As opposed to the certainty with which the guy I talked with yesterday at the terraces was saying it was going to be sunny today morning it was raining the whole night as well as most of the morning, with only short breaks between downpours. I have waited until noon for the rain to stop and the sky to clear so that I could go and see the rice field terraces properly, but as usual I had no such luck. So at least I made a few nice pictures of the local women in traditional local dresses from my hotel’s window.

I left in a little time window when it stopped raining. Although I was now riding mostly in about 230 meters above sea level I still had to negotiate a few mountainous parts going up and down sharply on serpentine roads. Many sections of the road I was on today was not great thanks to some road works as well as rock extraction activities from the side of the mountain usually taking over half of the road while making the other half muddy and full of potholes thanks to the large number of slow moving lorries moving the rock away. I was careful on all of the different surfaces but one took me a little bit by surprise. It looked like a perfect road, only wet from the rain. I was going downhill and although I noticed that the road was more slippery than one would normally expect a wet road to be and so I was going quite slow I still almost ran under the rear wheels of a lorry going in the opposite direction. I was taking the corners quite wide so that I really didn’t have to go at a turtle speed and there was this big truck behind the corner, so I braked. I braked as lightly as I felt was enough for the road surface I was on but it wasn’t enough. So I tried to brake more and I locked the rear wheel. So I eased on the brakes again but I was still on a course to hit the truck. I couldn’t lean more (or maybe could but was not brave enough) as I didn’t want to end up on the tarmac sliding straight under the wheels of a lorry heavy enough that it would not be too pleasant having it run over my torso. Now I was too close for any choices and I had to intentionally lock the rear wheel again to turn me away from going under the truck’s belly. So I slid and hit the rear wheel with the end of my left pannier. By then I was basically stationary so I put my right leg down but the angle of the bike towards the road was by then behind the limit of my capacity to hold it upright so I had to let go. The truck continued. The driver probably had no way to notice the little bump into his tyre.

So now I was standing on the road with the bike lying on it and could now feel the reason of my trouble under my boot soles. I think that if I was not careful I could easily have a fall myself. I think I have never stood on a tarmac so slippery as this one. An explanation that I came up with could be that the reason for the road surface being so slippery could be the trucks turning in tight circles in the curves of the hill and shaving their tyres on the rough type tarmac. This probably covers the tarmac with a thin film of rubber that can be this slippery when wet. Mix this with the exhaust fumes full of burned diesel particles that are blasted towards the surface of the road as the truck struggle to climb the hill and you’ve got the mixture for hot weather ice replacement. Well, that’s my theory anyway. ;-)

Before I arrived to Guilin I spent over an hour in a service station completely soaked waiting for the rest of the rain to go away. It never stopped completely but I later continued in much lighter rain.

Fortunately it stopped raining minutes after I arrived to Guilin city, which gave me the chance to start asking people for directions to cheap hotel(s). First a couple of girls took me to a 40 Yuan (which was apparently a price just for me, normally it is 50 Yuan they said) hotel, which was bit over my budget as you probably guessed by now if you read all my articles. Since I was in a big city that is very touristy too I was not sure if I’d be able to find anything much cheaper so I checked the room out. Wow, how furnished was that! Very nice almost a castle type room which I would actually expect to cost even more than the standard 50 Yuan. Anyway, I continued looking.

At the end another girl (well a woman of probably my age) introduced me to a little hotel for 30 Yuan, but they had no place to securely put the bike to. Under such circumstances I would have gone back to the first beautiful hotel with their own front yard, but the girl offered that I could leave the bike at her place as it was not far. I felt that I couldn’t refuse as by then she spent quite a bit of time with me, sometimes even running along me in her nice dress as the bike doesn’t really go in walking pace even if I let the engine to idle in first gear. I didn't feel too good riding a motorbike next to a girl running next to it in her nice tight dress. The room was small and a bit smelly as it had no window but I was at a point of no return...

When I unloaded the bike we went to put the bike to “her place”, which actually turned out to be a shared backyard of a few block of flats. It didn’t feel too safe to me either and I actually ended up locking it in front of the hotel on one of the busy major Guilin streets and still felt that it was safer there.

As I was unloading the second pannier and other stuff after I found out that this girl’s place was not a locked garage or something similar a young Chinese guy started to talk to me. He was yet another English teacher (while being an university student as well). He offered that I could go to use Internet, which was my next task, at their campus. Later he invited me for dinner to his home and even offered that I could stay there, but I had already paid for the hotel by then anyway.

So at the end we first decided to have dinner at his home that he said was 10 minutes on his pushbike that he was now riding, going from a primary school student of his. One of us had to misunderstood the other as it was actually almost 30 minutes of a very slow ride on first gear, that I presume is not the best for the bike. The cooling fan was running all the time and I don’t think that the chain likes the shocks coming from the engine through the first gear either. Had I known that it would be so long I would had had to refuse this nice offer.

The dinner was again very nice and not spicy at all, which was great. The ride back was easy as except two right turns we were going on a single main street all the time so even without my GPS that I left in my hotel room I felt confident to find my way back easily. Joan (which was this guy’s English name; maybe Johan as I tend to think that Joan is a girl’s name, but he says Joan) didn’t want to let me go alone though. He would ride with me and than catch a bus back. Nothing would make him not to make sure that I found my way back all right. I didn’t want him to have so much trouble with me but he kept saying that it was OK and that I don’t have to worry about him. On the way back I wanted to stop by a bus station for him but he kept saying the same think – “Don’t worry.”

At the end, after he helped me to find an internet place near my hotel (I knew about one a little further) and went back to my room for more talking he stated that he long missed the last bus and if I gave him the ride back “Right, that is the ‘Don’t worry’”… I felt a little bit annoyed as this seemed a little inconsiderate from him as I really needed to spend few hours on the Internet since I hadn’t had the chance for the past 10 days and I didn’t go there when he showed me because I didn’t want to make him wait. I lost another few hours thaks to him. Well, I’m sure he just wanted to utilize the opportunity to talk to someone in English, especially to someone he and many others before him call “a hero” (apparently since I travel so long, far and alone on a big bike). He really was a nice guy and we all have something that we need to work on… ;) When I returned from his place again it was too late and I was too tired to go anywhere so I postponed my Internet session till morning.