The Zarmalouloux and the end for Superbike

Superbike limped into Pakse, I believed it to be mortally wounded from the mileage I’d put it through. I checked my emails in an internet cafe, had lunch in the Indian restaurant next door then crossed the road. There was a tap on my shoulder. A grin the size of Manhattan beamed at me. Jan, the gentleman I’d shared breakfast with a few days before introduced me to the rest of his bicycle buddies, Yanouch, Arthur and Cyrell (pronounced Surreal). Collectively they are known as Zarmalouloux (zarmablog.blogspot.com). Jan kindly saved Superbike's life with a few adjustments here and there, I decided to get a guest house as my brother hadn’t replied to my previous email and Zarmalouloux came up to the balcony for an impromptu sing song. The energy and passion they have for music is astounding. They left to visit a waterfall the following day; I lounged around, ate at an Indian restaurant five times in less than 2 days then joined Zarmalouloux when they returned to Pakse. They played at every restaurant in town that night, making a decent profit then we camped by the Mekong.

 Zarmalouloux earning a living.

 The Mekong at sunrise.

We spent the next 3 days cycling to the 4000 Islands on the border of Cambodia where I’d meet my brother. It was really good having company on the road. Their personalities complement each other well; they have a real sense of solidarity. They share everything with each other and in the short time I spent with them they treated me like a member of their family.  

They have a different rhythm to me. I’m asleep not long after sunset, I get up at sunrise, I’m cycling within half an hour but I’ll take several breaks before the sun gets too hot to pedal. Zarmalouloux casually get up when they feel like it after a night of singing and chatting around the campfire. They juggle, meditate, do lots of stretching, light another fire for coffee and don’t leave until mid-morning. They pedal for a few hours without a break. They carry more weight than me and although they go slightly slower than what I was used to I found it hard going on the back muscles to cycle without breaks. Even if I wasn’t planning on meeting my brother and going to Shanghai I would have found it difficult cycling with them in the long term as they make their way slowly back to France.

On our third night of camping the police came with an interpreter asking us to go to the monastery. They were plain clothed unarmed officers with no identification to show who they were. They did not want us camping in the field because if anything happened to us they would be liable. They initially claimed it was because of the danger of wild animals but after a bit of interrogation from Jan they confirmed what we had suspected. After a quick phone call to the police chief they allowed us to camp so long as we put water over the fire at the end of the night. I'm assuming it was the police who came to my tent a few nights previously.

 Jan truly does live in a Superworld

4000 Islands

The whole of Laos has a slow pace; Dondet (one of the 4000 Islands) is that one notch slower. It’s possibly the most relaxed place in the planet. Zarmalouloux and my good self entered the island and camped on the field in the middle of the island amongst the buffaloes and cows. Kids gathered around to watch the juggling and hear the music. I met up with Alasdair and we spent most of the time lounging around, chatting and playing football with the locals as sunset approached. After two nights Zarmalouloux continued their journey south. I opted to stay with my brother. It was sad to wave goodbye to Zarmalouloux. They shared everything they had with me in the handful of days I travelled with them, they made me feel 100% welcome throughout. The sound of the songs they played rang through my ears for several days after, Colombia Tierra Querida and Rue De Paname.

 Zarmalouloux preparing to head out to Don Det.

 The buffaloes got a free concert.

Later that evening, I sold Super Bike for 6 beers, two vindaloos and a big bowl of spring rolls. I could have got more but myself and my brother were both full. I like the ending. I sold my bicycle for curry and beer which I shared with my bro. Superbike was phenomenal. I met other people who bought bicycles in Asia and it appears that I did get a bargain; I was in the right place at the right time. Nevertheless it was still a scrap piece of metal. The people in the bike shop laughed when I said I was going to Laos. They did not realize I was taking a huge detour from the quickest route. I not only made it to Laos, I only had 10km to go until I’d cycled the whole length of the country. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I thought Superbike was on its last legs but with a small adjustment here and there, it kept on going. It creaked and cranked its way south, its wheels misaligned, its brakes falling apart, the chain slipping every time I climbed a hill. It was a piece of shit and the further it got the more I liked it. Superbike defied the odds, it was an overachiever. When I bought it I was asked what kind of bike it was, my response was that I didn’t know, it had stickers but I hadn’t bothered to read them. It was only after a month or so that I realized its main sticker said Super Bike and it had a smaller one along the back saying Super World. It’s fitting. It really is a Superbike in a Superworld. I felt a bit sad after giving it away. I missed my morning ritual of packing my bag in the morning and tying it to the back of the bike. Pulling the bungee ropes as tightly as I could toned my whole upper body and was the perfect start to the day. I missed the freedom it gave me, I've seen possibly 50,000 smiles whilst on Superbikes dented old seat travelling through Asia, Superbike has given me so many phenomenal memories.

 4000 Islands.

 Sunset on Don Det.

Me and Superbike shortly before we parted ways, sad times.

Savannakhet - Pakse

The worst possible thing that can happen to a touring cyclist is becoming disabled and facially disfigured in a bad accident, insurance doesn’t pay the medical fees and you’re left with no money, loads of debt, one leg and half a face. The second worst thing that can happen is being involved in an accident that results in a slow painful death. The 3rd worst case scenario is having men with guns, who don’t speak your language, ordering you out of your tent in the middle of the night which is closely followed by running out of porridge in 4th place. I guess dying instantly in an accident is the 5th worst possible thing that can happen to a touring cyclist.

I left Savannakhet with a stinking hangover. I’d only had 3 beers and 2 Johnny Walker Reds the night before but I’ve become such a lightweight since I became fit and healthy and I’ve rarely drank since I started travelling. I’m an embarrassment to my former self who wasn’t exactly a heavyweight drinker anyway. So like I was saying, I didn’t leave Savannakhet until mid to late afternoon due to my embarrassingly stinky hangover. I went a lot slower than I’ve being going lately had a break after 10km instead of my normal 35 and pulled up in an unused bit of land as soon as I’d passed the 30km milestone (does that make it a kilometre stone or is it still a milestone measured in kilometres)? Hmmmm….

The land I’d chosen was on the edge of woodland and the camping spot looked green from the road but on closer inspection was gravelly and too hard to get my pegs in, there weren’t any clouds so I wasn’t too bothered about making my tent waterproof. Due to my embarrassingly stinky hangover, I couldn’t be bothered finding a better spot even though half decent land was dotted about all over this area and there was still about half an hour left before darkness even though it was sunset. I got in my tent, munched on some bananas, had a can of tuna then tried to sleep. I still had a headache and a few thoughts in my head (not bad ones) so I decided to read. With my wind up torch squeezed between my chin and shoulder and my book in my hand moving from side to side to capture the light in the right place I read several chapters. Several hours must have passed and I was so engrossed in my book that I’d forgotten how rottenly stinky I felt and began to feel sleepy. It was then that I heard shouting maybe 30 metres away. My torch went out. 

The voices got closer and it became apparent that the person they were talking to was me. “For %$*& sake”, I thought, “I can’t be arsed with this; they’ll get bored if they think I’m asleep”. After a couple of minutes they hadn’t gone away and I could pick out at least 3 different voices. I didn’t have a clue what they were saying but could work out there was more than 1 man out there and more importantly, I could work out that they weren’t taking my non responsiveness as a hint and I’d have to do something about it. I’ve become aware over the years how well intentioned people with fear can become aggressive and that people are often scared of what is alien to them so when faced with people I can’t be bothered with in Asia I don’t do anything sudden, I’m not tall and muscular but I’m bigger than most Asians (and I’m hairy) so I try not to appear to intimidating with sudden movements. I make a peace offering (usually a cigarette) and smile a lot.

So I stuck my head out of the tent and feigned enthusiasm. “SabaiDEEEEEEEEEEE”. The men quickly shone their torches in my face. There was a momentary silence…. “Phalang” (foreigner) one of them muttered. He continued to talk rather loudly at me. I casually got out of the tent, lit up a cigarette and offered the men a smoke. Even though I had been reading, my torch is weak and my eyes weren’t adjusted to the light shining in my face. I could not see much but eventually worked out that there were no takers, I could see an orange glow; one of them was already smoking. They continued trying to communicate with me. ‘They really can’t take a hint’ I thought to myself as I shrugged my shoulders and stared at the light blankly. I went back in the tent, got out my phrasebook and some bananas, returned and said “I don’t understand”. I then looked up the phrase ‘Can I camp here’? I was an expert on Chinese tones after less  than a month but have not shown the same level of enthusiasm for learning Lao and opted to show the writing rather than try to speak it, as I usually do if the phrase has more than 2 syllables. None of them wanted my bananas either by the way, I don’t know why, they were lovely. 

As the torches moved from my eyeballs to the book my vision adjusted slightly and I got a glimpse of the men. The two closest to me were middle aged and one of them had a rifle slung over his shoulder. There were 4 of them. I pretended not to notice the rifle and opted not to look directly at the other two. Then the man who had done all the talking shook his head, pointed to my tent then to the path that ran parallel to the road, He wanted me to go with them and I didn’t want to find out if they would take no for an answer. For some reason it didn’t feel like a robbery, just a pain in the ass. They continued to read my phrasebook as I got my belongings out of my tent, slipped a couple of 50,000 kip notes into my pocket and tucked my money bag firmly down my shorts so that I’d have something to give them if it was a robbery and started dismantling my home. They found a picture of a temple in my phrasebook. That was what I thought was happening. I’ve seen men appear out of the woods before with hunting rifles. In many parts of Laos, the majority of the protein in the people’s diet comes from wild meat. I’d also met several cyclists who have been invited to sleep in temples although not by armed men who demanded they move. If they didn’t have guns I would have ignored them and slept in the field. 

I’d only been previously been disturbed once in my tent in Asia. A woman shone a really bright torch in my tent the night after I’d left Yuanyang and asked me if I was cold. I hadn’t had a good sleep the night before and was having an amazing sleep until she came along. I’d told her I wasn’t cold in Chinese then told her to **** off in English and let me sleep in peace. It was difficult to pack my bags in the dark, even with the help of the men’s torches. It was a short walk to the temple; I noticed that two of the men had guns. In the temple I was given noodles and then told to wash my hair by one of the monks. I got taken to the cleaning quarters where there was a toilet, a huge pale of water, toothbrushes, soap and shampoo. I wondered why monks would have shampoo then quickly decided to try and think about something else. By the time I’d washed myself the men who’d led me to the monastery had left. I was going to ask them to pose for a photograph with me. I slept beside the monks on a nice fold up mattress and even though I’d rather have not been disturbed, I have to admit, it was really unimaginably more comfy than the gravelly land I’d previously been lying on.

I was given more free food in the morning. I gave the monks my bag of rice to thank them for their hospitality. The remaining 209 km to Pakse passed by largely uneventfully. Embarrassingly stinky hangover lasted until mid-morning. I thought about the chain of events from the previous night repetitively when I took a break from the burning midday sun. I felt annoyed that something bordering excitement happened and I didn’t get an adrenalin rush and was slightly worried by this. People who don’t get emotional reactions in situations of danger (or the illusion of danger) are psychopaths. I thought about all the intelligent people I’ve met who claim Vang Vieng is full of crazy people but the people in Vang Vieng do dangerous things and get a rush out of it, crazy me, I get nothing; it didn’t even cure my hangover. It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes but I had no superstitious thoughts running through my head when I saw the guns and got told to pack up my tent and go with them. I didn’t have my life flashing before me. I felt pretty calm during it all but the excessive weed smoking days of my youth have robbed me of most of my memories anyway. My life maybe did flash before my eyes but it happened so quickly I didn’t realise it. Although I didn’t have a major upheaval of my values or worldly beliefs, the events that took place that night did make me think and change at least one of my misconceptions…I’ve come to realise that although I still prefer China, travelling around Laos isn’t actually as boring as I’d previously thought and if you stay there long enough, sooner or later, something interesting might happen. 

I cycled the rest of the way with real enthusiasm and concluded that this was my adrenalin rush. I’m not a psychopath, my reaction times are just a day or two late that’s all. I’m an idiot, if I do ever get taken hostage, all they need to do is give me unlimited food and smile a lot. It would be 3 or 4 days before I’d even realise I’d been kidnapped and wasn’t allowed to leave. I’ve never ignored a kid who has screamed Sabaidee at me as I pass them, even though lately I haven’t felt any enthusiasm for it. They are just children and it’s exciting for them to see me and I’ve always at least tried to fake a smile. My enthusiasm for waving, saying hello and returning their smile has felt natural again. “Sabaaideeeeeeeeee”!

The following night I pitched my tent at the side of the road and 3 men in motorbikes pulled up. One spoke English and told me there was a guest house just a few hundred metres away. I told him I camp because I don’t have much money and he then told me I could sleep at a temple for free. I told him I was happy sleeping here and he looked at me amazed. “You are not scared of ghosts”? I laughed and shook my head, “no” I replied. Bless the Laotians. The man the previous night had probably been shouting at me as I lay in my tent out of panic and concern for my wellbeing. Language is such a powerful but dangerous tool. What I could have interpreted as an angry call of “YOU, GET THE F*** OUT OF YOUR TENT WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD AND HAND OVER YOUR MONEY”, was probably a fearful cry of “HEY MAN, ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU MUST BE OUT OF YOUR MIND TO CAMP HERE.  THE GHOSTS WILL ATTACK YOU, GET TO THE TEMPLE NOW BEFORE YOU GET KILLED, YOU’RE SPOOKING ME OUT MAAAAN”. I’ve relegated men with guns to the 4th worst thing that can happen to a touring cyclist. Having no porridge is far worse. Bless them.

I chatted to a woman who lived in America for 30 years and returned to Laos to take care of her elderly mother. She spoke excellent English and was nice and lively. I got chatted up by two men…. He stopped his motorbike and waved me towards him. “You speak English”? “Yes”. “You want fuck me”? “No”. End of conversation. He toddled on. The other one was far less forthright and just sat across the table from me and fluttered his eyelids as I read my book. After 20 minutes, “I love you, you love me”???? “No”. He toddled on. I spent one morning clearing an ant colony out of my tent, I ate 4 cans of tuna, had leeches all over my feet from wallowing in mud whilst washing my clothes in just about the only river I came across that wasn’t dried out, I found a restaurant that sold things other than noodle soup, I watched dragon flies for half an hour, I spent an hour watching ants busy dismantling my leftover pasta and I stopped smoking for 3 hours. I won’t tell you about the thoughts running through my head immediately prior to me starting smoking again but if I did kill the waitress, it would have been her fault for not serving me quickly enough. Nothing much else happened. I fear Superbike may be terminally ill, it made all sorts of cranky noises for the last 150km. I had doubts about it making it to Pakse but here I am. 

Tha Khek - Savannakhet

I checked my emails in the evening, checked my emails in the morning then left Tha Khek. Sharing a breakfast of porridge, honey and bananas with a passing cyclist was the highlight of this leg of the trip. He is French, was on his way from Savannakhet to tha Khek and part of a group of 6, the rest of whom were staying in Tha Khak at the time. He did tell me why he had been in Savannakhet without them, I’ve forgotten. They spent a year and a half cycling from Buenos Aires to San Francisco, singing at restaurants to pay their way then got a boat to Hong Kong and have made their way south since then. In fact sharing my porridge with this dude was the only good thing about this leg of the trip. Nothing majorly bad happened but I can’t remember the last time I felt so down. Even though I am writing this just a week later, I remember nothing about this journey other than a shared breakfast, feeling alone, reading my book under a tree because the midday sun was just too hot, crashing my bike into a young girl and running over a fork. 

I crashed into the girl not long after leaving Tha Khek. She was about 10 years old and on her bike, she didn’t look as she crossed the road, heard me shout, tried to turn back and I went into her back wheel. I’d slowed down to the extent that I didn’t even knock her off her bike but she got quite a fright and even though it wasn’t my fault I was still apologetic and felt terrible about it. Laos people are super laid back. Baw pen yang is one of the few Laos phrases I’ve memorised, it means no problem. 

I ran over the fork just 10km outside of Savannakhet. It gave me punctures in both wheels. One of my adjustable wrenches broke and it was night time by the time I’d walked far enough to find a mechanic. He insisted I keep his wrench and a glove because I had oil on my hands and because I don’t use maps or know my way around the town; his cousin guided me for a few kilometres to a guest house that was recommended on Wikitravel. Unfortunately, a bit of the fork was still stuck in the rim and I got another puncture and lost him. I found the place anyway. 

The heat has been unbearable at times. I felt really drained and lifeless in my first night in Savannakhet although my mood did improve the following day. It’s amazing how much a few emails from my brother and a skype conversation from a friend can transform my mood. I had a sore knee and sore bum from all that mileage so lounged around Savannakhet for 4 days. It is the most boring town in the world if you want an itinerary that is full of excitement but I really like the sleepy pace. I spent some time on my computer, lots of time acrobatically trying to kill all the mosquitos that were buzzing around my room, I wrote my first poem in Chinese and spent many hours strolling around town, admiring the crumbling colonial buildings whilst scoping out good places to eat. The food outside of major towns in Laos is so bland and repetitive that good food is my number one priority in its cities. The majority of westerners I chatted to were people living in Thailand who were doing visa runs in Savannakhet. I met a young couple, Ryan and Anna, who got engaged just a few days before and the 3 of us had an impromptu engagement party the night before I left. I really like that town. It’s the first place in Laos I’ve spent several days in and was not itching to get out.

Vang Vieng - Tha Khek

I started my blog partly to store my memories which photographs can’t, partly to keep my family amused and partly so I could direct people to my blog in response to the same questions I repeatedly get asked, rather than repeat myself in the emails I type. One of the questions I repeatedly get asked is ‘Your trip sounds awesome, are you having the time of your life’? Or a very similar question with maybe a subtle deviation…… Yes. Another question I regularly get asked is ‘Do you not get lonely’? Lately I seem to get asked the latter question more than the former. I don’t know why.

I felt lonely in China only when I was bored and I was rarely bored. I mostly travelled alone and it did not bother me. By the time I got my bike I could have basic banter in Chinese and I did not mind not speaking my native language for days or weeks at a time. I’ve felt my general wellbeing gradually deteriorating in Laos. In northern Laos I only felt this when in Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng to Vientiane was less than 2 days travelling; it was over before it started. I chilled out in Vientiane for a few days, met some really interesting people then Vientiane to Tha Khek was one big long lonely cycle ride that seemed to drag far longer than it really did. I did a visa run to Thailand, amusing myself and the immigration official when I registered my flight or other vehicle number as ‘SUPER BIKE’. The sticker on the side says it’s a Super Bike, she can’t argue with that. I then did 80km in an afternoon. Were it not for a morning of rain I would have done 150km the following day and I did 130km the day I arrived in Tha Khek. I’d envisioned the journey through Southern Laos to be a warm pleasant gentle ride along the misty, tropical, elusive banks of the Mekong. The road has been flat the whole way. I’ve barely seen the river. I was initially pissed off about this but it’s a good thing that there isn’t a road running all the way down. If people like me were capable of seeing it all then it would cease to be elusive. The only thing that I’ve been looking forward to lately has been something which seems crazy, at times seems totally unattainable and is completely out with my control.

I don’t view anomie as a bad thing, it’s inescapable, an inevitability, just like the rising and falling of the sun. It rises because it rises, it falls because it falls. At times I’ve felt Nihilism of the worst sort as I’ve cycled South of Vientiane. I’ve felt a complete lack of purpose or conviction about anything, just aimless rotation of the pedals. Some of the sights were interesting but I had nobody to turn round to and say ‘hey, check that out’, or share thoughts and laughter with at the end of the day. For that reason, at times I lost interest in even looking to see what was on the horizon, I wasn’t interested….. Aimless rotation. I guess increasingly, I’ve been writing my blog because I’ve had so many countless good experiences and this is the only thing I can share. Feeling down has however given me an insatiable appetite to write music again. I haven’t written or produced anything in a long time and I can feel a burgeoning bout of creativity inside me. It will get released when it is ready to be released. My laptop has the software to produce music but not the hardware for me to hear it. I don’t even know if music will be the vehicle, I’m just assuming. I’ll stop now. I don’t want to make this topic too long. It would unjustifiably make my life seem shit which it blatantly isn’t. It’s difficult at times, but when things are going well, and they usually are, things are phenomenal...... Recurring questions answered.

I could say it’s time to snap out of it and pull my socks up, but I try and be resourceful and pulling my socks up might stretch the holes and I don’t want to buy a new pair until I really need to! I’ll snap out of something.

Vang Vieng

Not all psychologists like psychopaths but every psychologist is fascinated by psychopaths, even the ones who don’t admit it¹. After hearing all the horror stories about the decadence of Vang Vieng I was expecting it to be to sociologists what psychopaths are to psychologists. Collective insanity. In a nation with stringent drug laws, Vang Vieng is the only place where authorities turn a blind eye. Magic mushroom pizza, weed and opium are mainstays on the menus of the numerous bars and restaurants. I was prepared for debauchery on an unprecedented scale.

Vang Vieng is in an idyllic setting. There are green, spiky crags jagging out of fertile plains. It is very similar to the scenery around Yangshuo. Unlike Yangshuo, the star attraction isn’t the scenery, Vang Vieng’s star attraction is tubing. You basically rent a rubber tube, float down the river, stopping at bars on the way to drink unbelievably cheap alchohol, and consume pretty much any concoction of drugs that you can imagine. There are zip lines and huge rope swings with little to no safety regulations. I was told by a drunken Scotsman who works in one of the bars that 28 people died tubing last year, some drowned whilst out of their faces, others let go of the rope swings at the wrong moment and fell into shallow water and hit rocks. I’m allergic to rubber dinghies and can’t swim very well either but wasn’t feeling it; I didn’t bother with the whole tubing phenomena.

I managed to find a cafe in Vang Vieng that neither had Friends nor Family Guy playing on repeat. The next day I got a bed with Wi-Fi and spent a ridiculous amount of time in my room, writing long e mails to friends, relaxing, eating fruit salad, meditating and sleeping. I lay in bed one afternoon and closed my eyes. Images of all the faces I’ve seen on my journey started racing through my head. I saw smile upon smile upon smile and heard shouts of ‘ni hao’, ‘hello’ and ‘sabaideeeeeeeeeeeee’. The images in my head made me laugh so much I had tears rolling down my face. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I’ve met some crackers.

I also did lots of research on what my options for the near future are and how best to go about them whilst every other foreigner in town was out tubing. It’s quite complicated. Bangkok is the major transport hub for South East Asia but I don’t know when I will arrive there. I’ll get a 15 day Thai visa but some of the applications for countries I considered visiting could potentially take far longer to process than the 15 days I’d have in Thailand waiting for the applications to be processed. The world just isn’t cut out for people who like to do things on a whim. A more complicated issue than border restrictions was deciding what I wanted to do in the short term future. What is rational, what is feasible and what my heart says are all at odds with one another. I decided to leave proper decision making until Vientiane.

I felt very lonely whenever I was out of my room. I had envisioned the SE Asia backpacking scene to be full of artisans, writers, musicians and poets and have found it to be full of what I term consumerist hippies. They are obsessed with buying all the accessories to make them look free-spirited and avante garde but there mentality is very similar to the materialistic, conventional western one. They live structured, predictable lives; they do not seek adventure, just token gestures of it. They do not seek to learn about the world, they seek to reaffirm their beliefs about it. I’ve found it very difficult to find people I can relate to. They just seem to do what ever the Lonely Planet tells them. As a touring cyclist, I've become an anti consumerist in my quest to travel light. I look at my bundle of possessions and instinctively ask myself, 'hmmmm, what do I have here that I don't actually need', 'how can I have less'? I enjoy washing my clothes in the streams, it's the most therapeutic time of day for me. I know that there are musicians, writers and poets out there but it’s just hard to find them amongst the crowd of mindless louts when everyone looks the bohemian. 

I went out for a wander one night and bumped into Nicki (whom I met in Yangshuo) and her friends from Hong Kong who were doing a mini tour of SE Asia for the Chinese New Year holiday. I had one beer, used a slight niggling feeling in my sciatic nerve as a justification to smoke some opium then went home. All the opium did was make my breath taste like I was 15 again. The following night I had two beers with the aforementioned Scotsman who works in one of the bars. His day job is at the river, his evening job is to pull his kilt up to reveal that he’s a true Scotsman then tell the revellers which bar he thinks they should go to next. He loves his job. He’d only been doing it for 5 days. His methyl amphetamine addicted colleagues who’d been doing it for a while seemed less happy about their position. One of the girls reminded me of the sort of people I grew up with. She looked gaunt, depressed and unhealthy but there was still a hint of her former beauty despite the enthusiasm for life having been long sucked out of her. It was quite sad to see. The stories of Vang Vieng being a cesspit and haven for moral decadence didn’t really ring true with me. The aggressive drunks and drug addicts felt too familiar, and in fairness to Vang Vieng, the ‘aggressive’ westerners, weren’t even THAT aggressive and the 'moral decadence' is known as a night out where I come from. I got told by the Flashing White Sergeant (I apologise for the terrible Scottish pun) that the Laos gangs who control the drugs trade (and the police) show no tolerance for yob behaviour and show little restraint in their heavy handed treatment of those who don’t treat the locals with respect. Fair enough. I didn’t get into the swing of the Vang Vieng party lifestyle. I found myself just sitting there, not really speaking to people, not fitting in and struggling to think of things to say on the odd occasion I did chat to someone. I was happiest when chatting to friends and family online. I had no motivation to get drunk and try my luck with any of the beleaguered, drunken bikini clad western women staggering about the town with their bottles of Beerlao in hand, despite the fact that my porridge making skills alone could have seduced at least 30 or 40 of them.

It wasn't as bad a place as I had envisioned, it just seemed a bit out of place seeing that sort of behaviour in a country where the norms are so different. I was glad to get back on my bike.

Luang Prabang - Vang Vieng

I estimated the journey from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng to take me 8 days, despite it taking 3 for other cyclists. I wasn’t far off. How can a journey that other cyclists take 3 days to complete take me 6 and a half you may ask yourself? Quite easily really….

I stayed up until 5am the previous night writing and woke up at 12:30 the following day, half an hour after checking out time. I was in a lethargic mood and slowly packed my things and made breakfast. At 2pm the owner asked me if I was staying or not, he seemed happy either way and didn’t seem annoyed that I hadn’t let him know earlier. 2 hours late by Laos standards is nothing. Laos people are super chilled. I felt a bit low as I left Luang Prabang. I’d been looking forward to having company further south…..blah blah blah…. I won’t bore you with details. I had let myself look forward to something that wasn’t a definite prospect. I should know better. It wasn’t all bad things going on in my head when I left Luang Prabang. I miraculously managed to double the size of my infinitely useful elastic band collection and was over the moon with that. I really was over the moon.

I only rode about 8km out of the city before stopping to make noodles. I could smell wild coriander from where I had parked and spent about half an hour hunting for the source. I gave up and went another 2km or so and went to a market (that sold rats as well as coriander) and bought some groceries then gave an English lesson on the request of the vendor, because I had nothing else to do. My enthusiasm for teaching was thin and after asking my name, age, etc she soon ran out of questions. I found her discomfort at the awkward silences quite amusing and made little effort to break them. I don’t necessarily find long silences to be awkward but do find them to get a bit boring after a while. Besides, it was getting late so I explained that I needed to leave to find somewhere to camp. One of her customers overheard and invited me to stay at his family home. Having worked for 6 years in an outdoor adventure company he has acquired excellent English. He also has a name, he also told me what his name was and I thought to myself ‘that will be an easy name to remember because it sounds a bit like an English word’. Yes, he definitely had a name. We spent the evening browsing through my laptops music folder. Although he was disappointed that I didn’t have any Westlife for him to transfer to his mp3 player, he was thrilled to bits to add Rod Stewart and Runrig to his impeccable collection. The wooden huts have no mosquito protection but I wasn’t bitten once. From inside the hut I could see quite clearly the village life from within the gaps in between the woven leaves that make the wall. After day 1 I had cycled a phenomenal 13km. 13km, I really did.

I can’t remember much about what happened to the other 5 and half days. I remember perking up on day 2 and doing a huge, big, steep and treacherous, death defying 15 km climb with just 2 short tangerine breaks and having a rest at the top complimenting my improved stamina. I was given elevation maps from an Australian couple going in the opposite direction and was well chuffed with myself for climbing the height of 2 Empire State Buildings so relatively effortlessly. There was a shop at the top, I bought myself a can of coke, took some photos then sat and had a cigarette on one of the huts that overlooked the valley below and admired the view. From behind me I heard a big vehicle pull up. From the blacked out windows appeared a van full of monks. Even though I don’t think I’ll ever become a monk, I do admire the simplicity of the monk ethic. I looked around me and felt a bit embarrassed to have my needless possessions that I’d acquired, my camera, cigarettes and can of coke sitting around me. I tucked them out of the way and watched the monks as they did their thing. They took some photos of the view, bought some juice, chain smoked a couple of cigarettes then gave their balls a good tug to get them in a nice comfy position in preparation for continuing their long arduous journey to wherever. Despite not believing in reincarnation, it appears that myself and Buddhist monks share a lot in common. I’ve got no intention of becoming one but should really try befriending one. I really should.

The rest of the road to Vang Vieng consisted of lots of climbs, hot weather, lovely Karst mountains and the company of Al and Jess, an English couple who’ve lived in Thailand for a year and are cycling around SE Asia before returning to England. Oh and I forgot to mention, lots of noodle soup. Really, lots of noodle soup. 

Laos

Laos is noticeably poorer than China. The Chinese customs building at Mohan is gleaming whilst the Laos side is an old corrugated iron roofed building with posters of Laos calendar girls adorned on every available space. The Chinese have invested a lot in the Laotian infrastructure and the roads close to China are new and easy to cycle on. The houses in Northern Laos are generally wooden with no windows. They have dirt floors and no running water but more often than not have huge satellite dishes beaming in images of the consumerist lifestyle from the richer, neighbouring Thailand. Although many aspects of Laos society are very traditional there are many young girls wearing ridiculous amounts of eyeliner and face powder to make their skin pale (is it foundation or is that something completely different)? I flicked through a Laos women’s gossip magazine and all the images had been photoshopped to make the girls seem much paler than the people I passed by. In general the people seem content with their simple life of subsistence farming but the more exposure they have to other cultures, the more I’d expect people to look at their own lives and feel a sense of inadequacy.

On my first morning I had bought a can of coke to assess the cost of living and sat at the side of the road. A man walked by with a noose and I assumed he was going to kill a chicken. There were loud screams minutes later as he pulled a nice healthy looking dog 50 metres or so with the noose in a bamboo cane then his mate clubbed it to death with 2 swift blows of a stick. The screaming immediately stopped but the tail continued to wag. There was chatter and laughter throughout this ordeal, it meant nothing to the locals. Other than that, my journey to Luang Prabang has been thoroughly uneventful. I felt a bit bored cycling through much of northern Laos. The geography doesn’t change much, the vegetation doesn’t change much either and the people don’t have the same amount of curiosity towards foreigners as the Chinese.

Throughout my time in China I was frustrated about all the things I couldn’t communicate but arriving in Laos made me realise just how much I had come on with the language. I didn’t meet any foreigners or English speakers in my first two days but had a conversation or two with a few Chinese speakers. I asked one how far the nearest restaurant was and he told me 40km, I thought he misunderstood me. That would never happen in China. If there are Chinese people in the vicinity then you’re never far from a good meal. On my third day I saw 9 westerners in one day. It really was a shock to the system. I had arrived in a town (Oudomxai I think) and had decided I wanted to get to know some Laos people and did what I always did in China, sit down and do nothing and allow people to get used to my presence then they’d make conversation. It doesn’t work in Laos. As I was sitting there I saw a western couple with the whitest of complexions (clearly short term travellers) and said hello. When they saw my western face they almost looked embarrassed to say hello back. As far as they were concerned that small town was off the beaten track and the sight of my western face was ruining their adventure in an untouched traditional culture. “It’s ok” I felt like saying, “you can have the politeness to make eye contact with a westerner as you murmur a hello and still have an ‘authentic’ experience with the locals”. They toddled on with their lonely planet map guiding them round every street corner, making just as few cultural exchanges with the locals as myself. I got more amusement from the fact that they didn’t speak to me. Clowns.

I met a couple who’d hitch-hiked from the Ukraine that were far more open. You learn far more or at least as much from other travellers as from your encounters with locals whom you can’t communicate with. In the next town 100 or so km away, I met a really nice Israeli couple and an Australian couple who were also on bicycles and the 5 of us had noodle soup, a good laugh and half a bottle of Johnny Walker. We inspired the Israelis to get bicycles with our tales and enthusiasm.

All in all I have made no effort to get off the beaten track.  I’m sure there are ‘remote villages’ that are more picturesque than the ones I’ve been through but even the villages on the main road are pretty remote and besides, these ‘remote’ villages might have a foreigner every 2 weeks snapping away whilst the villages on the main road only have busses that whizz through and no one ever gets out. The food has been pants, I’ve lived on porridge and noodle soup because that’s all I have or all I can find. I’ve missed Chinese food, basic shops that sell things and the ability to have conversation, even if it is just the same repetitive things, where are you from? How long are you here? etc.

I don’t really know what to say about Laos…there’s lots of trees, lots of deforestation with logging trucks heading north, a village every 10km, then an identical one 10km later, dogs that sleep on the middle of the road, yeah, it’s ok. It’s been a pleasure to cycle through Laos without having to worry about my visa expiring. I can take my time and have 3 coffees before deciding to pack my tent away. Camping has been easy. Even though Laos is the most bombed country in history I haven’t felt the need to prod the ground with a stick before I pitch my tent to make sure there are no UEO (unexploded ordinance) it’s all felt very tame.

It took me two days to cycle the distance that the Aussie couple planned to do in one. I stopped for coffees, went for a dip in the river and engaged in all round general laziness. There are kids everywhere in Laos. They all say ‘Sabaidee’ as you cycle past.  A group of school kids joined me for 10km or so, it felt like the Le Tour de France and I was wearing my yellow t shirt that my brother gave me. Sometimes the kids will line up along at the side of the road to give high fives as a cyclist passes. If I miss a hand, I’ll go back to give a hi five to the one who’s hand I missed, (because I've got nothing better to do). I thought about ways to communicate with them and remembered being told that Mr Bean is universally popular because people from any language can get the jokes. Apparently he’s a legend in India. I need no encouragement to make a fool of myself. Besides, doing Mr Bean impressions is good exercise for your facial muscles. I stopped at a restaurant once for would you believe it…noodle soup and one of the kids was playing music on his mobile phone. I was in an upbeat energetic mood and started playing musical statues stopping whenever he changed the song. They couldn’t stop laughing. It feels good to make people laugh, especially when you haven’t made any real contribution to society in 7 months. I continued to play musical statues once my food got served and they’d always stop the music as the food was about to go in my mouth. I don’t keep track of time but my soup was stone cold by the time the kids got bored. It didn’t taste of much when warm so I wasn’t particularly bothered. That’s about as entertaining as the road from Mohan to Luang Prabang has got. Nothing bad has happened and there is nothing much to report, I took only a few photos, here are a handful.

Luang prabang is pleasant, there are lots of nice plants in the gardens and it has a nice slow rhythm. When I arrived in Luang Prabang I randomly bumped into Julie and Fintan whom I shared a dorm with in Dali, mother and son extraordinaire’s who have taken a year out of school and work to travel. Julie said I’ve lost weight so I’ve spent most of my time in Luang Prabang eating. Laos is a former French colony. It’s great. I bought cheese for the first time in I don’t know how long and have been munching on baguettes in the day time and dirt cheap Laos buffets at night. The foods nothing like what I've tasted n the road but if it says it's Laos cuisine and it's cheap and its a buffet then I'm happy. One night I ate a whole barbecued fish after my buffet that must have weighed half a kilo (because I can). I’ve had a few wanders, fixed some bike parts, bought porridge, rice, Chinese cooking oil, Chinese sauces and will buy fresh veg from the Chinese market tomorrow, I’ve wrote this blog (and the last one), met up with the Israelis and gave them advice on buying and repairing bikes, watched youtube (because it’s not banned) and met a handful of fascinating and thoroughly decent people and had great chats with them.

I’ve come across my fair share of idiots too. One girl I saw of maybe 19 bought lucky birds because she felt sorry for them. They are basically small birds locked in tiny cages; they can barely fit in the cages. You pay the owner money to free them and they tell you that brings you good luck in the next life. It’s supposedly a Buddhist tradition but I’ve only seen it in a touristy part of Bangkok and Luang Prabang. I didn’t meet many western idiots at all who were backpacking, studying or working in China and you’d often have conversations about the lack of sophistication of Chinese tourists. You meet a lot of expats that permanently moan about Chinese culture. China doesn’t really attract foreigners interested in loutish behaviour. The average age of travellers in China is older and less daft than in South East Asia and it’s easy to forget that half the population of tourists from your own culture are idiots too. I’ll be leaving Luang Prabang tomorrow, taking the road south which leads to Vang Vieng (because it’s the only road that leads south). I’ve been told it will take 3 days so I’ll probably be in Vang Vieng in 8, (because I can).

Adios 

Videos

Now that I've got decent broadband here's some videos that I couldn't upload earlier, it seems pretty pointless when you can't see them then read about whatever it was I wrote to put them in context but never mind.

Dancing at the bank in Suzhou

Huangshan - Loving it, too cool.

To get an idea of what the atmosphere is like, put on a pair of headphones and put the volume at max.

A return to Chengdu park

Me and a yak herder, I sound like I have learning difficulties, my accent has changed and I speak so slowly.

My Crazy Encounters with the Deadly Wild Elephants of Southern China

Before I arrived in Jinghong, the last Chinese city before the Laos border, I had asked a restaurant owner if I could camp in their unused field. They fed me, treated me like a king and I was forced by old granny to stay for lunch the following day. The wee Granddaughter was amazed that my home country has swimming pools and gave me plenty of warning about the ferocious Daxiang (Elephants) that lay in my path ahead. They were a really nice family. The one armed grandfather told me how he had a motorcycle accident and refused to have medical treatment because he believed god would help him.  He has survived to tell the tale; I hope he survives to tell the tale of how his huge stomach abscess miraculously heals. Evangelical Christianity is growing in China at a phenomenal pace. I learned that the Chinese word for hallelujah and amen are the same as in English and that the word for god is Shendi. I had a really good time with this lively family who refused to take any of my money, they treated me so well it was almost embarrassing so leave having given them nothing in return.

I had earlier assumed I would have been entering Jinghong with plenty of cash to burn and was going to go to Karaoke for the first time in China (for the quintessential Chinese night out) and blow the rest of my renminbi on luxuries that I haven’t had in a while. 


I was hoping my bike would get trampled on by Wild elephants in the jungle near Jinghong after being told how dangerous they were. The photos of Elephants jumping on my bike and stealing my tangerines would have been epic. By mid-morning I was just hoping to see one, by midday I was hoping to hear an elephant and by the time I left wild elephant valley I was just content that the socks I’d washed in the stream had dried and my suntan had improved. No matter what I do or where I go, nothing out of the ordinary happens to me. Apologies if you thought the title of this blog entry was going to result in me ferociously fighting off stampeding tusks. I wasn’t being deceitful; this blog is about my encounters with wild elephants, which adds up to a grand total of none. However, I did see footprints on the mud of the riverbank which I washed my clothes in. The photos didn’t come out well but trust me, it was  Elephants that made them. Don’t tell me otherwise.

I arrived in Jinghong with little Chinese money left and after stocking up on camping gas, I spent my last day in a Chinese city trying to find the cheapest noodle stall instead. I was hoping something bad would happen as I left China so that I wouldn’t miss it if Laos turned out to be utter dross.

The last town I passed through before entering Laos was Mengla. I bought a jin (600g) of tangerines from a fruit stand and then was given loads of freebies (2 gorgeous fresh pineapples, 5 tangerines, 2 apples and a type of fruit that I’ve never seen before and was also given the opportunity to chat up the fruit seller’s highly attractive 26 year old daughter who lives in Kunming (I got nowhere). I will definitely remember China for its people doing everything they can to rip you off one minute and being unbelievably generous the next. Since I got my bicycle my Chinese has improved a lot and more often than not towards the end, I was overwhelmed with the friendliness, curiosity and generosity of its citizens. 

I arrived at the border the following day with enough cash to buy rice, a bowl of fried tomatoes and eggs, a small bottle of water and a can of coke. The radio was playing the same pop songs that were being played 5 months ago when I arrived in Beijing. I left China in the early afternoon and cycled the half kilometre or so to the Laos checkpoint. They allow you to pay in US dollars but wouldn’t accept my 100 dollar bill as they had no change. I wasn’t allowed back in China so spent about 3 hours waiting for a taxi driver to exchange money at a good rate. I had a pineapple, a Salman Rushdie book and plenty of cigarettes so it wasn’t too bad. I ended up paying 8% commission for exchanging my US dollars to Laos Kip. I suppose it could have been worse.

 I didn't know it that the time that this would be my last good meal for 300km

The border at Mohan

I reflected on my 5 months in the Middle Kingdom whilst lounging around in No Man’s land. China is too vast and varied to be summarised in a book let alone a short blog entry. I’ve shown a couple of people my route through China and they’ve been amazed at the amount of places I’ve seen whereas I look at my route and it feels as though I’ve whizzed by so many sections and missed so much even in the small percentage of the country that I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel through.

Looking back

When I hear the name China the first thought I think about is its beauty; its old pagodas, willow trees, bamboo swaying in the cool breeze, gravity defying mountains, lush fertile farmland with buffaloes ploughing the fields, round straw hats popping out of the rice fields as its farmers use every daylight hour to feed a billion mouths in techniques of an age old tradition. There is the smell of wood smoke and freshly cooked food in tightly clustered villages with chickens roaming the cobbled alleyways and children smiling and laughing as their grandparents look on from the comfort of their tiny little stools, gambling, smoking and watching the world go by. Inside are spacious houses with no consideration given to decoration but in a strange way, this functional clutter nevertheless has a definite aesthetic appeal. Chinese civilisation is the oldest living civilisation.

However, China isn’t always pretty, far from it. Many of its historical old walled towns that survived the wars in the first half of the 20^th century were destroyed in the second half as Chinas communist government sought to modernise the nation with little or no consideration for its history or the livelihood of its people. As China has abandoned communism in favour of a market economy its wealth has boomed in the last 20 years Chinas and an emerging middle class has grown with an appetite to explore its nation’s roots. Much of the remaining old towns with their historic architecture still intact have become overly crowded holiday resorts that are more like theme parks than living cities; generic shop fronts sell items that nobody needs, every 2^nd building is a guest house and the sound of crickets and the sight of the milky way at night has been replaced with the sound of countless bars pumping bad techno or very bad karaoke to the sight of neon lights and vomiting drunken youths. The local population is almost invisible and rarely treated with respect by its wealthy, city sleeking visitors who have found quick wealth and think overly highly of themselves as a consequence.

Most of Chinas big animals are either locally extinct or highly endangered as there habitat shrinks and they are killed for superstitious traditional ‘medicine’. This appetite for exotic ‘medicines’ is decimating the population of wild animals on a global scale and unless there are huge cultural changes within China, I can’t imagine this situation will get any better as the disposable income of Chinas growing middle class increases. Much of Chinas most beautiful terrain is getting ripped apart for mining, all but two of its hundreds if not thousands of rivers have been dammed (the Li and the Nujiang) and an astronomical amount of sand is being dredged from its rivers for construction materials. Lorry after Lorry belt out black fumes as they carry their cargo through beautiful but rapidly shrinking, picturesque landscapes to one of Chinas numerous indistinguishable, hazy, polluted cities.

The average Chinese city is by no means beautiful but they are full of life. The streets and lanes are a web of activity; you’re never far from the smell of food or the sound of car horns. In the evenings people don’t just lock their doors at night and shut themselves off from the world, they play cards, go dancing in the park or more often than not, just hang around and chat or watch the city as it moves. Neither the young nor the old, nor women feel threatened to go out at night, no matter how poor the street lighting is in the dark dingy lanes. Not once in 5 months did I see violence. When I lived above the town centre in Peterhead I didn’t even bother looking out my window if drunken people were fighting, it was commonplace. I once whacked my knee in someone’s ribs pretty hard when clambering up to my bunk on a sleeper train from Guiyang to Chongqing. I said ‘duibuqi’ and the middle aged man laughed even though he looked to be in pain. Showing anger in China just isn’t cool, they don’t glorify being tough and aggressive in Chinese society and I’m sure that the man wanted to punch me in the face but he just wouldn’t, it’s not the thing to do, I said sorry and he laughed, that’s how they roll.

You have to go a Chinese city to get an idea of the amount of construction that is taking place and even then, it’s impossible to fathom the scale of this growth on a national level. People have asked me why I wanted to spend so long in China of all places (when I could sit around beaches in Thailand instead)…. China is such a dynamic country, it’s energetic, and the changes that are occurring now will have reverberations around the globe for years to come. The greatest migration in human history is taking place in China. The Government project that 300 million people will be migrating from rural life to urban life within the next twenty years. I have a friend living in Shanghai who compares living in Shanghai now to living in New York at the turn of the last century. In my blog I earlier compared Chongqing to New York 100 years ago and you could justifiably compare Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Tianjin in that category too. Shanghai was just a village 100 years ago and is now a high tech, modern cosmopolitan city with a population of 24 million. Shenzhen was a mere village just 30 years ago and is now a city of 12 million and source of just about every product you see that has ‘made in china’ written on it.

These cities of new, towering, gleaming office blocks are a world away from so much of China. All of the wealthiest nations have a high rate of urbanism and I believe China faces two major hurdles in its quest to becoming a truly modern, high tech, post-industrial nation. The biggest hurdle to the government plans for mass urban migration is Chinas geography. Only 10% of the land is arable and that figure would be significantly lower if they didn’t farm steep mountain sides. The staple crop of rice requires a field to be totally flat so that it can be flooded at a controlled level. This means that so much of China is impossible to farm on an industrial scale. Unless there are huge leaps in technology in the coming years China will continue to be dependent on the work of peasants to feed the country and the average age of peasant farmers must be well into the 50’s. In Guizhou I saw countless people in their eighties who are half the height of what they used to be. These hunchbacks still work, providing essential farm labour carrying heavy loads. Almost all the young people migrate to the city as soon as they can. Whereas the youth create the vitality of its ever growing cities, it’s the pensioners that feed the cities and keep them running. The face of 21^st century China is one of growth and upward mobility but the backbone of Chinas economy is old and frail. I had this discussion with a Swiss woman and she asked me if I was worried by this. I told her yes, but eventually the lack of farm labour would increase the cost of food which would provide economic incentives for younger people to farm. The man sitting next to me from Hong Kong was quick to agree. “China is the oldest continual civilisation and things will sort themselves out, like they always have done in the past”. Whereas I agree with him to an extent, Chinas long history hasn’t been without its fair share of disastrous episodes. The average working life left in these farmers who know the land intimately can’t be more than 30 years and you only need to look at Zimbabwe to see the consequences of large numbers of people with no background in agriculture being put in farms. I’m not saying things can’t be done swiftly and effectively and if any country can replace a workforce of 300million in the space of one generation then it’s China. They have lots to think about.

The second factor I believe may be a hindrance in Chinas aims to be a world economic leader is it’s education system or to get straight to the root of the problem – the government. Tianjin alone has a construction site with office space the size of lower Manhattan being built under the assumption that Chinese companies will be leading the global economy. How can a country lead the world economy when its people can’t be trusted to have information about how the world works? In order to lead one requires creative thinking to find solutions to problems. People in China are bred from birth to think with subservience and not think out the box. This hasn’t had much effect on Chinas economy while its growth is still primarily based on manufacturing but I believe China needs to allow more personal freedom if it is to move to the next level.

A lot of people fear China as it emerges into a global superpower, I can see why. It’s a dictatorship that’s becoming more powerful and polluting more and more as it gets wealthier and wealthier. It has made no secrets about its desire to make Taiwan part of China by force if necessary. The Chinese people generally regard all Chinese speaking places as being China as well as Tibet and Xinjiang even though the local populace may feel very differently. There continues to be simmering tension regarding the border disputes with its neighbouring nuclear powers India and Pakistan over the territorial boundaries of Kashmir and I even heard one Chinese person vehemently correcting me that Vietnam is a part of China that got stolen from them. The lack of education in how the world both in and outside of the middle kingdom works and the inaccessibility of objective information is worrying. Although many of the greatest atrocities of the modern age have been committed by democratic nations with a free press, the Chinese people, having lived in a one party state all of their lives are much more inclined to believe what they are told and act accordingly.

Having heard the scare stories about China taking over the world and now having spent a considerable length of time in China, I view the emergence of China from a sleeping giant to a major political player with less apprehension than much of my fellow westerners.  I’ve found the people to be kind and hospitable despite their cultural superiority complex (if you lived in the centre of the universe you’d feel the same)! They appear rude at times with their pushing in queues, spitting and very direct way of speaking. “Waiter, bring me water” is how they’d say “excuse me, can you please bring me some water”, but no harm is intended.

They are tough in business and will lie out their teeth to get a good deal and never give you a straight answer if you ask them a difficult question but that’s fair play as far as they are concerned, they are not dirty people . A taxi driver once tried to charge me 10 times the going rate, I corrected him, paid the correct fare then he chased me down the street to give me my bag I’d left in his car. A street vendor tried to overcharge me for rice when my bank card was locked and ended up giving me loads of free meat and veg when she realised I was genuinely skint. I was more often than not overwhelmed by the kindness of its people.

China is almost a whole nation comprising of only Children; I’ve talked in the past about the negative aspects of the one child policy but what would have happened if it hadn’t been put in place. The population is well over a billion and Chinese peasant wives were sprouting out six or seven, China would have had to either plunder other nations or starve. The pressure heaped on parents for their only child to be successful is huge. The education system is highly competitive as is the competition for jobs. Social status and the ability to find a partner is determined by wealth as it is in any other society but the pressure to succeed in China feels greater than what I’m used to.

Many of these from the one child generation are very well pampered by their parents and seemed to mature later than westerners as they don’t live very independent lives even after leaving school. Amongst many of the young people, I felt an overwhelming sense of pressure to succeed to the expectations of family, a sense of vulnerability and lack of confidence and more than anything a craving for a sense of belonging. I felt sorry for a lot of the lonely young men who couldn’t get a woman without a good job, one of the 25 million ‘spare males’ that’s occurred as a result of the one child policy. I didn’t see a generation of people to be feared in the future. The Chinese are like the French; their number one concern in life is food. They don’t want to take over the world, for the majority of them, all they seem to be really interested in is a plate of good ‘chifan’ and the latest mobile phone. 

I like Chinese culture and its people and as the nation moves forward at an astronomical pace, I fear the consequences of this explosion of activity as much for how it might affect its own citizens as for the consequences that this new world superpower might have for the citizens of the rest of the world, the environment and the welfare of the 200 or so wild elephants that leave footprints on riverbanks. I don’t care that I didn’t see them, I’m just happy to know that they are still there. I don’t know if I will always look at China with such fondness but I know I will always look at my own time in China as being one of the most educational and enjoyable times of my life. I have forgotten the names of every Chinese person I’ve met (apart from ones that give themselves English names) other than two. Jeng Peng in Beijing and this man here, Heng Hua Xin. As people get older their faces tell the story of their lives. I don't fear dying young or growing old. I fear living as long as Heng Hua Xing and having a face that tells the wrong story because unlike him, I failed to find a reason to smile at any given opportunity. Wo zoule, Zaijian.