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 agriculture dominated landscapes seems highly organized, every inch used and large scale production seeming to be the target;

• you're not allowed to go on the express highway with your motorcycle, although we snuck through two tolls;
• your internet blog site is blocked but tanks to Connys Technical savvy this only stopped our blog updates for a couple of days;

Monday 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 hone our charades skill. Conny has also resorted to drawing some very elaborate pictures and we are now able to get a double and single rooms :-)