Navigating around Kunming

The last three days we managed to bypass Kunming bumping along the windy road no. 213. We followed it along the steep mountain slopes leading up to passes which are higher than 2500m and then cruised down again into the valley bottoms. We still cannot use the express free way, which would have permitted us to cover the total distance in a few hours. We of course tried to sneak onto the freeway a couple of times, but the ladies in the toll boots repeatedly waved us down and signaled us that there is no way through.

The overland road was actually much more beautiful than the freeway, as it lead us through many beautiful landscapes and small villages. It only gets frustrating sometimes when the road is very bad and we would just like to make some easy kilometers.

Along the route we also passed a few really big cities, which in fact do not even exist on our China maps, and on the GPS they only show up as small dots. We first thought these were only small towns, but hey, we are in China! These are cities of considerable size. I think our path lead us right through the industrial belt of Kunming. The cities have big suburban areas, where masses of new housing blocks are constructed. The single blocks actually look quite nice and are painted in bright colors. You're likely to find such housing blocks in suburbs of Swiss cities too. Only that here in Yunnan there is not two or three of these blocks, but twenty to thirty lined up one after the other (it looks like Bumpliz times 10). I guess they are designed to absorb the masses of people streaming into the cities from the rural areas.

The Chinese suburban cities also have large industrial areas. Everywhere we see huge industrial compounds, concrete factories and other steaming and stinking factories. The biting odor in the air and the fume steaming out of the soils around these industrial buildings is just disgusting. It lets us assume that environmental standards are not quite at the level of our home countries. The size, quantity and condition of these industry parks gives us a feeling of how so many goods are produced in mass quantities in China and are sold at dirt cheap prices for us - and we have not seen the working conditions - disturbing facts. Is this really what attracts the people living in the country side? The propagated urban life which is displayed by the huge advertisements along the road sides does not really correspond to what we see here.

Highway no 213 of course always leads us right into the middle of every town and we have to be careful not to get lost. Most times the road signs are only written in Chinese, and frequently only the way onto the freeway is marked - a no go for us.However we have become quite good at navigating right through the heart of the cities and once we get off the highway into the maze of city streets we are able to make our way back onto it at the other end of he city without large detours. And that is for one thanks to the GPS and our Open Stree Map data. Without the GPS we would be totally lost as our maps covering all of China are just not detailed enough for useful navigation within the cities and it would be quite a hassle to stop and ask for directions all the time. And then of course it is the skillful abilities of Boris to use the GPS while riding along with a very good sense of orientation and at times good guts feelings of which direction to take.

So our riding strategy is always that Boris and I take the lead and while Boris maneuvers us through the traffic and having one eye on the GPS, I look out for traffic coming on the wrong side, grandmas crossing hte road at the most inappropriate locations and Chinese road signs. I've become quite good at memorizing the Chinese signs for the different cities which we target. I find it quite fun to try to read the signs. Sometimes we don't have the small streets on the GPS, only the freeway. But as this the general direction we just follow it on the smaller roads until we are out of town. Then we look out for the mile stones along the road which have the road number on them.

Goodbye Laos - Hello China

You know you are not in Laos anymore, but in China when:

• there is a super road system and barely a pothole in sight
• bureaucracy almost works and you ay rate the quality of the government service received by pressing either a smiles-button, or it's opposite
• you cannot read the signs along the road, and it seems strange (not like in Laos where you also can't read them but it does not bother you anymore, as the signs are so familiar)
•   the agricultural dominated landscapes seems highly organized, every inch used and large scale production the target
• you are not allowed to go on the express highway with your motorcycle, although we snuck through two toll 
• your internet blog site is blocked but tanks to Conny’s Technical savvy this only stopped our blog updates for a couple of days;

Two days ago we crossed the border to China at Boten and in the meantime learned already so many things. We headed out early but of course didn't remember that on the Chinese side the clocks are ahead by one hour. Like every bike gang we of course did not hesitate to bypass the long queue of heavy trucks and zoom to the front of the que right before the border crossing.  Thanks to Horsts quick thinking and cunning we managed to get past the Lao Boarder check point with the bike and all exit stamps. 

On the Chinese side things took a bit longer, but that was good for us to already adjust to the Chinese way of doing things and to have a look around in the border town, have our first Chinese lunch and play a round of hacky sack.  At 3 pm our Chinese guide called "Yeah" had sorted everything and we could continue now in our new formation: Manny and his truck together with guide Yeah, and the moto gang.

We were able to ride to Jinghong and stayed there over night - our first night in China! Jinghong is a funny city. It's the capital of Xishuanbanna Prefecture and it looks like an exhibition of Christmas tree decoration at night time. Every light imaginable, blinking and flashing with an array of colour to dazzle once vision. So far the cities in Yunnan are rather spacious with broad boulevards decorated in the middle with flowers, palm trees and bushes. The Chinese are very good at this landscaping/gardening.

Tuesday was not the best day we communication between the Truck and the moto gang not being as efficient as it should.  Poor Mani and our guide had to wait for 4 hours at a pre-arranged lunch rendezvous only to find out from the moto gang some hours later that they had passed and were now waiting in a small town 1 hour north.  We are much better with comms now with our China mobiles working well and split between the expressway and back roads just fine. Motorbikes we are actually not allowed to ride on the express highway. The express/highway systems are an engineering feat.  Snaking through the hilly landscape like roman viaducts, many sections elevated and the tunnel network rivals that of the Swiss.  We can't use it and thus are forced take the "old" roads with lots of curves going along the hills.

The old roads are actually far more exciting to travel and but they limit the average speed to about 40 km per hour.  We have traversed from 400 m up as high as 1850 m and everything in between.  The views from the mountain roads have been great raging from lush forests, rubber plantations, tea plantations and terraced rice paddies.  The road take us through many small villages and allow a much better perspective of rural china than one would otherwise have from the expressway. 

The food has also been great with every lunch topping the last and the local hospitality great.

Language is for sure a challenge as English is a rare beasts to the Chinese.  Thankfully Horst, who lived in 

China for some years, is regaining his Mandarin capacity whilst the rest of us develop of hone our charades skill.

We are now on our way to Kunming and from there we head onto Dali.