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
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" ๆ
้คจ " 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
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