I got up early in the morning as my brain working so hard all the time lately would not let me sleep the healthy hours. I still thought this night was a friendly service so I didn’t want to seem rude leaving instantly so I stayed with the guy watching TV, which he was doing the whole night. When I finally did I was asked to pay for the night. I asked how much and the number that appeared on the paper we used for communication made me to burst into laughter. 300 Yuan for 4 hours of sleep, no bathroom and no privacy – “Right! :-)” We settled on 10 at the end although it was worth about 5.

The moment of truth was here. Choke, ingnition key and press the start button… NOTHING! :-(( Changing to a gear and back to neutral and another try. Buf buf buf, now the starter motor turned and the engine was running instantly no problem. I was a happy camper at that point as there were no cars around - to jump-start me if I needed - as far as I could see. In fact, the road ended in a village just a couple of kilometers further so no wander. I had to return to the city.

Then it was just driving and driving. I wasn’t even looking around much. My head is so pre-occupied by my thoughts of Tanja and home that I can’t concentrate on anything more than trying to ride safely. There was no room for noticing the beautiful surroundings. I tried hard for a while so that I at least had some photos from today to add to this article. I did manage to do three or so… ;-)

I’m trying to avoid the unbelievably expensive expressways very meticulously now. I only had to pay 2 Yuan at the first toll gate of which many you can still find on the other “normal” roads and from then on I was either not stopping using the narrow motorcycle pathways through (I’m still not sure if these are only meant for the locals or if I actually have the right to use them too) or just passing around the gate itself if it is short enough to leave enough space to go around it, or I was let through when I “attached” myself behind a truck. They seem to be OK with that though so I suppose that I’m really not required to pay. Only if I stopped at the gate I think that some of them might use the opportunity to get the money from me anyway, so I rather don’t look at them much at all when passing them.

I got very nicely lost in the morning when the road changed from concrete (which seems to be the favorite surface for roads here) to dirt, then started to narrow and finally changed into a muddy track for which they would not be ashamed even in Cambodia ;). I was trying to get some help from the locals to no avail. When I passed the same spot for the fourth time a guy stopped me and gestured to follow him. I talked to another two guys there before so they must have told him. So I followed. After riding just a few meters we turned and without any warning or foreplay we were on very narrow muddy footpaths, going up and down sharply. I’d like to take a picture when we got to a very narrow footpath in the middle of a very steep hill. However, the guy would not stop for my picture session and there was nowhere to put my legs anyway to support the bike if I stopped.. I was fully expecting hitting the almost vertical hill by my left pannier subsequently falling the about 10 or 15 meters down to the pretty rice fields below. After about 7 kilometers we reached a city through which a proper road was passing. This saved me at least 30 kilometers of backtracking. Only when I looked down at my trousers I thought that it was lucky that Lili’s mother, who so meticulously washed them 6 times, didn’t see that.

Today I was also passing through a coal region. I would normally probably have called it interesting but it was actually quite depressing for me today. Instead cities full of apartment block buildings there were whole big cities of predominantly only huge bamboo sheds full of coal. In front of these sheds there were people with little hammers breaking the coal into smaller pieces I presume (unless they were making sculptures of them, separating bad bits from the good ones or something else completely remote to me). At the back of these sheds there were furnaces with raging fire inside. Someone out there could probably tell me what was the actual purpose of this fire as I have no idea. The road was black and lined with piles of coal and numerous trucks were coming and going with new loads. Seeing all these people and cities with no houses I really wandered where all these people lived. I would not be surprised if they lived in the open sheds behind the furnaces.

To find a hotel at dusk in my final city of the day was quite easy as the city was more of a small town actually, which I was very happy about. 10 Yuan was the deal here – sweet. I even managed to find a place where they let me use their internet for 2.50 per hour and had a nice dinner. I also called home to test my new Chinese SIM card as SMS messages didn’t seem to work. No luck catching anybody there :-(.

(438km)