The earth is my bed

·         A sleeping bag with a comfort level of + 15 degrees isn’t much use in December (even in Yunnan).

·         Chinese road signs rarely tell you how far it is to the next city but there are milestones every kilometre to tell you how far you are from the centre of the universe (Beijing).

·         Never say the Chinese word for yes (dui or shi), just nod your head and make an ‘uh’ sound. Never say that you understand someone (mingbai), just nod your head and go ‘uh’. Never ask someone if they understand you, (‘ni ting bu dong ma’), just tilt your head up and say ‘uh’. Whenever someone is talking to you, fill in every pause for breath with an ‘uh’ sound to show that you are listening. Saying ma at the end of a sentence turns a statement into a question, if you forget to add the ma at the end, just tilt your head up and go ‘uh’, they’ll know what you mean. Never say goodbye (zaijian), say ‘xiexie’ (thank you) to the shopkeeper then ‘wo zuole’ (I’m going) then look them in the eye, tilt your head up and go ‘uh’. Don’t expect a smile, a ‘have a nice day’ or a ‘thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart’, you might get a ‘xiexie’ or a ‘zaijian’ preceded by the ‘uh’ but more often than not they’ll grunt an ‘uh’ then continue watching their soap opera.

·      With blogspot you can check the nation of those who have viewed your page, the browser people have used to view your page and the google searches that have brought people to your page. The most common search that takes people to my blog is ‘taiyuan brothel’. I can’t imagine many Taiyuan brothels have an English website.

·         There isn’t much to do in a tent on your own – I go to sleep early, I’m packed and moving whilst the world is still sleeping.

·         Cycling up steep climbs at walking pace is a bit pointless when you can walk.

·         Having grammatically perfect Chinese helps when travelling through China but it is not essential. You start to pay local prices once you have perfected the correct usage of how and when to make the ‘uh’ sound. That’s when you know you’re starting to get to grips with the culture. Uh?

·         Tying a backpack to the back of a bike with bungee ropes and making it tight and evenly balanced on both sides is an art that I’m getting the hang of. I usually get it right first time now and in half the time it used to take.

·         Even though I’d been travelling for 5 months before I got my bike I feel that only now my journey has properly begun. I feel free. I’m a true nomad now (and a tramp).

·         Fortune rarely favours the reckless but the reckless have the best time of it while it lasts.

·         Pushing a bike up mountains with a bag full of clothes, shelter, cooking equipment, food, a laptop, toiletries and cycling maintenance essentials isn’t much easier than cycling up them.

·         Chinese people don’t care where you pitch your tent; so long as you’re not bothering anyone they are happy.

·         Horse and cart are the taxis and busses of some towns in Yunnan, notably around Weishan.

·         Seeing the early morning mist rising up bamboo clad, terraced mountains makes me feel extremely lucky, having a coffee and cigarette whilst watching this from the comfort of my sleeping bag makes me feel even luckier, especially if I don’t really have a clue where I am and I effectively just stumbled across this spectacle.

·         Chinese roads aren’t nearly as dangerous as people make out.

·         A pretty Chinese girl with high cheekbones, wearing big sunglasses, a bright red, hip length duffel coat, a short skirt with black tights and well-toned calf muscles sporting ridiculously long high heels whilst riding a scooter with her long hair blowing in the wind is the ultimate in sexiness. In fact, she may be the ultimate in everything.

·         I’m all up for the “Choose life” and all that, I just don’t expect the “cars, compact disk players, and big televisions” to make that much of a difference. Give me a tent, a bike, nice scenery, a culture of smiling, friendly people and I’m happy.

·         When it rains in Yunnan it really does rain.

·         Cycling with a bag that’s soaking wet is a bit of a **** and all the nice scenery in the world won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

·         Sleeping in rural hotels is always an option - 20kuai/£2/$3 a night before bargaining isn’t exactly a nightmare scenario.

·         I’ll maintain my belief that Chinese roads are relatively safe until I get run over.

·         Cycling all day makes me too tired to bargain even though I’m probably not paying the local rate. (it’s only 20 kuai a night).

·         Porridge with honey, jam, raisins and bananas is the perfect meal and takes less than 5 minutes to make.

·         I now regard any toilet with a roof as being luxurious no matter how dirty it is.

·         When a man who’s worked in a bike shop all his life laughs when you tell him you intend to take your cheap second hand set of wheels from Dali to Laos with a few scenic detours on the way and tells you it’s not going to happen, he may have a point (but he probably doesn't).

·         I’m healthier and happier than I’ve ever been.

·         Maybe ‘uh’ isn’t the best way to write it, maybe it should be ‘eugh’ or ‘ugh’. It’s like how a Brummy or Mancunian would say church, but with less effort involved. Think of someone from the Royle Family or Shameless having to do something that requires a bit of effort and to show that they can’t be bothered they make an ‘uh’ sound. That’s how you do it, now just make it that little bit snappier and less prolonged.

·         Washing clothes in irrigation channels is nearly as disgusting as bathing in the river Ganges – there are no dead bodies floating about but there’s everything else..

·         Times New Roman – I’m just not feeling it anymore.

·         I rarely swear (I rarely speak English coming to think of it) and don’t like it when I do swear,  it sounds really tacky but cycling in the rain with a bag that is soaking wet really is a bit of a ****. There is no nice way of putting it.

·         If I write a blog entry that is 40% good things and 60% moaning, it means I’m having the time of my life.

·         You think you’re cycling up those steep hills as fast as you can, then a big dog with a deep pitched growl starts barking and gnashing at your legs and you realise that you’ve got the energy to cycle faster, a lot faster.

·         A girl wearing high heels whilst driving a scooter can weave through the traffic so effortlessly that she might not even realise that there is a traffic jam, let alone realise that she caused it.

·         Finding somewhere suitable to pitch a tent with less than half an hour left of sunlight is a bit stressful – just about every bit of flat land in Yunnan seems to be used to grow something.

·         The sides of some Chinese roads are full of broken glass but their bottles are usually always green and usually always easy to see.

·         Just because someone can cause traffic jams doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not boring, now there is a bit of philosophy for you.

·         When a Chinese man tells you the road from point A to point B is flat, what he means is that point A and B are at the same altitude. He isn’t making any reference to the terrain in between.

·         Chinese women don’t grow old gracefully and maintain a great set of legs until a ripe old age.

·         You arrive in a town and ask someone how far it is until the next town that’s on your map. 80km. You cycle for about an hour and a half, stop for a drink of water and eat a biscuit and a local shopkeeper starts chatting and asks where your from, where your going etc. He tells you how far you’ve got to go. 80km. You keep on moving. It’s finally time for a cigarette break and a chance to give your thighs a rest. There is a woman waiting for a bus on the side of the road. You ask her….still 80km. You cycle for around another hour and a quarter then stop for a cigarette, the sun is blazing, the birds are in song, and your legs feel slightly wobbly from all that pedalling. There is a man walking towards you with a bamboo cane on his back and two big sacks of Fresh farm produce tied to either end. He’s heading to the market that you’ve just bought some tangerines from. You say hello and ask him how far it is to the town. He says 36km. Finally someone who knows the local geography. To double check you ask him how far it is until the town you’ve just came from. He tells you it is 80km. He asks you where you’re from. You tell him you are from Scotland. He looks at you blankly. You say you’re from Yingguo (the United Kingdom). His face lights up and he repeats what you’ve just said. You nod your head and say ‘uh’, answer a few questions then pedal on. To your surprise, it’s just a short distance then you arrive at your destination. You see a group of young men in their late teens looking at the foreigner on a bike with excitement and curiosity. They’ve been learning English throughout their school years. They say hello in English then speak to you in Chinese. You answer a few questions. They ask you a question that you don’t understand and you reply ‘ting bu dong’. They repeat the question and you give them the same response. Their enthusiasm to communicate suddenly diminishes. To satisfy your own curiosity you ask them how far it is from where you are to the town you just came from. They tell you how far it is then they all say goodbye in English with great pride and enthusiasm. One of them shouts Welcome to China as you leave even though you’ve just told him that you’ve been in China for 4 months. The answer to your question that you asked them….80km.

·         Do not smoke anything that grows on the side of the road. It will make you do daft things such as buy a packet of cigarettes, spend 5 minutes making sure your change is correct because you keep on losing count. You leave the shop, take out your lighter then realise that you’ve left your cigarettes on the counter and beside the stool that you sat on whilst counting your money is your change, your half eaten bag of biscuits and your bottle of water. You were too busy peeling a tangerine to notice.

·         If you camp in rural china, it’s a wise idea to memorise the location of all the buffalo pooh in case you need to urinate in the night.

·         Forget finding an English speaker, its difficult enough finding someone who can speak Putonghua in some rural parts of Yunnan. It feels strange to meet Chinese people who speak even less Chinese than me.

·         Chinese counties tend to be named after their biggest town. So when you ask how many kilometres it is until Weishan, they tell you that you’re in Weishan.

·         Yuanyang Rice Terraces – go there if you get the chance, I’ll say no more.

·         I don’t know how so many people can fail to see the beauty amongst life’s brutality – it’s everywhere.

·         When a man tells you that the Chinese like to smoke after meals because that’s what they do in heaven, just agree, especially if he’s paid for the meal that you’ve just eaten. Just nod, make an ‘uh’ sound, smoke your cigarette that he’s given you and agree.

·         When you go into a Chinese shop you don’t have to put up with Jingle Bells or that Pogues song about New York for two months solid in the build up to Christmas. Fantastic.

·         Don’t assume a Chinese woman is young and pretty if she looks good from behind. Don’t assume anything. In fact, just don’t look. 9 times out of 10 she will be young and pretty but the trauma from that 1 time out of 10, oh the trauma. Just don’t look. Forget I even mentioned it. She could be old enough to be your granny and not the sort of pretty granny that you see whilst staggering home from the pub at 2am on a Wednesday night either.

·         Yunnan has a handful of locations where tourists flock to but away from there, many people have never seen a foreigner. There you can behave however you like. The locals will assume your culture is strange rather than realise that you’re just an idiot.

·         If you camp in rural china, it’s a wise idea to wear shoes if you go for a piss in the night.

·         Happiness is a bowl of porridge.

·         Waterproof clothing makes you dripping wet with sweat but I still put them on whenever it rains. I think about how pointless it is whilst I’m putting them on but even then, I still put them on and 5 minutes later I’m soaking and I’m wondering why I bothered putting them on. Then the sun comes out and it takes me 10 minutes to take them off, pack them in my bag, fasten everything up and get going again. By that time I would have been dried by the sun anyway but I still put them on. Whenever it rains.

·         I was somewhere in between Honghe and Yuanjiang. The heat was blistering and I was running out of water. It was about 10km since I last passed a shop and I didn’t know when I’d pass another one. The water from the Red river below was too murky to drink even after boiling it. I was desperately hungry but also gagging for a coffee. I did not have enough water for both. A dilemma of this magnitude needs a calm but decisive response. What should I do?

·         The ultimate happiness is a bowl of porridge with honey, raisins, bananas and jam in it.

·         China feels even vaster when you need to use muscle to get through it. My thighs feel like they are burning on a regular basis.

·         Intense contentedness can be a form of insanity - sometimes I have to remind myself that there is brutality amongst life’s beauty.

·         I hate visa restrictions.

·         My current lifestyle is not an easy one, far from it, but it’s phenomenal.

·         I know I’ve criticised China quite a lot in my blog but Chinese people are so friendly and cheerful towards foreigners, it’s unbelievable. I rarely lock my bike, it seems so pointless.  When I do, I feel embarrassed if a local sees me taking these precautionary measures, it almost feels as if I’m insulting their community when I pull my bike up at the side of the road and tie the lock. This nation is not perfect but it is about as safe a country as you’ll find. My favourite time of day is when the kids are walking home from school. All I get from them is a hello but their enthusiasm is infectious.

·         Pepsi Max is basically just Pepsi with caffeine in it. I name the response to my emergency dilemma Porridge Max. It was absolutely disgusting and will never catch on but at least I can claim to have invented something.

·         The dogs get close, they make the hairs stand on end but they’ve never sunk their teeth in.

·         It’s been sunny almost every day in Yunnan in December.

·         Every day, something happens that makes me think, wow, life is amazing, beyond comprehension.

·         I have neither watch nor mobile phone. With the way I live my life, there is day time, night time and times when I’m hungry, in which case I make myself a bowl of porridge.

·         I pretty much do whatever I want, spending very little and polluting very little in the process.

·         The earth is my bed and my blanket is the stars.