My world walk China part two Blog # 33

My world walk China part two Blog # 33

A summary of my last week based on a Facebook post. You may have seen some of these pictures and read some of the following detail.

My Spot.tracking device hasn't been updating these last few days. 26km yesterday and rain stopped play early. So it was an early shower, some singing and yes shampoo in my mouth
Expect about 34 today. I'm less than 200 kilometres from Macao and then a short ferry ride to Hong Kong city.

I had two similar walking days on some nice and relatively quiet rural backroads in Chinas Guangdong province. Those days I walked through about ten small villages and towns. Both nights I finished at small grocery stores. With a hint of rain in the air, I asked if I could sleep on a sheltered bench outside those shops. As always everyone was kind and friendly. One family gave me a bowl of rice, cabbage and egg and some form of hairy potato for dessert. My offers of payment are almost always strongly refused, so this is a dilemma for me.

You may have noticed from the photos and videos of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam that in those countries that so many people there greeted me with huge smiles, waves and shouts. It's a bit different in this part of China. Its almost as though I'm a white elephant walking down the road for so many people persistently stare at me with long incredulous looks.

It's amazing the difference just crossing a border makes. I offer my greetings to all of these people. More often than not they don't respond. Sometimes when I'm up for it I repeat my greeting a second or a third time. That usually gets a response. I want to be crystal clear here. I'm not suggesting the Chinese are unfriendly, far from it for often I sat down with those that gave me long stares and after a few minutes its like we are all great mates. So many cyclists told me that they considered the Chinese to be an unfriendly race. No, not my opinion. I believe those same cyclists just didn't take the time to stop to get to know them as I do. I love Chinese people.

Just about everyone is amazed that I'm walking and that Karma doesn't have a motor! It's pretty funny watching them look for a motor or even pedals.

One day I saw a large sign in a village and was curious to know what it was about. Another feature of Google Translate is that a picture can be taken of the foreign text. Then a translation scan can be made of this same picture with a translation into the desired language.
I saw the cruel sight of a man with a racoon swinging from a rope which he had attached to a wooden frame. He was selling the poor creature at the side of the road. I had strong words with him but obviously, he didn't understand me, he probably considered me to be a nutcase.

Another day it rained heavily and when I got to the far end of a large town I decided it was ridiculous to keep walking that day. I had no luck trying to source a hotel. When I got to a row of about ten metal fabrication shops I sat on a sheltered step of the only one that as closed for I was too wet to do the 'entertainment show' that afternoon at one of the occupied shops. Just then a man came along and pulled up the shutter and invited me inside. I sat there and watched the torrential rain for half an hour and was grateful the man boiled up his kettle so as I could make a mug of hot coffee. I was wondering where I was going to sleep that night. My maps didn't show any hotels and I was grateful when this man pulled one up on his map. It was just a block and a half away. I zoomed in on it and studied its location so as there would be no mistake. Sure enough, I tracked it down and ten minutes after handing over my equivalent of eight euro I was in a hot shower. Between the rain and smog that day I picked up a bit of a cough.

Next day I walked 32 kilometres along route G325 and enjoyed a nice wide hard shoulder along the busy highway. When I got to a restaurant with an adjoining hotel I stopped for the night...  I thought the dinner and room were much more expensive than what I had previously paid for similar but the company was nice. I enjoyed a chat with the owner who is a 37-year-old woman. Through Google Translate she told me that her son is in the army and her daughter is still in school. This woman is annoyed with her husband who often gets drunk and falls asleep while she has to work the restaurant alone. She is feeling a bit isolated as she is originally from Fujian province. So I started showboating by picking up peanuts from a bowl with my chopsticks. She put me in my place by picking up her peanuts with toothpicks, lol

That Friday, my 35-kilometre trek along Chinas route G325 took me to Juntang.

Stopping at a convenience store for a snack I had another interesting chat in Spanish with a woman who lived in Venezuela for twelve years. It seemed that her family have a business there and she returned to China a couple of years ago when the economic woes hit the South American country. Needless to say, this is the first time she had an opportunity to speak the worlds most widely spoken mother tongue.

With 140 kilometres to Macao which will be followed by a short ferry ride to Hong Kong, I have plenty of time to spare on my China visa. I  holed up in a nice hotel in Juntang for two rest days and sucked on a cough bottle. My cough improved dramatically, but that could have been due to being away from the smoggy highway. One decision the budget traveller has to make is whether to spend more time in the expensive western world with its relatively clean air or in the more affordable but polluted poorer countries. Obviously, there are health issues. When smog is bad I cover up my face.

25,854 myworldwalk.com kilometres have so far been walked in 744 road days.

Please remember that early cancer screening saves lines.

My world walk blog part two China #32

My world walk blog part two China #32

11th October I arrived in smoggy Maoling which I was told is a small Chinese city of about six million. I needed to have some work done on Karmas wheels and also have a rest as it had been a tough week and I was feeling a bit emotionally drained. 

Sometimes hotels can be tough to find in China, so I jumped on the first one I came across. In the ideal world, it would be nice to check out the room before I parted with my money but it's a bit of an ask for the worker to escort me to and from the room when it is on the sixth floor and the hotel has no elevator. Still, I should have known better as the cost was only two and half Euro. I just wasn't in form for further tramping around the city that day. It was more of a doss house with small grubby rooms and little privacy for there was a hand-sized gap at the top of the wall. The light from my room had my neighbour knocking on my door telling me to turn my light off and it wasn't even eight o'clock. The shower was filthy and I stayed clean by not using it. I also used my seeking bag.

I was tempted to forfeit my money and go off looking elsewhere but I just stayed put.

When I have a safe place I usually leave my passport in the room when going out to dinner, but not there. 

Saturday I went down the road and found a nice place for my rest day. I don't like to sit around in squalor on my days of leisure, I work hard enough to deserve better. 

Then I had to find a bicycle shop on Google Maps. That was challenging and not to mention a lot of footing it around for Google seemed to lump every motorcycle shop into a bicycle category. However, on the fourth attempt, I lucked it out when I found the German Bicycle Shop. Earlier I also had to track down a hardware store to purchase some washers. Reason for that is because several spoke heads had busted their way through the rim. So the washers were to put on the spokes to prevent this. It's a specialised pop-off wheel which has its own shaft. This usually has bicycle shops flummoxed when it comes to alignment as it doesn't fit on the alignment rig they use. However, I have been there before and it can be aligned in a workshop vice, and that's how the man managed. Cost, less than a Euro and I had a hard time getting him to accept my tip. 

Next day I was on the road for 31 kilometres to Xiadong and for the second time in a few days a bridge was impassable and I had another long detour along some quaint backroads. I presume this didn't show up on Google Maps as closed because Google is banned in China and perhaps they don't have the latest local information. As mentioned before I can use it and the similarity banned Facebook because I have a VPN installed on my phone. This is essentially an unblocker. If anything happens to my phone and I need to get a new one, then I won't have a VPN and will have major communication hassle. I have heard that despite the Google ban that the company still have 600 staff based in China. There is also talk of legalising Google Maps if stuff like churches are removed from their China maps. It's also been reported that Google is working on a compromise search engine (from memory I believe its called Dragon Fly) for the Chinese government. All of the usual sensitive stuff like human rights and religion will be removed. This project has many Google staff and rights watch groups up in arms. 

Then I walked on through a  village where a dog was up on a table waiting to be sectioned and cooked. I'm sure I've eaten dog before, God knows what else I have eaten. The golden rule in China is not to ask what one is eating for they make everything tasty. Recently I read a report that the Chinese government and also the Vietnamese are starting to disfavour the eating of dog meat. This is not only because of bad tourism publicity but because the first cases of rabies have occurred from the consumption of dog meat

That day I also stopped at a scrap yard to see if I could pick up a couple of spare 20-inch wheels for Karma as the ones I have are a bit dodgy. Previously I mentioned that I was thinking of picking up old 20-inch wheels and doing a respoking job. The problem is that the spoke count is different and my hub which is about a thumb length and is also smaller than the standard ones on child bicycle wheels. However having looked at so many wheels over the last few months in bicycle shops I have noticed that there is a hard to find size that is about a centimetre longer than mine. My latest idea was to look for one in a scrap yard and find an angle grinder to modify it! 

So that's what I did and the staff there couldn't be more obliging. I actually picked up two spare wheels and a nice man used a pencil grinder to remove a lip so as my shaft could fit in. Then using an angle grinder he ground down the outside hub walls so as the wheels could fit onto Karma! It worked a treat. And then they treated me to lunch in their canteen! 

I had a nice Google translate chat with them before I left and they mention that work every day collecting and sorting scrap and never get a day off. One of them showed me a translated message saying that it was their pleasure to help me that it was fun (please see photo) And of course no charge for the work. The Chinese are such wonderful people. 

Then I marched on to my finish in Xiadong and had more hassle trying to find accom. After a while, four young lads escorted me to a pricey hotel and when I indicated that I would rather pitch my tent they found me a really spacious apartment in a building which was behind a clothing shop. The storekeeper seemed to be acting as a broker and then after I handed over my equivalent of eight Euro I had a ten-minute wait for the apartment block owner to escort me to the apartment. 

Then the young lads who told me that they were all 15-year-olds carried my stuff up to my room and then lit up cigarettes in the room! Ah yes, China, I just love it!

My world walk blog china part two #31

My world walk blog china part two #31

Based on a Facebook post

I have now hoofed it on foot for more than 75,555 combined kilometres for both my world run and my world walk.

That just me into second place just ahead of my friend Jean for the second most covered expedition kilometres on foot! Less than 2,000 kilometres ahead of me is my other great friend Masahio from Japan who has the lead and is on a long break from the road, so I should overtake him before the end of the year! Thanks to every single person who made this happen, be they a sponsor, host, friend or offered me hospitality along my way. 

It was a bit of an anti-climax when I passed that kilometre mark for I just kept walking. I have always believed its about the smiles and not the miles, still, I do come from a competitive background and I know a lot of my followers are interested in this stuff. 

Two days ago a man on a motorcycle stopped and then turned around and went on ahead eight kilometres out of his way to the next town and bought me some water and sweet bread. I don't feel comfortable accepting such snacks here as I did in richer countries like Australia and New Zealand for the man probably doesn't earn much money. But after him going to all that trouble how could I refuse without bursting his bubble or offending? Thank you, my friend. That day I walked 35 kilometres and camped on some wasteland and out of sight from the road behind a huge pile of sand.

Yesterday afternoon I was following some minor roads and all of a sudden the road ran out for a bridge had somehow collapsed. So that was a pain as it meant an extra seven kilometres round trip back. I don't count such kilometres as they are not advancing me. I do count as extra kilometres I get lost so long as they are not in a loopback. By that, I mean that it's up to me to decide my routes, so by extension I'm not obliged to take the shortest route. So a long way even if I got lost is just another alternative route! 

That's what happened yesterday. I walked north for about five kilometres before I realised my error. Luckily there was a road that went east, so I took it. By the end of the day, I must have walked close to kilometres and will just record 30 in my logbook. I finished late and camped in a forest. Just as I arrived at the place to camp I busted a hub on my front wheel. I have a spare wheel and replaced it before setting out this morning. Karma is getting such a battering on these appalling roads. Pretty soon I'm going to have to figure out how to modify some new rear 20 inch wheels for Karma. Hers are specialised quick release and I may have to get some regular bicycle wheels and respoke them by using her hubs. Problem is the spoke count is different but I will have to leave four holes without spokes. 

As I have been camping these last two nights I have had to make extra stops in restaurants and grocery stores to keep my phone charged up. I need it for my maps as its so easy to get list here. I had been using a great offline map called Maps.me but it stalled as it needed an update before I could open it again. Unfortunately, it wasn't updating on my data. So, I was lucky that I also had my VPN so as I could follow the blocked Google Maps. I tell you, there is always an issue on the road!

My world walk blog China part two #30

My world walk blog China part two #30

Based on a Facebook post 

Saturday was another uneventful day. Once again nothing to report from my 28-kilometre clip along Route 325. 

Guangxi province is one of five autonomous regions in China. These autonomous regions have their own local governments and have more legislative rights than other provinces.

 Feeling a bit unmotivated I took Sunday off to catch up on some stuff. 

I'm about two road days away from overtaking 

Jean Beliveau's 75,550-kilometre lifetime total of (VERIFIED and scrutinised) expedition kilometres made by foot. Jean is currently in second place and he did this on his eleven-year world walk. He is now retired and living near Montreal. Earlier this year  Masahito Yoshida surpassed Jean's total before he clocked out in his native Japan with 77,500 amassed from a world walk and also a walk the full length of the Americas. I understand he may return to the road but only after a very long break. Perhaps I will have passed his total by then, let's see but I hope he will still be there when I arrive in his hometown in a few months time. 

As regular readers will know the distance of my world run was exactly 50,000 kilometres, and not a metre more! I have walked 25,504 kilometres on this world walk so far. So that's 75,504 for me. 

Please remember that life is precious and early cancer screening saves lives

My world walk China part two #29

My world walk China part two #29

Based on Facebook posts

Back at Kevins house we had lunch and thanks so much to his mother Chen Xuexiang and Sun Jinyun, his father. 

Kevin says that his family are Christians and I ask if they celebrate Christmas

 He said no that in the Bible there is a discrepancy as the Christmas season is 

 out of kilter with the farming season and it certainly wasn't Dec 25th.

I agree and add that its a compromise date and even more so Easter, lol which is a different date every year. I ask if there is any government interference. No, none at all said Kevin that the government are allowing some nearby churches to be built.

34 kilometres today from Hepu to Zhakou. 

Walking through a village one young lad who spoke good English asked me if I needed any help. I was up for a chat so I asked if there was anywhere to get coffee and that I would treat him. He rushed away and came back with three bottles of Nescafe cold coffee. What kindness even though I meant hot coffee. I must be the only one here who prefers it that way! 

Ofttimes when I stop at a cafe and see pictures of the food they sell I take a picture of my selection. Then I show my picture inside. One would imagine that would be the end of it but there is usually a volley of further questions and I have no idea what they are saying. Perhaps they are asking about how spicey or other ingredients I just nod a yes to everything!. One Euro for this beef, noodle and veg lunch. 

After lunch, a jolly looking man jumped off his strangely packed bicycle and rushed across the road to give me a hug! Then he wanted to know where I was from and where I was going. I'm pretty tuned in to this line of questioning and no matter what their language is, when people are talking amongst themselves I always know when they are asking about my nationality. I was able to tell him about my mission by Google Translate but unfortunately he didn't understand when I asked him.

 I suspect he is Chinese and has been travelling around the country for a long time. This man refused my offer of a bottle of coffee and a large red apple.

Then after dusk, I stopped at a petrol station in Zhakou and a nice man walked with me for ten minutes to show me a cheap hotel. This one was above a pharmacy store and I would never have found it on my own for the signage was different to standard hotel signs. I remember experiencing this on my last trip to China that many many bed nights were obtained from places that resembled stores. 

Total 25,446 myworldwalk.com kilometres for 731 road days.

My world walk blog China part two #28

My world walk blog China part two #28

Based on a Facebook post

I took a rest day in Hopu today. It's not every day that I meet a Chinese person who speaks English and offers to show me around. Thanks to Sun Chuanfeng who prefers to be called Kevin, and that's fine with me!

He is the man who found me the hotel last night so I treated him to breakfast this morning. Then we popped over to a local park where many senior citizens were working on their aerobics routines. It's interesting that in almost three months in south-east Asia that I have only set eyes on about two obese people. To me that speaks volumes for our western diet which is high in meat, processed food and junk food, its pretty much the opposite here.

Hopu, China. 

Then Kevin brought me over to his Chinese friend who is called Dan. He has a ping pong machine above his shoe shop. I thought the machine was a bit slow! Wait and see what happens in the next video. He speeds it up and with a couple of balls coming out at the same time. Is it any wonder the Chinese are so good at this game?!

I had a delicious dinner tonight in Hapu. A man called Ah Wei stopped me on the road yesterday and gave me the invite. Thanks to his wife and mother for cooking up the terrific dinner.
Earlier a man called Kevin helped me find a hotel. He went to enormous trouble and I'm so grateful. Kevin is from this area and studied ecological marine management in Belgium for a couple of years and speaks good English.
Yesterday a truck dropped a load of wood shavings on the road. It was a bit funny watching the cops clean it all up by hand as the mad traffic beeped them off the road
So they were two easy days, a 22 and a 24-kilometre day.
25,412 kilometres for 730 road days. Web:/ www.myworldwalk.com
Please remember that early cancer screening saves lives.

My world walk blog China part two #27

My world walk blog China part two #27

Apogies due to time constraints this blog post is an unedited Facebook posting. Mushroom Crisps! 35 kilometres on my first full day in China from Dongxing border town and along the busy S325 dual carriageway to Jiangshan. There wasn't much to shout out about, a pretty dreary dull day, even when you are living your dream. I have had better days and there will be more to follow. Except for a delicious lunch in Jiangping. These are the meals I love, restaurants with food on display to be loaded up onto a compartment tray. "I will have this, this, that and this and lots of cabbage," I said. I love Chinese cabbage, so soft, delicious and tender. I walked through two long downloads and was kept fairly dry by walking along with the great golf umbrella that some nice people gave me in Thailand. Later that day I lost the umbrella. I sheltered from much of the first dose of heavy rain at a well-placed grocery store and Mushroom Crisps were on sale, I kid you not! Unfortunately, no bread to make a crisp sambo but really, You just can't beat Tayto as we have in Ireland! I love mushrooms, they are my favourite vegetables and any time I can't make up my mind what to eat from a menu I look for mushrooms. They have the deciding vote be it an omelette, a pizza, burger or a steak. If it has mushrooms I will go or it. But please not these snacks. Yuk! That night when I arrived in Jiangshan, a grubby town I couldn't find any accommodation or green grass to pitch my tent. So after eyeing up a local covered fish market where I planned to pitch my pop-up tent I spent the night sipping delicious lemonades in a lemonade parlour for a couple of hours until I was ready to retire for the night. Earlier a rat running past the only open restaurant quickly put me off my dinner. It would be tempting just to lay my sleeping bag out in the fish market and not bother with the tent. Yes, folks, I have been in that situation and these types of markets draw rats. So the pop-up tent is always a good solution. It's also good for when there is no grass about but a secure place to camp, including a supermarket in a safe town. I have camped in some of the most bizarre places, including bushy roundabouts and even a quiet street which turned into a busy pedestrian street when I got up in the morning. Next day, I was a bit of a celebrity in Jiangshan and over breakfast, I was asked to sign several autographs for the school children who were dressed in yellow and green tracksuits. Out on the road, I was a bit tired and when I got to a city called Guigang after only 18 clicks I called it a day when I found a nice clean and cheap hotel. The reason I stopped early was I didn't expect there to be anything else that day. I reckon south-east Asia and so far here in China is about 10% the cost of what hotels, meals, drinks, and other travel necessities cost in Australia. On the road, I noticed a lot of security cameras clicking every passing vehicle. They may be used for speed control, but I believe it's also for other forms of controls and observations. I wish China would use them to get a grip on the insane dangerous driving. Perhaps that's asking a bit too much. I have a lot to say on this subject of surveillance for I have researched mass surveillance extensively and China are the world's leaders. I understand they have a half billion cameras in operation. They are also perfecting facial recognition technology and the Chinese are probably way ahead of the curve there. There are still some bugs in the system but improvements are being made and it's becoming more reliable. It can also be used for positive reasons too. For example in a clothing store and the manager says to the assistant. "Oh yes, that's Mr Tony Mangan coming into our store.. Last time he came in he bought stripy pyjamas. Let's do a hard sell and try to get him to buy a teddy bear this time!" Don't be surprised if one day when facial technology has been really perfected if a passport will no longer be needed. Hard to imagine but that's what's been muted. I will write a long blog post on it soon. I believe I also did one for China part one when I walked south from Mongolia and through the middle of the country to Vietnam when I did that leg a year and a half ago. Please feels free to search my website on the blog page for that one. A little later I came to a village where local farmers wanted to flatten out their crop. No messing with a mangle, they just lay it all out on the road for vehicles to flatten and I did my bit Please see the photos. Then a little further on and it looked like a river was about to break its banks for a small section of the highway was flooded. That was a 38-kilometre day that took me to a large spread-out city called Qinzhou. At least half of that day I was shaded by either tall buildings or tall trees and switched sides of the road for optimal comfort. Arriving in the city and not being able to spot the now-familiar four Chinese characters for a hotel" 旅館 " Sometimes just picking them out from everything else that's surrounding them in a vibrant street is challenging. It's like trying to find the hidden letter in a maze puzzle that you sometimes see in children books. I wandered down some likely busy streets where traders were doing a brisk trade. A little later I stopped and asked at a house where a father and his teenage daughter were sitting outside. She spoke some English and told me of a place which seemed complicated to find. So I asked them to show me and honestly, it was a huge effort to get them to walk a few hundred metres to show me! I was grateful for their kind help, but sometimes I feel a bit frustrated by people who make walking even a short distance a chore. In the past, people have taken their motorcycles just so as they don't have to walk back. This couple abandoned me when I was about two hundred metres away and assuming I could figure the signage just said, "Over there!"  Eventually, I found the place in amongst the maze puzzle of Chinese signs. Inside at the reception, I showed my carefully prepared Google translated message. Sometimes these hotels make extra money when the rooms are rented out for a couple of hours to amorous couples. There have been a couple of times that when my hotel was so cheap that I wondered if I was getting an hourly rate or the overnight rate. So my message translated into Chinese. In English, it reads: "I want to sleep overnight. How much is your cheapest room please?" Even though the sign on the wall said the cheapest room is 180/RNB this woman said 100, about €12.50./ US$14. An important rule is don't always take the first rate and if feasible haggle. Then she added that's without a window. This was all communicated on a translate app. Then after I paid and said that I don't need a window she strangely said that she wanted to charge me 200! I held out and when she asked me if that's all I had, I just said yes. "Will I open a window for you?" She said. Yes, was my reply and I got a swanky Holiday Inn type room in a hotel called the Q Hotel.  I think I got the 200 room at half price. Waking up on Sunday morning I was tired because I was up most of the night watching football and then I went back asleep. I resisted the temptation of yet another rest day. It was a hard one to turn down as I walked out of my swanky hotel. A lacklustre day resulted in me getting to a junction for the expressway just six kilometres south of Nali. For most of the day, I had been following route 325 and I will be doing so for the next few days. As Nali is not on my route I stopped at a cafe on the junction for dinner, cost about €1 for beef, cabbage and rice. With nowhere to stay the nice owners said that I could camp next to their property. 30 kilometres walked today, Sunday 30th September. Sorry for any typos! Tony Mangan walking around the word with a cancer awareness message that life is precious and early cancer screening saves lives. My website: www.myworldwalk.com

My world walk China blog Part two #26

My world walk China blog Part two #26

 

Apogies due to time constraints this blog post is an unedited Facebook posting.

I crossed from the Vietnam border crossing at Mong Cai to China and had to wait until the following day until I got my China Sim sorted! Thanks to wonderful help from a China Mobile employee. It's now lunch time and rain is pelting the city, so I'm not going anywhere today. It's a day for drinking large cappuccinos and every good day starts with great coffee.

Two days walked in China so far, 35 km on Thursday as far as Jiangshan. Then I departed from there yesterday in the middle of all this bedlam and had an easy 18 to reach Guigang City. 

Please remember that every life is precious and early cancer screening saves lives. My website: www.myworldwalk.com