phenomena in Hong Kong worthy of an Adventure Capitalist mention.

Pick Your Poison – Signing with Currency Choice

My blue polo shirt became stained, ripped, and eventually lost at some point on AsiaWheeling and thus I was happy to visit my favorite Japanese clothing retailer, Uniqlo, to acquire an identical one to replace it.  At the cashier, I was surprised to see a receipt in which I was to circle which currency was preferable to pay with my credit card- U.S. Dollars or Hong Kong dollars.  Before this, I had not come across this, and wondered what the value was in giving the customer this choice.

The Hong Kong Dollar is soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar, so the discrepancy in values would not be great, though I wonder if credit card issuers may add fees to purchases in foreign currencies.  Thanks to CitiBank, this was not a concern, though I encourage more hypotheses for why this system developed.

A Day at The Races

Horse racing, the only legal form of gambling in Hong Kong remains phenomenally popular among the people of the city.  Cabbies have their favorite horses and study the odds published in the sporting press, while expats attend the races to socialize and punt on random horses, and all over the world gamblers can place bets thanks to the advanced online betting system set up by the Hong Kong Jockey club which organizes the races.

I was lucky enough to be invited by a group of expats to watch a race in Happy valley, which was quite a visual experience.  Elderly ladies with FM radios gather around each other to chat, while middle aged men swill skol beer and roll up their pantlegs.  All in all, it was most definitely a spectacle to see these beasts race, as well to consider the races a a popular point for socializing among the many expats, many of them British.

Brand and Retail Evolution

Hong Kong has also gained in retail sophistication since my time studying there, and while not all the below firms are new to the city, they warrant a mention.

Aesop, a Aussie line of skin care and cosmetics that AsiaWheeling highly regards has expanded to Causeway Bay.  Their scientific  presentation, black, green and white color scheme, and codified simplicity of packaging make them a joy to behold.  The brand respects consistency as the aesthetic extends from the product, to the marketing collateral, to the retail store design.  While much less complex and developed, they rival Apple in their ability to immediately convey calming value to the onlooker.

Another is Greenfingers in central, which provides plants and accessories for home gardening with a striking aesthetic.  With all the growth in urban farming, I’m curious to know trends about houseplant purchases in cities worldwide.  I remember colleagues of mine investing in Christian Tortu designed indoor plants at Tokyo Midtown and being quite curious about the market for these beautiful inanimate green pets.

Great Food Hall, City Super and ThreeSixty are three phenomenal gourmet grocers which have also continued to grow.  Focusing on the highest quality products and shopping experience for a market increasingly conscious about a natural and organic origin of their foods.

Ketchup Adventure

Finally, it behoves me to mention much of my time in the city was spent researching how to ply the local market for the gourmet ketchup which my partners and I market primarily in the states.  Serendipitously, ketchup, a cantonese word (茄汁-k^he tsɐp), actually originated in the regions surrounding Hong Kong as a fermented fish sauce.

This experience involved a wonderful creative session at a local print shop to produce our pitch book, as well as meetings with retailers and distributors which led me all across the city.

From riding the trams of Admiralty, to meandering the midlevels, to late-night meetings in private clubs while wearing Sri Lankan sandals (the only shoes I owned), the adventure was a fantastic success in dipping into our first market abroad.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We left our room at the Hotel Central in Macau and headed down to the cycles. There was still plenty of space left in the sky for the sun to traverse, so we headed out in search of adventure. The traffic was thick with tour buses and taxis, as we rode back toward the hotel district. Our first mission was to buy bottles of water, but each shop that we stopped at seemed to sell water for a more ridiculous price than the last. Perhaps my idea of realistic pricing had been skewed by our time on the mainland, but I was aghast, rendered unable to bring myself to purchase that life giving and most basic necessity.

Instead we rode on, thirsty, pounding across the cobblestones, onto the smooth wide boulevards of Macau, past casino after giant glittering casino. There is a certain kind of architecture, use of a special kind of gaudy building materials, a certain relation of dimensions, which it seems is reserved exclusively for casinos. It’s somewhat distasteful, but also come-hither in a certain shameless way. Regardless, a landscape clustered with casinos is nothing if not interesting to wheel through. We decided, however, that the intensely casino-ed part of town might be, like Las Vegas, better experienced at night. So we rode on, stopping briefly for a delightful selection of famous Macanese egg tarts with iced coffees.

The island of Taipa lay in the distance, shrouded by ocean mists and connected to us by three elegant bridges. It was there, we decided, that we might be able to gain some perspective on this strange and expensive city in which we had found ourselves. We chose the central, and seemingly the shortest of the three bridges and headed out.

As soon as we left the spotless glass, giant chunks of pink marble, hideously golden, metallic painted shelters of the casino district, we found ourselves subject to quite a strong wind blowing off the Pearl River delta. In addition to the strong wind, the road had become rather narrow, and as we climbed onto the central bridge, the shoulder we had been riding on disappeared altogether. In a last-ditch attempt to avoid being killed by one of the many buses that flew by us, we decided to ride on the narrow and very high walkway that ran along our left side. This was much safer, but left us subject to a fair bit more wind, and was studded periodically with nasty obstacles, many of which required us to stop and hoist the bikes over or around them.

Once we made it over the crest of the bridge, we had gravity on our side, so I hoisted my speed TR over the two-foot drop back onto the road. From there, I did my best to cover the remaining distance in the smallest amount of time possible, riding in the center of the road, pushing with all my might against the headwind, trusting in the downward slope of the road, and hoping that my speed was close enough to that of a slow car to avoid too many nasty interactions with nearby traffic.

On the other side of the bridge, we pulled a left and began to ride along a much more relaxed seaside road. To our left, separated from us by a long thin stretch of salty marsh and a decent chunk of deep blue water, was the heart of Macau. Glowing and blinking in the afternoon sun. It was such a strange-looking city, full of bizarre buildings; it was easy to deem it nothing but a place to worship money and games of chance.

There had to be more to this place, we thought, so we rode on, toward the heart of the island. Here we found some more familiar Chinese characteristics: large blocky apartment buildings, noodle shops, and construction everywhere. In contrast though, it was strikingly clean, and the roads were all brand new and delightfully smooth. We could see what looked like the center of town in the distance, separated from us by a large cluster of identical concrete 20-story apartment buildings. Unfortunately, for all we could tell, the only way to get to the center from where we were required traversing a scrap metal yard, which it seemed would dump us onto a section of gravel roads through the back yards of these large apartment buildings. Since the dogs in this part of the world tend to be small and docile, we decided to head in.

It was a maze. As we crunched along on the speed TRs, we ended up many times staring at a peeling blue-painted sheet metal dead end. The thirst we had ignored earlier was beginning to return with a vengeance, and it was with great delight and not a tiny bit of desperation that we finally found the correct path and bounced off the gravel, over a curb and back into traffic. Luckily, right there, on our left was a circle K, the same chain convenience stores we had so often used in Bali. They were happy to sell us water at what I could at least consider to be non-predatory pricing. We bought six liters, and drained three of them there on the spot.

Refueled and full of new life, we headed out to explore this new island.  Though neither of us had any interest in gambling that evening, we nonetheless discussed the rules of various casino games, throwing around ideas about how one might hack them, given, for instance an unlimited number of plays or an unlimited amount of money. Could you develop a strategy that would be increasingly likely to make you money, or at least to break even for you in craps? What about roulette? We pulled the Speed TRs over near the island’s airport and sat down in the grass to work through our ideas on the Martingale system with a bit of paper.

Unsurprisingly, we found no such advantageous method. So we wheeled on, circumnavigating the island, through sections of dense urban residential structures, large open parade grounds, more casinos, and even a rather Providence-Rhode-Island-esque busted industrial section. As we made our way through the industrial section and found ourselves once again back at the bridge where we had started, we felt pulled toward the center of the island. It was mostly a large hill, on the side of which clung a fair bit of forest, a few parks, a cemetery, and what looked like a long snaking stretch of road.

But how to get there… We kept wheeling back toward the airport in search of an entrance. We tried a few paths, but once again found only dead ends. The sun was sinking low, and we began to discuss returning to the mainland for dinner when we passed an unassuming and very steep lane. We shrugged and gave it a shot.

Sure enough, this one poured onto a slightly larger road and that onto another. Then we were climbing on the main road. The purpose of this rather large, smooth, and spotlessly clean thoroughfare, it seemed, was to provide access to a large park and nature preserve on the top of Taipa’s central hill. The park was dedicated to the many ethnic groups in China, and as we rode, the sides of the road were decorated with statues dedicated to each ethnicity. Under each statue was the name of the ethnic group and a caricature of that type of person.  An ornately dressed woman represented the Naxi, while the Han man carried a trench-digging shovel.

The road was steep, and the sweat was pouring off of us as we climbed toward the top of the hill. I pulled ahead of Scott as he stopped to photograph some statues and we became separated. When I reached the top of the paved section, I kept riding, onto a packed dirt path, which wound its way around the crest of the hill and into the forest.

The sun was falling low in the sky, and the insects around me began to sing the approach of the night. The concentration of insects was, in fact, so great, that as I rode, they would hop across my path pinging against my spokes with a sound not unlike the country western spittoon.

At the end of this dirt path, I found myself at an outlook of sorts. It was a fascinating view. The sky was torn between light and dark. A fierce gray-blue rain was falling on the city of Zhuhai, which was just barely visible in the distance, while a golden ray of sun was spilling over Macau, which did its very best to reflect most of it back at us in radiant polished glass and gaudy golden splendor.

Soon the insects bouncing off of my legs on their miscalculated trajectories became an annoyance, and I began to wonder where Scott had ended up on his trajectory, so I turned back. I found Scott back at the trail head, gazing out at a similar view. We climbed back on the cycles, and allowed all that potential energy to convert to momentum, whipping down the hill and back onto the main thoroughfare at frightening speed.

The rain had moved from Zhuhai toward us and was beginning to fall in great cold drops, as the sunset spread orange and purple through the sky. We decided to take a different bridge back to the mainland, in hopes that it might have a larger pedestrian walkway, or even a decent shoulder on which to ride. And it was in search of this bridge that we worked our way from roundabout to roundabout, traversing the city of Taipa like Chinese checkers, and eventually following signs to the bridge.

It was a much larger bridge, which meant that cars had more lanes of traffic with which to avoid us, but we were still forced to choose between the shoulder-less traffic-filled road and a rather obstacle-laden, narrow, two to three foot high pedestrian walkway. It was raining now for real, and the sunset had faded into a dim pre-night orange gray. We chose the walkway.

It was the right choice, for the area on which we rode turned out to be much larger than initially anticipated, and even widened as we went. Cars whooshed by, and rain spattered against our helmets. All the while, Macau grew larger and larger, and the casinos began to light up with thousands of neon lights and LEDs. It was a glowing, pulsing, otherworldly light show, and we had the best view in the house.

I was suddenly forced to screech to a halt when I saw a large discarded television set looming, just barely visible in my path. It was perhaps the closest that I had come to a cycling accident on the whole trip to date. Crunching into that television would have no doubt knocked me off the three foot high path on which we rode, and likely encouraged the crushing of my body by a car. But let’s dispense with the macabre that could have been.

Back in Macau, the rain began to fall in buckets, quickly soaking us to the bone. We feared for camera and telephone as we darted through the narrow and traffic-clogged streets of Macau. The city was lit with that kind of surreal light that can only be produced by thousands of tiny moving and flickering sources. Traffic was mostly in a rain-related gridlock, and as tiny shadows danced on the periphery of each real shadow, we splashed across the pavement onto the cobblestone streets of the Hotel Central’s neighborhood.

We stumbled, sopping wet, and giggling uncontrollably into the lobby. It had been a great wheel.

By the time we had changed into dry clothes, the rain had stopped and we headed out in search of dinner. As we strolled, the streets glistened delightfully, reflecting the vast array of lights all around us. We ended up at a small Macanese restaurant, where we ordered dumplings, some eggy scallion pancakes, and a plate of sticky sweet pork. It was all quite delightful, and we chased the entire meal down with two ice-cold Tsing Tao beers.

We spent the rest of the evening wandering the streets of Macau, walking in and out of casinos, and studying the strange world that surrounded us. In the casino section of the city, every other shop is a jewelery shop, suggesting that when one feels they’ve hit the jackpot here, they immediately go out and secure the winnings in the form of gold or jewelry. Perhaps because such things are easily smuggled across borders? Regardless, it shows a more earnest attempt to use gambling to generate money for more than just one’s self. If I remember correctly our visit to Las Vegas during the AsiaWheeling planning process, that is far from the typical move in America…

Macau might be a place better described through images and video, so perhaps we should conclude this post with a brief gallery of our evening touring the casinos of Macau.