Karma on 2 wheels

31 Years After, Northern Ireland 2010

2010-10-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

In 1979, I was cycling Northern Ireland for the first time. At that time, we were three young Swedes who didn´t know better. Landing in Larne, we soon found out that this was a Very Serious Situation, with ongoing fighting and soldiers everywhere. The smoke from fires was burning our nostrils all the way to the border of The Republic of Ireland near Dundalk.
Today it is a lot more peaceful, though it clearly looks like the diskussions are not quoite finished yet. People are very friendly and generous against us – but maybe not so much against each other.

We (me and Harold) started our yearly cycling event by boarding the flight with our bikes ( Trek Touring Bikes) in Evenes, northern part of Norway. In Copenhagen our connection was ”downsized”, so we had to make a stop-overe here. No panic, Copenhagen is a nice city by night! The next day we got to Dublin by Paris. Allmost all luggage was with us, but he last items came first in the afternoon. This meant that we hit the Road one day later than planned, with course due north. The ride took us up to Coleraine in the north via Armagh. Then we rode westover into Donegal and followed the coast until we headed southwest towards Dublin via Enniskillen.

All in all we pedalled for 800 km and spendt around 60 hours on the saddle. We had a tent, but stayed on hotels or B&B. All over the place we met friendly people. As an extra bonus the sun was shining almost every day. Just as well, as we had a very distinct head-wind every day cycling!

This was my forth time cycling Ireland and I´m positive it will not be the last!

About Lufthansa, a quest, a hunt and an international team

2009-10-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

Tommen, Harald and Arne from Norway, and myself as swedish - together we made up an international team of somewhat serious bikers heading for a tour around Lake Ontario. The tour around the lake started and ended after 880 km in Toronto, Canada after 8 days. The tour itself was of no greater interest, pedalling trough a quite boring countryside consisting mostly of farmland and small towns. We also rode trough some larger metropolises like Rochester in New York State, Niagara Falls and (- of course) Toronto. The rides consisted of Arne on aDBS off-road bike(very heavy, but kept Arne from a speeding ticket), Tommen on a racer bike and Harald and me each on a Trek Touring Bike. After a while we got obsessed with the question about which way the Niagara falls were pouring its water. Was it flowing into the Lake Ontario or the other way around? We asked several people, but nobody could tell for sure (the answers we got actually were wrong). After a short while this become a sort of a quest for an answer. When confronting the falls, we came aware of the water poring into the Lake Ontario, so one could say that our goal was achieved at the end. Back in Toronto we sat out hunting for the Canadian Goose. Harald was extremely keen of gaining an example of this very high quality outdoor outfit. After a good day of hunting we actually got away with 4 examples of this famous Goose. These days it becomes harder every day to get a bike on a plane. Still I think British Airways take them for free, but really and seriously you should stay far away from Lufthansa. These guys really hate t have bikes on their machines. We booked with Canada Air and got a price for a bike of 50 $ Canadian one way. When checking in with Lufthansa as a partner, we were told that the price is 250$ Canadian for a single trip, which means we should be paying 2000 canadian dollars for getting our bikes along. That is not far from the price for our ordinary tickets! Anyway, we got our bikes for the 2x50$ fee with the help of some kind people, a rebooking from Lufthansa to Canadian Air and some luck. From this day we all agreed to stay a long distance away from Lufthansa. F them! All in all we had a great time, staying 4 people and 4 bikes in double rooms on motels, keeping our bikes well protected and sleeping soundlessly (?).

Toto catches Big Cod

2009-07-14T03:31:00.000-07:00

Springtime in Paris

2009-04-13T03:16:00.000-07:00

A trip to Paris

To feed the hunger for travel, Me and Madame decided to spend an Easter holiday in Paris. Going by air was not an option, because flying is a mean of transport - not to be compared with real travel, such as cycling or going by train. As we only had ten days at our disposition, it had to be the train.
Got our selves tickets from Narvik to Paris via Stockholm, Copenhagen and Cologne. Cheapest tickets included an Interrail Pass for 10 days/ 5 traveling days. This sounded good, but when having a closer look at the tickets 2 days before depart we found out that the trip takes 6 days but is only valid for five. Got «new» tickets from Sweden (issued by their «experts»...), but couldn’t get them processed trough the «ticket machine» at the railway station. Bought some complementary tickets via the Internet, because we didn’t believe the Swedish «experts» were capable of making a day just sort of disappear.

Using our «old» tickets without trouble we got ourselves under way. In Copenhagen we entered a Tjekk sleeping car. Very modern with lots of high tech gizmos. Usually when you see a button with strong red light it means «don´t touch, except in danger». Not here, it’s only the button for getting the water running! In any case the car had great service and good comfort.
After changing train in Cologne, we continued to Paris with the Thales express train going around 300 km/h. Great ride!

In Paris we hade made an internet booking (-via Alpharooms.com )for the cheap two star Hotel Illiad on Rue Letort, about half an hour walk from Montmartre and 200 meters from the Port de Clingancourt metro station. The hotel was really great wit very good cleaning, nice staff and a great breakfast (included). We now had almost six days in Paris to kill in wonderful spring weather.

Using Madamme´s step-teller, we spent about 110.000 steps to have a closer look at the Louvre, Muse´d´Orsay (with the crème of impressionist painters) Notre Dame and lots of other sites. Just to walk down one of the large boulevards in the warm spring sun was very rewarding. Another high five is to sit on a street side cafe, nipping a chilled white wine and just see the people coming and going around you.

Traveling back home was a bit more tight, with very small marginal at the connections in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Boden. This time we didn’t have any sleeping car through Germany and had a hard time sleeping, mostly due to the train warden and the use of the loudspeakers every time the train was nearing one of the many train stations going through the Ruhr area.

We had a really great time traveling and are for sure going to make more of this kind of travel ( it’s a pity it is so difficult getting international tickets on the internet - compared with buying air tickets ). But first it is soon time to get the cycles rolling - as soon as spring hits Narvik!

About a week of fishing and a trip to England

2008-07-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

Every year I get a visit from my very good and old Swedish friend Toto. Like me, Toto loves fishing. We spent a good week fishing in the sea close to Narvik. As always we took a lot of fish, ate a lot of fish and smelled a lot from fish. When the week was over, we all have a good stock of good fish in the freezer- usually lasting well into winter, even though we eat fish 3-4 times a week. This year we caught more than usually, though not so many really big fish. We got some Catfish at about 7-8 kg and some Cod with weight around 5 kilos. At the end of the last day Toto gets an Halibut on the hook. It was a real monster of a fish, taking about half an hour to reel in and with a weight of 30 kg (19 kg of filet!). What a fight!

I also went to England with my two daughters, Malin and Linnea. The main purpose was to attend Linnea´s graduation after four years of fine art studies at the University of Loughborough. They sure know how to make grand ceremonies in England and I returned home with Malin bringing a memory for life.

Back home, we got our new bike from England. A Thorn Raven Tandem! So now it is maybe time to start thinking about a new pedal-adventure - but this time with my wife well secured on the back seat as a stoker.

Traveling from the Arctic to a fake tropical beach

2008-04-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

After cooling down a couple of days at home surrounded by snow-covered mountains, I bought an air-ticket to Gran Canary. My youngest daughter is living and going to school down there, and it really was a long time since we met each other. Before I went, I couldn´t resist taking a couple of short cycle tours on my «street-bike». Be assured it was a comparably cold experience, but the traffic and riding conditions wasn´t far from asiatic style. Even if I myself have gained some quite dangerous traffic habits, there were at least one motorist who nearly drew me down when I was pedalling on «his turf». After a week my luggage also arrived after circling the Terminal 5 on Heathrow. According to the look of the bike box, I didn´t even dare to have a closer look at my bike. Instead it went straight to the bike shop. Now I´m down here on the Canary islands, sitting inside in front of a fan trying not to sweat to much in the 36 degrees heat. We have had winds from the Sahara for a couple of days and in addition to the heat it brings tons of desert dust. The visibility here is maybe even worse than urban China on a bad day. Except for the capital Las Palmas, I think Gran Canary along the coast is one of the most plastic and artificial places I have ever encountered. Almost nothing is growing naturally, everything is built to canter for mass tourism and even the beach here where I stay is fake and imported from Caribia. The prices for necessary items make me nearly fall back over and even beats the absurdly high norwegian levels for such goods. On the positive side, the climate is very good all year round , which is why my doughter is living here. I´ll stay here another week before venturing home. 7 of May I will start work, which will put an end to my half year free. There is no immediate plan to another tour, but me and my wife have decided to get ourselves a tandem bike. One plus one is actually two, so I suppose it will not be too long before we start on some kind of bike venture taking us somewhere in the world.

Another encounter with my new dentist and about luggage lost

2008-04-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

On my last day in Beijing the tooth got worse. I was thinking hard about calling my new dentist, when suddenly she called to check in on my condition. We made an appointment the same day after lunch. Philip The Frenchman invited Mr. Bo and me to lunch at China World Trade Center. At the same place the IOC was holding a meeting, so security was very high and we strolled among delegates from allover the world. The lunch was indeed not to complain about in a surrounding very, very far from ordinary Chinese people and their ordinary life. Mr. Philip was a very nice and generous guy. At the dentist’s, doctor Winnie Qu who used one and a half hour to make a root filling and capping the disaster, received me. The treatment and professionalism was indeed an example for our own dentists in Scandinavia- you could say I came out of it with a completely new perspective about the dental profession. Next morning I was escorted Mr. Bo to the airport and its new terminal, which is the biggest building in the world (they say). I was going to fly British Airways, which is very competitive in price and the cycle goes free of allowance as long as its weight is below 23 kg. I was a bit worried about the condition of the new terminal 5 on Heathrow, and there indeed were a lot of delays all the way, both entering and leaving the terminal. To me, they also appeared quite a bit understaffed. And of course - (Murphy’s law again) when arriving in Stockholm the checked luggage including my bike was lost. I still have not heard about it, so I hope they find it soon and send it to Narvik in Norway. Probably the luggage is lying together with thousands of other people’s luggage in an enormous heap in Heathrow. Now it is time for some statistics and comments on the 11860 km journey. Amount of calories used for pedaling: Aprox. 296.000 Equivalent amount of burnt fat: Aprox. 33 kg Lost weight: 4 kg Pictures taken: 4200 pictures saved on the Mac and on a external hard disk and on two USB-memory sticks (yes, I have been a bit neurotic about saving securely). Bloggs written: 35 Visits on the blogg (I put a tracer on the blogg through Google Analytics) 19 Jan-14 April: 1256 (4823 page visits)
There is some of my equipment that I am very pleased with. The Trek 520 Touring Bike worked without any real problems all the way (I got very fond of it!), All the parts stayed with the bike all the way. Actually I did not meet any cyclists with 700 c/28 wheels on the trip and I am bold enough to say I had the fastest bike on the roads, maybe with exception of Mr. Harald and his bike. My Exustar Stelvio shoes are still nearly as new and the Ortlieb cycle bags were in fact as good as advertised. Also the Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires were quite extraordinary. Looks like they stay with you for around 10.000 km (without punctures). The computer, an «old» Mac iBook 12 inches, worked like a Swiss watch all the way. It encountered serious shaking, heat, cold and moisture without a single symptom of distress (maybe the Ortlieb bags want some of the honor for that). The Ericsson K750i cell phone also worked very well all the trip. I didn’t loose any belongings due to theft, but on the railway transport to Beijing the Vietnamese rear mirror and the bell «disappeared». If I want to return to any of the countries, I think New Zealand, Malaysia and Cambodia are highest on the list (though I really got very fond of the Chinese people). New Zealand for its nature, Cambodia for its people and Malaysia because its such an exciting country where the as a bonus speak English. China loses a bit due to the very dangerous traffic and pollution level, but of course there are many parts of the enormous country, which I haven’t visited. I am now sitting on the train to Narvik, which takes 21 hours from Stockholm. I’ll be staying in Narvik for a week, before going to my youngest daughter in Spain (Canary Islands). Maybe I will write some bloggs from that trip too. In the meantime I bid farewell and see you soon.

Walking a construction site to the dentist

2008-04-09T04:41:00.000-07:00

Today I walked to the dentist through a grand construction site. Actually all of Beijing is a construction site, and as I have told before - all of China is really and in fact an enormous construction site. The activity is everywhere and to really describe or understand, it must be experienced. Well, the dentist made a good job of diagnosing some minor and major problems. Because I leave the day after tomorrow, there are no time to make a big job out of it and instead I have to creep on my knees up to my Norwegian friend mr Corneliussen when back in Narvik. Today me and mr Bo went to meet a french friend of his in the China World Hotel. The place was steaming with olympic delegates and the security level high. Got some food and drink in a environment a galaxy far from the usual pedalist seedy overnight stay overs. Beijing is crowded with westerners. Quite a few live in this city of officially 14.000.000 inhabitants, but there are also a lot of tourists who are here to fill up there bags with cheap consumer goods before returning home. I am having a great time with mr Bo and his wife, but I am sure longing to start the travel towards home on Friday. To conclude about China, I think is a good country to cycle in. The roads are very good, but the traffic is sometimes very dangerous. People are very nice and I have really became very fond of the chinese people. The problem of course is the language, but with some patience and good homour you get a long way. The food is just great ( -and cheap) and the hotels (even the cheaper ones) are of good standard. I will get back to a more deeper analyse of the tour in the next and also probably the last blog.

Riding to road´s end with a Chinese biker and having a long chat with mr Roger

2008-04-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

The other day I started cycling from Qu Fu, the home town and burial site for Confucius. After a short ride I passed a chinese biker. We were going the same way towards Taishan, so we started cycling together. This guy was 57 years old and was keeping a bike shop (www.wuhubike.com)! We had a very nice ride chatting away and stopping for drinking and small meals together. Taishan is a famous mountain and a really big chinese tourist place. Here my new friend tried to get me cycling up the mountain and also staying overnight up there somewhere. Because of a bad leg I had no intention to take me and my bike up this big slope and we bide ourselves farewell. Here in Taishan I decided to take the train to Beijing. The 24 hour open train station was packed with people ( see picture) and getting a ticket a big strain on my patience. This day also was a holiday, which I didn´t know. I got the bike placed inside the tourist information, where they talked absolutely no english, and got into the line(-s). Jesus almighty, this was bad! It sure put a strain on my patience, but in some strange way I got a ticket for hard sleeper the next morning. But what about the bike? Nobody could tell! I got back my bike and toured the area some and actually found a luggage department at the side of the station. Away went the bike with an express ticket! Next morning I met a retired couple from Australia who were in Taishan for a year teaching english. They said I was very lucky to have got tickets. The 7 hour train ride I spent chatting with mr Roger ( that is not his real name, but everybody calls him that). He is managing a lead mine in a distant province, 3,5 hours away by air. When arriving in Beijing, he helped me finding the bicycle. I am quite sure that I earned quite a lot of time because of his help. It was great to ride a hard sleeper again after 20 years. There sure were some differences, mainly that smoking was forbidden. In these days there also is a heavy traffic with people selling all sorts of things ranging from toys to tiger balm- and of course food and drink. So after 11758 km I am now in Beijing, a stones throw from Tiamen square and staying in an apartment with mr Bola and his wife. Here I´ll stay until 11 of April, when I am going to catch a flight to Sweden.

Murphy´s law, crossing Yangtze and about threes

2008-04-02T03:26:00.000-07:00

Writing this I am about 700 km from Beijing, in Wei Shan by the same highway 104. To get here, I hade to cross the mighty Yangtze going out of Nanjing. The bridge is seen as a masterpiece of chinese engineering, and I am sure was impressed of the grand construct. Unfortunately the haze was really bad, so there was actually not much to see. In fact it didn´t matter, because the cycle lane was so underdimesioned that I had to focus on the usual non cycle traffic., not to be massacred or thrown over the rail. Today I cycled about 164 km. All the way they were planting threes along the road. The recipe is simple- put together a couple of thousand willing people and put them to work. The threes are not tiny and small, as they are when we plant threes at home, but pre grown to about ten meters and so put into the earth. Every three then gets a protective cover made by rope drawn round and round the stem. Quite a work being done! I have told before about all the building and construction work going on, resulting in gravel, stones and bricks lying in the cycle lane. There are hordes of people putting to the task of wiping the lanes, but it is a never-ending task! Today the lane was very clean from stones, but according to Murphy it is enough with a single stone for me to hit. I did it not only once, but twice - resulting in two punctures. The first puncture also made a hole in the tire, which can be devastating because I have no longer a tire in reserve. I managed to patch the tire and now I´m using a lot of focus not to hit more stones so to avoid becoming a pedestrian. The last couple of days I have had a reasonable good tailwind, giving me a lot of extra kilometres. If this persists, I reckon I will be in Beijing in about 6 days. Today I also bought a ticket to Stockholm.

Kazakhstan in China and about finding a bed in the Southern Capital

2008-03-29T03:37:00.000-07:00

The other day, I managed for the second day in a row to find one of this bathing establishments. This one had real good rooms and also was in the middle of downtown of Lyang, a town I´m sure of is housing some couple 100.000 people. Around the corner from the hotel, there was a muslim restaurant with a few tables. They had my favourite fresh noodles, so I went in and ordered. The other table was occupied by a quite noisy bunch and they invited me in. They were «chinese» Kazaks, and the first people I met here who actually knew about Norway ( «good on ski and reindeers...») and could put it correctly on the map. We had a great evening with lots of food and a lengthy conversation. For the second night in a row, I was not allowed to pay for my dinner Yesterday I came pedalling into Nanjing ( which means «southern capital»). The funny thing was that it was really hard to get an hotel which would accept me as a guest. I later got hold of a local «guide book», where it actually was described that it could be hard to get a cheaper hotel because of a « non-foreigner policy». At last I got a really god one close to the imperial summer residence and very close to a pedestrian street with everything, including such thing as KFC and Mc Donald's. It is remarkable that in every country we have been and almost every town and city- there is a Kentucky Fried Chicken! In any case, Nanjing seems to me to be as nice a really big city can be. I stay here for two nights and I´m starting tomorrow on the last 1200 km up to Beijing. But first I have to cross the Yangzi River and get out of town....

About deja vu, dogs and cycling rice paddies

2008-03-27T03:08:00.000-07:00

Writing this, I am sitting in a minimalistic hotel room in Huzhou. The hotel is a peculiar thing, situated in the very heart of the city and sporting a bath department! It is also a real cheapy, but you get your own set of underwear after taking the bath. Yesterday I was trying to get into Hangzhou, a really Big city. The road suddenly became a no-cycle road ( with control!) and I was redirected trough some smaller roads. Of course I went the wrong way, the road suddenly ceased to exist because of unfinished construction and suddenly I found myself cycling the rice paddies. All went well in the long run, but today I used the whole morning getting out of the city. All this have made me decide to drop Shanghai and instead cycle the 104 directly to Peking. Cycling into Shanghai would have meant to cycle for at least 5 days in an urban terrain! Being in the chinese cities in bad weather and polluted air and walking the streets at night among thousands and thousands of people and with high noise level and lights flashing everywhere, have got me feel I have seen this before. Suddenly it hit me! Blade Runner, the movie with Harrison Ford chasing the streets for the last androids. If you have seen it, you know what I am talking about! There is another big differens from 20 years ago. Now there are dogs almost everywhere. They are not so aggressive and most of them are chained. In the cities you can see them being wagged, often also being dressed up in some fancy clothes ( honestly, I cross my fingers!). Actually I hit one dog when coming down a slope doing about forty. Both me and the dog managed all right, I think. But the dog sure have a new view of bicycles, I think. The other day also my front tire bide me farewell, so now I am flashing to brand new tires- and no reserve! I do think they will hold the 1350 km I have left to Beijing, so I am not worrying to much. I am also experiencing very good weather the last couple of days, so it feels very nice to cycle. Here it is almost summer, with a springy feel in the air, but some days the smog is unbelievable thick.

More of suicidal tunnel-pedalists and about cycle lanes

2008-03-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

One of these days, I came across another tunnel along G 104 (the highway to Beijing) on the outskirts of Ruian. This one had no sign forbidding cycles, but it sure was dark, the traffic dense and it was 2 km long with absolutely no trace of ventilation what so ever. Along came not one, but two bikers with loaded bicycles (picture). From their marry and optimistic look, I decided to follow suit. This tunnel, I assure you, was more like a 2 km gas chamber with a noise level from the traffic reaching above the pain level. After some hundred meters I decided it was time to say farewell to my comrades on bikes and I put in a high gear and pedalled like a mad to get out of it and save myself from suffocating. I don´t know exactly, but the carbon monoxide level I assume was far above the danger line. Getting out, the air felt really sweet, though the amount of air pollution is far above what we are accustomed with from home. How the other guys managed I know nothing about, but they had probably done this stunt many times before. All cities and most town here have cycle lanes. They are well marked and well spaced. The thing is that everyone is using it. Cars are coming at speed, motorbikes and every kind of transport vehicles including trucks drive on it, and the rule is clear: Big is Boss!. It is also used as a parking for cars and trucks. Pedestrians, often walking in the middle and/ or several abreast contribute to the total chaos. On top of it, everybody is going in every direction. The worst ones are actually the electric motorbikes. Because they make absolutely no noise (except honking), it means they suddenly are just appearing from out of nowhere. All this makes it hard to cycle, so many pedalist like me take the car lanes to survive ( it is the same mess in little Narvik in Norway, I dare to say). There are a few pictures showing the condition on the bike lanes put in the blog this time. Because of the gigantic construction activity, there are an armada of big and small trucks driving with huge loads of stones, gravel and sand. A lot of it falls of the trucks- and guess where it ends? Yes, on the bike lane! Because of this it is very important to look out well to avoid hitting one of the buggers. To collide with a small rock on a downhill race is the same as game over - or at least a good puncture. One picture is showing the congestion around one gas station ( but taken from the bike lane). It looks like there is a shortage of fuel, especially diesel fuel. A lot of stations doesn´t seem to have any to sell. A few have the juice, but there often seems like they are operating only one pump. This means that the big vehicles are lining up and sometimes make the traffic around some gas stations to slow down or stop entirely, creating long queues. The last days have been a hilly affair in a beautiful landscape dominated by tea plantations. At least I think it is beautiful, but the haze is very thick so it is hard to see for more than a couple of hundred meters. There is a picture of a lot of posters along the highway- it is a good illustration of the haze-level and the visibility. I´m now about five days from Shanghai. My intention is to experience how it feels to cycle into a city with some 20 million people living in the area. Riding here along the east coast of China, I get good training cycling big cities. They pop up like pearls on a string and I am very happy for my compass, which have helped me more than once to establish the direction out of a city. I must also confess that I have had a second puncture. It followed a rupture of the rear tire, which now is replaced with a new one. Otherwise there is no big problem with my bike. It runs smoothly, but needs to be cleaned often due to the wet weather and the huge amount of sand and dust on the road.

A suicidal biker and other tunnel experiences

2008-03-20T05:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I rode out of Fuzhou (a city with some million inhabitants) with the help of my compass. I was searching for Highway 104, which eventually goes all the way to Beijing. Cycles were directed to smaller streets and suddenly, when hitting a bigger road, I was standing before a 950 meter tunnel with a no-bike sign. Asking people, they clearly stated that this was the only road. Out of the dark tunnel among a really heavy traffic, there suddenly appears a quite suicidal, kamikaze-type biker on a three-wheeler fright cycle doing about 3 km an hour and no light. Well thinking about the courage this guy displayed, I decided that my ods were better. Putting on some light, I ventured into the dark among cars and trucks, who were careening through the tunnel without light. I actually was passed by two police cars, also without light! Coming out the other side, I understood that I actually was pedalling on the freeway, which absolutely is a no-bike zone. Double felony, you could say. Later on there came a second tunnel, also with no-bike sign and clearly no detour possibility. Here I got some help of a young guy on a motorbike and when coming out the other side, I (-believe it or not!) passed 10 000 km! That is why I look so peculiar on the photo. Highway 104 is a lot smaller road then the earlier 324 and 325. The last days I have ridden up and down hills, some covered with tea plantations. The weather is changing all the time. Yesterday I lost my rain poncho, so I got a bit of a panic. Luckily there was no rain today, so i stayed dry and got myself a rain poncho chinese style. I have also bought a new camera. The instructions are all in chinese and I am not accustomed to it yet. This means the pictures get some peculiar cuts «in the corners», but I hope the quality will improve soon. Yesterday I came into the city of Ningde after it was dark. This is something I don´t like, but there is one advantage - it is very easy to spot the hotel signs! Right opposite my hotel was a building showing off a lot of coloured lights, changing all the time and making it look like the entrance to a amusement park or something. But it was no amusement park - it was the communal hospital! The milestones along the road tell me it is about 2120 km to Beijing.

Learning chinese google way and about a mystery solved

2008-03-17T02:44:00.000-07:00

Because of an extremely slow connection to my norwegian mail server ( this also applies to other norwegian sites- downloading a newspaper takes up to half an hour or more), I decided to open a google mail account. The thing with this is that it is impossible not to connect with the chinese site, which means everything written is in chinese characters. I gave it a really hard try and after a long while with try and error I actually succeeded with the apply form. So now I have the following mail address : goeranz@gmail.com Hopefully your mail reach me with latin characters! Everybody who wishes to write an e-mail, please use this address. It is also working very,very fast to my great satisfaction. When writing this I´m about 50 km from Fuzhou and some 870 km from Canton. I´m sitting at a curious place at a road crossing with nothing around but roads and rice paddies. There is a lot of activity in the hotel, and if you want to eat, it is a private room that counts. There also are suspicially many ladies wandering around, or sitting in groups in some rooms. I also suspect there is a karaoke going on somewhere in the building. I don´t want to sit alone in a enclosed dining room, so I bought a packet of instant noodles to take to the room, but suddenly they were at the door with food for about 6 persons. I don´t know how it will end when thinking about that I haven´t ordered any food at all. Maybe they want to be kind to the lone rider and give the food as a complementary? Anyway, the last three days I have been refused room at hotels/hostels once every day. I now think the reason is that cheaper, smaller places don´t have the necessary paperwork to register a foreigner. I mean big trouble and a lot of difficult work so to say! Instead of admitting this kind of problem, they say that the hotel is full or just shake the hands and lough it away. Outside the cities you often get a bed without even showing the passport, so the level of control is very different. The ride the last couple of days have been very pleasant with warm, sunny weather and little wind. The traffic differs a lot, but you could say that the danger level is in the red area, especially when riding through a city. I have seen quite a few accidents. Yesterday I rode trough an urban landscape for over 100 km! The pollution level is also high, which can be seen on the picture with the advertisements by the road. There also is a picture with ice cream, something I make use of every day and which wasn't here 20 years ago. I am now planning to use some time in Fuzhou to get a new camera. The old one is showing serious signs of retirement and my second camera I had as a reserve worked for three days before it took a good and lasting farewell!

A divorce along Highway 324 and about plastic bags

2008-03-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

After 7281 km from Singapore, Anders and I were united in the decision to pedal separate ways. I am continuing north towards Xiamen and Shanghai, but Anders was more uncertain about where his bike would take him. In any case, we hade a great ride and I wish Anders all of luck on his way. The good weather is still following me along the way, but the haze is extreme- the visibility is almost as bad as in foggy weather. Today I was pedalling for almost 45 km in a urban landscape with a very bad traffic condition. The intensity is not that bad, but they drive in a very confusing and unpredictable way ( in Viet Nam there were at least some kind of unwritten rules to follow). Coming from all direction, both cars and motorbikes in combination with cyclist and pedestrians makes an anarchistic mess with a lot of near-collisions. I actually saw two accidents with cars and motorbikes involved. Along the road there are a lot of trash- not as much perhaps as previous countries, but the Chinese have a thing with plastic bags in every size. If you buy let´s say five items at a shop, you can easily step out with three to four plastic bags in your hands. This means the countryside is flooding with disposed plastic bags. In the cities they wipe the streets very clean, perhaps even cleaner than Singapore. Like earlier countries, the use of mobile phones seems to be exploding. Every thinkable and even unthinkable person is sporting a cell phone here. I only regret I didn´t have some Nokia stocks.

25 km of furniture while riding into Canton

2008-03-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

After 8900 km and 2000 km of rain and icy headwind we finally have reached Guanzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. The urban area is immense and a startling contrast to the endless sugar cane fields of Guangxi province, which was our first encounter with China. The weather have improved and we are experiencing springy weather with warm weather and sun. Well, the sun sure has some problems with getting its rays trough the dense pollution which is enveloping the whole area. It has also been time for harvesting strawberries, which we have made use of by eating a daily load of when cycling towards Canton. As I wrote in the last blog, there are great changes in China. The use of disposable items is startling, but the most impressive thing is the use of electricity. Not only do they light up roads for tens of kilometres, they also light up their cities by putting light on high-rises and sporting laser shows every evening. Of course it is impressive to see a 30 story office complex sporting its whole facade as a video screen, but it sure must use a lot of juice!. There also are an unbelievable industrial activity. While driving towards Guanzhou City centre, we passed about 25 km of furniture production plants and outlets. It is not difficult to see that they start a new coal fired power plant each week! The traffic is quite light between cities, but becomes very dense while riding into town. Probably a lot of traffic is taking the Expressways, which we are forbidden to ride.The standard of living seems quite high compared to our earlier visited countries, but this only counts for the cities. New figures shows that the yearly income is about four times in a urban area compared to rural areas. While riding into this town, we had some problems with orientation ( we were due to cycle on car-only roads). Because of this, we got our self a police escort to a ferry, The very friendly police paid the tickets and even drew around and met us on the other side of the Pearl River to continue the escort to a «safe haven». The bikes are now very dirty and we are going to stop some place convenient and do a Grand Shape-Up. Anders has had 5 punctures, while I still don´t have had such problems and I´m still riding the same Scwalbe Marathon Plus tires since New Zealand. I haven´t lost any spokes and it seems that Anders´problems are solved by changing into a fat rear tire. 8 of Mars we start on the 1700-1800 km ride up to Shanghai, which will be next stop.

Zhanjiang 20 years after and about a brutal nightly meeting with the local gangstas

2008-03-03T01:41:00.000-08:00

After a no problem crossing into China, we are now 385 km along highway 325 towards Guangzhou ( Canton), about three days ride away. For me it was a peculiar experience to visit this country 20 year since last time. 1987 we went among other places to Zhanjiang on our way to Hainan Island. Last night I was at the same spot, not recognizing anything. The difference is astonishing, to say it the least! Everywhere there is construction and building going on, expressways are going all directions (without us- we are not allowed on those roads), and the traffic intensity is very much higher than 20 years ago. Not so many cars though, and not as many motorcycles as in Viet Nam (every third moto here is electric, by the way). Still there are quite a few bicycles, but compared to our previous countries, the roads appear a bit calmer and are nicer to bike on. The qualities of the roads are also over all very good, with so far few exceptions. Another difference is that people over all are a lot better fed and gone are the green or blue clothes everybody went around in 2 decades ago. In fact you see a lot of fashion walking along the streets. The use of disposable chopsticks is also widespread today, but I suppose this habit eats quite a lot of trees each year. We started with bad weather, windy and wet. This meant reduced visibility and very bad for taking photos. The last two days have been very fine, but the pollution cause a haze which also make visibility poor. Today we also had a sensational tailwind for the first time since Saigon! We also met a fellow cyclotourist for the first time in over three weeks. Andreas started in Irkutsk and after circling in China and Tibet, he is now heading down Viet Nam and plans to follow Mekong northward. He also has a homepage - www.menny.info Well, two nights ago we stopped at a small town along the highway and got us a room at a small hotel. Our room was behind the main complex and we were the only guests in a house with 4 rooms. We sure saw that the lock was of very poor quality - Anders meant that any key probably could open the door. There was a lot of noise and loud music from the hotel bar when we went to bed and I thought I heard some suspicious noise from above, but fell asleep like a baby. At half past two in the night I was awaken by a loud bang and in the dark I could see the door with frame and all coming into the room followed by an youngster. I don’t like being awaken that way, so I went very fast up on my feet and started a fight with the uninvited guest. Having a wrestling match in the new door opening, I could see he had two companions waiting outside. In any case he went out with a little help and his comrades thought better of it and started running away. By this time also Anders was awake and made a loud warrior cry, which probably made their escape decision final. After this, we went to sleep with Anders cycle and a water dispenser as «lock» for the door. In any case, we have now learnt to be more aware of security issues when renting rooms. Now we are heading to Canton for a few days rest, before continuing north along the cost. At least that is the plan...

Mong Cai at the Chinese border and going Viet Style

2008-02-26T04:11:00.000-08:00

After about 2300 km in Viet Nam, we now are ready to cross the chineese-vietnameese border at Mong Cai. It is a busy border town with a lot of construction work and wide plans put on the table (´ let¥s show those Chinese that we also can...)The last day we encountered wet weather combined with coal dust on the road from Halong City passing some heavy industry( picture of cycle). This meant that the bikes turned black, the clothes turned black and it was time for a high pressure hose again. At least we have had a couple of nice days to ride on since the last blog. The wind have also almost stopped blowing, which make life a lot easier even if it is rainy again.
As you can see in one of the pictures, I have begun going Viet Style ( the picture also has a ´hidden messageª to some of you folks). Up here in the north a lot of people are using the classic Viet army hat, almost as everybody uses the typical scarf in Cambodia (- though very few women use the hat here).
It is also high time to make up the account with Viet Nam. This country is nice enough to travel in, but as I already have written about - the traffic with its noise pollution is a real pain in the ass. They also have this thing with our passports. Every place we stay at, they keep the passports until we leave. At some places they also take the passports to the police for registration ( -or whatever). This extended use of my passport has led to a heavy stress on the basic construction and it is beginning to fall apart. Because we leave at six in the morning, we usually also have to wake up some poor bastard from his dreams, where he or she is laying in their ´sleeping placeª, guarding our precious bikes and their own motos.
Well, on the positive side the Vietnamese people are like people most. Kind, generous and friendly. It is dirt cheap to sleep and eat, though at some places ( mostly in the southern part) they try to overprice everything you consume. The beer is great and so is the food. The noodle soups are just as good as in Thailand, though the portions are more generous here.
It is a pore country in the third world, but compared to Cambodia there doesn¥t seem to be such a widespread and deep poverty ( better ´sleeping placesª). Politically there sure is not free press and media ( my blog is blocked!), though satellite television and internet probably make most people aquatinted with the rest of the world in the same way as we are. All in all, still Malaysia keeps the lead with Cambodia at second place( maybe I should say that New Zealand also is scoring very high, let¥s say shared second).

Out of the fog and soon leaving Highway 1

2008-02-22T05:27:00.000-08:00

After some hard biking in rain, wind and cold, we now are settled for the night in Thin Gia. Thin Gia is a dusty stretch of street along the highway towards Hanoi, some 200 km away. While sitting and writing this, the hotel staff is sitting in the garden smoking exotic herbs, spreading a somewhat strong smell around. Today we exited the foggy rain area and encountered sunny sky and some warmth for the first time in 8 days. This also means that we have a chance to dry some clothes. Actually, today it felt like a warm spring day at home and my spirit went high with a crippling happy feeling when pedalling along the rice paddies.
When it is cold in these parts of the world, you will not get any heating at the hotels. Some places where we have been eating have had a bucket with glowing charcoal to give some warmth. Otherwise it is warm clothes that counts.
Here in the northern part of Viet Nam, we have not encountered any tendencies of squeezing money from us. Could be that there are no tradition of this here and people honestly ask for the right prices. We havn¥t directly been staying in tourist areas either, which also can be reason enough. One difference from the southern part of the country is that when sitting down at a street side food stall for noodles, here there is a bottle of Hanoi Vodka standing ready on the table at your service in the morning ( our table neighbor this morning pored a good dose of it into the noodle soup!).
Due to the bad weather, there are few pictures this time as today was the first day we could see for more than 100 meters. Cycling north from Hue we passed the old DMZ along the
17th latitude. Along the road there are countless war memorials and grave yards. We stayed a night in Dong Ha, a town levelled with the ground by the US air force. Today every house is newly built, there was no visible trace from the war and the town had stunningly clean streets.
After Nhatrang, we havn¥t seen any other bikers until today. There came a lone guy pedalling fast with a good tail wind and laughing out loud when passing us on his way south ( without stopping). Maybe he laughed at our efforts to overcome our headwind, but he sure will have some good time to get aquatinted with the weather which we have left.
We are now heading for Haiphong, Halong and the Chinese border at Mong Cai, which we expect to cross in less than a week. Our mood is good and we are in good health. Our bike got a good cleaning this morning - luckily the hotel we stayed at had a high pressure hose, which the staff used to clean their motorbikes. Anders have had two more punctures and choosed to change into a new rear tire. I still only have had one puncture ( Bangkok cycle shop!) after 7663 km

About freezing in the tropics

2008-02-16T03:24:00.000-08:00

The last week we have been aquatinted with the famous north-east monsoon wind, which is constantly blowing in our faces this time of the year. It is also bringing along cold and damp weather. This means we found ourselves with a big deficit in our wardrobe. Here in Hue, we woke up to 13 degrees in the hotel room and after being used to 30-35, we sure as hell were freezing our asses off. After spending some time in the local market, we soon had some warm clothes and life felt much better. Because of a lot of rain the last cycling days, the dusty roads became the muddy roads. This means some heavy cleaning work on the bikes. Another aspect of this climate is that the clothes doesn´t dry up. After 2 days in the hotel room, my damp cycling clothes are just as damp as when cycling. One of the pictures is showing me ready for those cold and damp vietnamese roads. Besides being wet and freezing, there are some aspects about cycling here. Nearing a town or village, we often encounter a lot of school kids venturing along with their bikes. The girls usually go slowly and have a very upright and sort of proud way of riding their bike. The boys always starts to give us a chase( which they always loose!), often two on one bike and both pedalling. This soon becomes a mess because of 4-5 cycling along besides each other, everybody overtaking and on top of it - all the motorised traffic which comes speeding blasting away their horns! We have now spent two days recovering here in Hue, actually our first stop since Phnom Penh . Hue is a very nice city of about 400 000 inhabitants and a lot of history. In the centre is a citadel, sporting the highest flag pole in Viet Nam. Here the Liberation Front flag was to be seen the a three and a half weeks the city was held during Teth Offensive 1968. Tomorrow we start the last leg here in Viet Nam, bound for the chinese border some 10 days ride from here.

About the «Highway Food Chain», price levels and the end of Teth

2008-02-12T04:29:00.000-08:00

Pedalling for 12 days in a row in Viet Nam, we now are quite used to the Vietnamese traffic. Actually there are a sort of traffic «food chaine», where the bigger eats the smaller. Smallest of course is a bicycle. To make one´s point it is very important to honk, and to honk well you need a good horn. The motos have some improvements and sounds like cars, the cars sounds like buses, the lorries sounds like fright trains and the buses sounds like ocean liners. And everybody blasts away the whole time! It is amazing watching a bus coming through a small town doing 100, blasting away at the same time as overtaking and sending everything smaller fleeing in all direction from the lanes! There is only one law - biggest goes first, and there is only one strategy- staying alive! There is picture with me by the road - it means I have stayed alive on these roads for 7000 km. We also have become accustomed to the way prices are made up for goods and services. At the beginning we soon got very confused when the prices differed a lot for the same goods, like coffee or noodle soup. The reason is simple: Here comes a tourist with a reasonable thick wallet, so why not put some salt on the dish? We don´t mind paying a bit more than the locals, but when the difference reach 10 times, it becomes parodic. Now we always ask for the price before ordering and that works all right. Some times there is a bit of haggling, but we usually agree on a fair price. As prices go, I spend about 5-600 $ US each month- that includes everything! The Vietnamese new ear, the Teth, is over and everybody is returning to their homes after visiting family. Customary one eats «sticky rice» during Teth, which is a very compact mixture of rice and meat. It boils for many hours and is afterwards packed into banana leaves. Because of end of holiday, we have been treated with this several times. The problem is that it really fills the stomach and we hardly manage to eat any other food after a dose of this heavy mixture. It is also rumoured that sticky rice kept the Viet Cong going and in that way played an important part in the war against the americans. We are now about two days from Hue, where we plan to stay for the weekend. After that it is full speed ahead to reach the Chinese border before 2 Mars. As it goes, we have a very strong headwind slowing us down a bit (but we are not chickening out!). This wind is typical for the season, and maybe the reason why all on bicycle are heading the other direction. There were two dutch guys ( on picture) who had gone trough Europe, Turkey, Iran, Nepal, India and China. Now they are heading for Indonesia. Their blog is on this site: erikentjeerd.waarbenjij.nu Otherwise, we have no serious problems. The bikes run well and our bodies are cooping good and well.

About a chalk mark in the road, a table on fire and a day at the farm

2008-02-05T03:48:00.000-08:00

1 of February we crossed over to Viet Nam. At once there was a great difference in the traffic intensity. Most overwhelming is the enormous amount of motorbikes going in all directions. Here you have to stay focused and for god¥s sake don¥t make any mistakes. The road is littered with chalk marks after traffic accidents. I was cycling quite slowly when suddenly I was hit from behind by a motorcycle and was eating dirt in the ditch. I recovered quickly, could assure myself that both the bike and myself was functioning good enough. Looking around I saw one motorbike laying in the middle of the road behind me and another a short distance ahead. This was confusing, because there seemed to be several drivers involved. In any case, after having a second look at myself I started to look for the other drivers ( maybe they were hurt!) - but they had mysteriously and very suddenly disappeared with their bikes.
Later this first day, we learnt about Vietnamese coffee. This is by far the best coffee we have experienced during the trip. You get a own little brewer on the table, and after a while you get a small glass with very strong and sweet coffee. Usually you pour it into a big glass with ice to make ice-coffee. 10 points out of ten!
Day two in Viet Nam I passed 6000 km while cycling on one of hundreds of bridges in the Mekong delta ( se picture). Later that evening we met a bunch of old comrades of war. One was living in USA, while his brother had stayed here all the time after the war ( stayed where?). With them, they had an old friend who all the time was referred to as "the Captain". The Captain had lost his leg in the war and had trouble keeping pace when we were out looking for a cafe¥ to get some coffee. The one living in USA spent 9 months every year in Viet Nam doing charity.
Next day we cycled straight trough Saigon. That was quite an experience, though not as bad as we had feared. We had a lunch at a restaurant in the middle of town. There were a very noicy bunch, celebrating a good game of tennis. Suddenly their whole table was at fire from playing with a food-heater. The fire went out with the help of loads of moistered towels.Theese were important people, so they seemed to get a way with it with no fuzz and could continue making a lot of noice. In any case, we had no intention of staying there so we continued towards the cost of south china sea. On the way we were invited to a family, actually it was to stay at grand parents farm. Because of the Teth celebration, family members from all over comes to visit.
There were quite a bunch gathering and we had in our weakness said yes to the invitation. All this meant spending a day and night eating lots of curious food, included most parts from a for the occasion slaughtered duck. There were also a lot of fluids, mostly a brew (home-) made from bananas and tasting a bit like sake. We really felt like at home and the family was very generous, though they are relatively poor. Also here there seemed to be earlier members of the part co-operating with the americans. One had spent 15 years in prison, one went as a boat refugee when 12 years old and grandpa himself was a very rich man before 1975. One of the brothers though, had had his leg shot off by the americans. Apart from eating and drinking we also had a good look at the rice paddy, the corn field and the fruit orchard. We slept in the best bed in the house with hens, ducks and dogs running around. We sure did not need an alarm clock the next morning. We are now at the cost and are heading north towards Hue, where we plan to stay a couple of days. All well and the machinery is running smoothly.

Visiting a Killing Field and about me going voluntary working

2008-02-01T01:29:00.000-08:00

Back in Phnom Penh, we had a day going sight seeing. With a rented moto-taxi driven by the exellent driver mr Nato, we went outside the city to one of Cambodia´s more than 340 killing fields. Only at this site the Khmer Rouge killed off more than 20.000 people, mostly people unfortunate to have an education, soft hands, long hair (men),
spectacles and other more or less hard to believe causes for a death sentence. Also their children were killed at the site. Quite a depressing place showing the madness humankind is capable of, but important in the way of not letting us forget about it. We also visited the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. It is in an old school, which the Khmer Rouge converted into a centre for interrogation and torture before the poor victims were sent to the killing field. It is quite hard to understand what awful acts were conducted at this peaceful and quiet place. The Khmer Rouge were in power for four years and as a consequence some two million people died or were killed. It is also hard for me to understand that most countries supported the Khmer Rouge, not the Viet Nam supported government which was erected in 1979. Another thing is that we have seen it later on also, like in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Darfur - to mention some places.
After PP, we returned to Takeo for the last leg down to the Vietnamese border. Here we met with mister Heng Chum, who is running a school for poor students. Here they learn english, which is very important for getting a job. Mostly he relies on tourists/ backpacker who help him teaching and also with small donations. Many of the pupils don´t have pencils and paper and there is a lack of chairs and tables. Mr Chum asked if we wanted to look at the school and after answering yes, he asked me if I could give the children a lesson in english. This really was escalating and after a short conversation, I had said yes to teaching for two hours.
On the way out to the classroom, mr Chum told us about his experience with land mines. As a student, he was drafted at the age of 15 and sent to the Thai border. The area is riddled with mines and he soon stepped on one and lost his left leg. He also lost his father and brother due to the Khmer Rouge. There are thousands of similar destinies in this country, but seeing how eager the children were for learning, I am sure we can look at the future with optimism for this country.
Anyway, tomorrow we leave Cambodia and it is time for a short summary. The roads are not as bad as I thought, but the traffic can be hazardous. The food is on the middle of the three, but the Anchor beer is great. They make great coffee!
There sure are a lot of poor people and one can see people sleeping everywhere, with or without roof over their head. But everyone are nice and very friendly to foreigners like us. The cost of living for us is very, very low.
I sure want to return in a few years to see how things develop, and of course have another pleasant stay here.

Sitting in the shadow of a Mango three

2008-01-27T23:53:00.000-08:00

After Kompong Thom, we stayed in a small village ( Kompong Kdei ) along the road before arriving in Seam Reap. Kompong Kdei vas a bit fascinating with a cluster of houses along the highway. Here not only the dogs were searching the trash-heaps for food, but also cows in every fashion were also joining the search, even wandering around restaurant tables. Just outside Seam Reap is the large temple complex of Anchor Wat, which we toured around by bicycle during a couple of cool morning hours. It is a vast complex of temples spread out over a large area and of course several days is needed for a closer look. It sure was impressing, and be assured there were a lot of traffic going in and out with loads of tourists. In fact Cambodia had 2 millions of tourist visits 2007 and I suppose most of them visited the Anchor temple. The same afternoon, I placed myself in the shadow of a Mango three. The three is growing outside our guest house in Seam Reap, and casts a good, cooling shadow over the balcony were I had placed myself. Strategically placed at my side I had a cold beer and sipped from it while looking out over the street below. A steady traffic of motos, moto taxis, a few cars,a lot of cyclists and pedestrians and lastly quite a few cows and water buffalos. The remarkable thing about the cows and buffalos was that they only went in one direction. This morning I got the answer on that one - they were on the way to the muslim butcher to end their lives in a correct halal way. This street also have another very unusual installation. It has street light, which by large is very rare in Cambodia. Even in Phnom Penh there is very few street lights, the light there is comes from homes of people and shops. We are now back in Phnom Penh after a boat trip on the Tonle Sap lake. It was a swift tour of 5 reasonable comfortable hours on the roof of a veritable coffin. But stay assured - it went very fast along both the open lake and later on on the river which empties itself ( and the lake ) in to the Mekong river. Now we stay a couple of days here in Phnom Penh. Among other things, I want to visit the genocide museum and maybe the killing fields. I have now cycled around 5700 km and yes - I have had one puncture, but I believe it was from the handling in the bike shop in Bangkok. The only other problem with the bike is a saddle stem which is ruptured (I´ll sure will have a serious talk with Mr Bergh later on about that ).

All systems are go, nearly all lights are green

2008-01-23T03:28:00.000-08:00

Sitting with my wife´s beloved Mac (- or «little apple» ) after around 5500 km in Kompong Thom, in the middle of Cambodia. It is also in the middle of a countryside filled with water in every direction and rice paddies as long as the eye can see. That also means there are in fact some mosquitos around and some other more or less pleasant little animals ( we had a Huge spider in the room yesterday). We are in good health, though Anders is sporting a «curious stomach» and me myself is developing a fungus condition which needs some attention. The roads here are not as bad as I thought. They have made some very big improvements recently, I think. Actually, the roads in northern Norway are quite similar except they are more narrow at home. The traffic is another matter. It is interesting to see how much they can load on every thinkable sort of vessel. A lot of bicycles and motos, but also some big black cars coming in 150 and supposing everybody moves aside. That also counts for the buses. Today I saw a lot of chalk marks on the road describing accidents that had happened. Everything could be recognised, like a pig, a motorbike, a cycle and of course some human silhouettes. In any case, it is a great feeling cycling along the mighty Mekong river! We are still going the same way as our dutch friends. There are also a german couple going our direction. I now give you all their blogsites on the web: bangkok2chengdu.blogspot.com (dutch) www.on.tour.ms (german) And also a web site for consideration: www.ratgeber-aussteigen.de ( hope you can read german). On the way here we passed Phnom Penh, where we stayed one night. It sure is special to ride in to at city with some million inhabitants, where the traffic is not making much noise and there is no visible air pollution. In the night, most streets don´t have streetlight ( like everywhere else in Cambodia)- the only lights comes from shops and restaurants that are open. The food here is making us considering vegetarianism for serious. The main reason is the way thing is handled hygienically, that also counts for rice. In any case we still are eating noodles from street vendors to get our legs moving in the morning. In Takeo we ordered one portion of chicken and one fish soup - we got beef. Such things happen when we don´t talk the same language. Now we are heading for Seam Reap and Anchor Wat. The plan is to stay there one day and then return by boat on Tonle Sap to Phnom Penh. Hopefully I have some new pictures to show you then.

Riding the dusty road and a high profile visit

2008-01-18T23:37:00.000-08:00

After leaving Kho Chang, we stayed a night in Klong Yai - a place god forgot about just after the Creation. After that experience, we crossed the border in to Cambodia. The border crossing went without fuzz. Visa bought quickly and dealing with the beggars and touts with scandinavian stoity we soon hit another kind of road. Suddenly most of the traffic was gone, with some cyclist, motos and a scarce car as our companions. We stopped at Kho Kong, the town closest to the border and also the starting point for the fast ferry to Sianokville. It sure was a border town with a lot of «border activity», including a casino ( same thing across the border with Burma). There sure were quite a few westerners, mostly men in their fifties and up, sporting a big motorbike with a determined look on their faces and biding their time at one of the numerous bars in town with an Anchor beer close by. After riding the waves and being soaked for a good day, we spent a night in Sianokville. Pleasant enough town, but the beaches sure are same-same as we have been seeing (too-) many times before. Many western people (mostly men, curious enough) seems to own bars and guest houses in this part of Cambodia. I´ve been told that the prices for land ( and here you can own land) still is very cheap, so it is not too late to start up some activity! After another day of riding the bikes along a quite and good road, we now are staying in Kampot. A very pleasant town of 20 000 people, light traffic and cool atmosphere. It was very special to cycle here on a road where you actually are able to talk while cycling. We spent some time during the ride with a dutch couple who where going up Laos and into China. On the way we also met a german couple coming the other way. Seems like few are going our way through Viet Nam. Today the town is visited by the Minister from Phnom Penh. Lots of action with police and military on the streets and even two helicopters coming and going ( with the minister?). All hotels are booked full ( we got the last room!),and in the streets you can see big black cars with top notch people, some even with escort. Well, we have lots of time here in Cambodia, so we plan to stay two nights here and start towards Phnom Penh and Seam Reap ( Anchor Wat ) tomorrow. There are two roads in our direction, so we are taking the least busy one. So far the most striking experience in Cambodia is all the many children coming out of every house and hut along the road, shouting and waiving there hands towards us. On average, this country must have a very young population. It is also very easy to see that the standard of living here is far below that of Thailand, but the people just as pleasant.

A visit to «Little Sweden», night market in Chantaburi and about paradise lost.

2008-01-13T00:04:00.000-08:00

After an early start from Pattaya, we followed the coast towards south east. We have this thing about desolate beaches, and sure enough we found a stretch of 5 kilometres of nearly empty beach along the coast close to Kho Samet. Only the local fishermen, some thai beachcombers and of course a few swedish settlers. There was a building program in progress, where they sold houses ( you can not own the land) to swedish families. The latest development of 50 houses were already sold. Well, let us really hope that the oil price and prices for air tickets don´t rise too much in the near future. Next morning we cycled trough a misty landscape. The dogs here didn´t bother to stay out of the road when taking their sleep. No, they were littering the road far out in the lanes - actually I first thought they were dead, which can be a fatal mistake. At night we stayed at a chinese hotel in Chantaburi, a town famous for gem production. We didn´t go for the gems, but we took a walk to the night market to find some good and descent food. But hey, what are those furry things running around the tables like cats in a greek restaurant? They didn´t look like cats, that´s for sure. Actually the place was swarming with huge rats, but nobody seemed to mind them. Well, we didn´t want to appear afraid of an close encounter so we ordered in a very delicious meal with fish and vegetables. You can see one of the little bastards on one of the pictures, where it appears in front of the chefs in the cookery. Now we are taking some time off on Kho Chang, where we rent a real cheapy of a bungalow each about ten meters from the sea. Kho Chang was a real disappointment when we first put our wheels on the island. A lot looked just like Pattaya, with the same bars, bargirls, indian tailors and big piles of litter along the road. Actually Pattaya was cleaner. In the back yards a few meters from the luxury resorts, the workers live behind tarpaulin and in corrugated steal shacks. I havn´t seen worse shanty towns so far on the tour! The trade with women is very apparent here. Where we stay, we are about the only ones without female companionship. Anders got into a conversation in german with his new bungalow neighbour from Austria. The guy was driving around with a rented motorbike. As Helmuth was sipping from a glass of liquor, suddenly there appeared a thai lady from within his bungalow, she put a refill of ice in his glass and disappeared the same way totally without a sound. In a few days time, I will be sitting writhing in Cambodia, so it is time to sum up Thailand. We both are quite happy with leaving Thailand. The best part is the food ( spicy!) and its people. We call it our self for «hello-hello land». This is because people are shouting hello-hello all the time. Actually the hello-hello is proportional to the distance to the tourist machines, meaning the closer we get, the more rare the greetings are. In the centre of Pattaya nobody greets you! Thailand has very good roads, but the traffic is a mess. We do not find it as dangerous as it looks, but the pollution level is enormous. The worst thing about cycling here is without question the dogs ( even though we have some good counter measures ). It is also a country where it is relatively easy to find a place for the night. The country is littered with Seven-El evens, so you always find water, an ice cream and an ATM. All in all, maybe the Malaysians keeps the lead so far, mostly due to their better language skill and roman alphabet.

Staying close to Ping Pong Bar and about a dog with bad karma

2008-01-08T04:07:00.000-08:00

At last Anders have gotten a new stash of snuff and another load of spokes today. We are on the second and last night in Pattaya, staying neighbor with the Ping Pong Bar. There are some hundred other bars clos by with different poetic names, - but with the same crew of ladies, selling beer and hosting a pool table. I am sure you can guess the clientele. To be honest, I hardly can wait to get out of this place.
To get here, we took the main highway from Bankok to the east coast. The traffic was tremendous ( one long queue) and the pollution level close to extreme. Suddenly there comes an old looking dog wandering very slowly (as the dogs usually do-) stright out into the heavy and intens traffic, which is not a good idea. Looked like he was tired of his lousy life and had decided to finish off with some style ( let one of those things I have been chasing all my life do the job!). Sure enough, there soon came a car who did the job right in front of our peacfully rolling bikes. For all I know, the body is still lying by the highway like many others. The dead dogs aside, there are also a lot of dogs with three or even two working legs. Even if they can?t run any moore, they shure can bark and show their teeth away.
Well, tomorrow we are starting on our last leg in Thailand. Hopefully we enter Cambodja the 15 of february, maybe after a short stop on Kho Chan. Moore about that later on. I?ve now cycled 4700 km, so the magic 5000 will pass before we leave Thailand.

6 Nights at The Moonshine Bar in Bangkok

2008-01-05T02:46:00.000-08:00

After Cha-Aam, we cycled to Samut Sakhon 30 km from Bangkok. We stayed in this port and industrial town to get an early and easy cycling in to Bangkok centre, where we planned to stay. At Prah Artrit Road, we found Peachy Guest House, which also houses the Moonshine Bar ( popular with thai students). The place is dirt cheap, with clean rooms, a pool table and lots of air and space. Very few cockroaches, lice and bed bugs- which you can´t say about Kheo San Road, a few blocks away. In Bangkok we started our search after a bike shop where they could look at our bikes, especially Anders bike which is eating spokes at an alarming rate. We found a good one, mine is cleaned and tuned and Anders got all new spokes on the rear wheel, plus 50 spokes in reserve ( yes, we have talked about this - why not buy a good new bike? ). In any case we also have had a good opportunity to be aquatinted whit the unbelievable traffic chaos in Bangkok together with an enormous pollution level when cycling around ( about 30 km all in all). There was also the question about visa to Viet Nam and China. Due to new year holiday all embassies were closed, but we got the last of our visas yesterday. This means we are all set to continue towards Cambodia tomorrow. The visa to Viet Nam is between 1 Feb. and 3 Mars, so we have plenty of time. Because our path takes us trough rural Cambodia, I started with malaria medication last Monday. That means that it has been an exciting week because of the possible side effects of the drug, - among others I risk becoming psychotic. Because of this, Anders has kept his old leather belt in case... It is a bit like Russian Roulette with pretty good odds. The area we stay in is crawling with tourists of all kind. Because of Kheo San Road 10 minutes walk from here, there are hordes wandering in and out. Kheo San have seen its better days I think. Looks like any tourist street in the world with souvenirs , clothes and handicrafts to buy and pizzas to eat. There so many people in Bangkok (7-12 million), so much noise and impressions. All this have for some reason made it difficult for me to take good pictures, but I´ll put in some from the city anyway. I sure am glad to be leaving tomorrow and get some fresh air. First we had to Pataya, where Anders will get a load of swiss spokes from Sweden (I rest my case!) together with a fresh load of snuff.

At the barber shop in Kratchup Khiri Khan and about morning rituals.

2007-12-29T04:52:00.000-08:00

After Ranong, we spent two days on the 125 km crossing of the Krah Ismut. Arriving in Chumpon at the west coast of the Gulf, we had a sleepless night in a mosquito infested guest house - also functioning as a bus station. Well, what do you expect for the price of 250 bath? Now it was time to stop the sunday school cycling and start speeding up. We had a stop at a deserted beach ( Had bang bird beach), where we rented a ridicoulus large bungalow. In any case, the food was excellent and as the only guests we had a faboulus service ( we were met by three people when arriving!). Next day, we continoud up the cost 125 km to the town of Kratchup Khiri Khan. Due to bad map, we had to pedal at least 35 km moore than needed. Here we got a room at a dingy hotel ( also a garage) to the price of 200 bath. Very airy room with a really good fan. I took the long step and went to the barber to cut my hair. And cut it was, including some artistic use of a razor knife ( inside my ear!) and as a grand finale also including neck and head massage. All in all to the price of 50 bath! The barber himself worked 6 days a week, starting at 7 in the morning and finishing off at 9 in the evening! His day off was wenesday. In any case, he seemed to enjoy his work and certainly was very good at it. Maybe I should tell you about morning rituals. As we start up very early, we pedal by the monks collecting their food and at the same time delivering some prayers in return. This early, the dogs are very active. Mainly they spend their morning scratching away on their different body parts. Well, I´ll tell you, they really have some itching going on! That leaves our own morning search for a noodle stall that has opened, so we can get some starting fuel for our pre dinner heat pedaling. Now we are in the town of Cha-Am 25 km north of Hua Hin. Cha-Am is a place where the Thai themself spend some freetime. Most are probably comming out of the smog in Bangkok at weekend to have some air and a good time. We estimate to be in Bangkok in two days, which means we spend New Years Eve there. So to all of you: Happy New Year!

Breakfast time, and what about lunch?

2007-12-24T01:38:00.000-08:00

Today is Christmas Eve and I?m sitting writing this in a cheap chinese joint in Ranong, right on the south east border to Myanmar (Burma). We have now pedalled 1663 km from Singapore and my total is 3673 km. It is good to have a day off, before we take on the crossing over to Chumphon on the east coast of the peninsula.
Yesterday we started as usual by finding a street vendor at the morning market selling noodles. Yes, indeed she had noodles, but what were those white things sailing around looking like macaroni in the presumed nutriscious noodle-meat soup? Quite soon we found out that this soup contained every thinkably part of some poor animals intestinal organs. Anders was around ten seconds from vomiting and my own lust for noodle soup this morning disappeared in a wink. Not talking about the smell!
We did a quick take off with our bikes and put all our money on a good lunch, later on. Ranong province is the least populated in Thailand and is mostly made up of rain forest and hills, so there are not too many luncheons around. At last we found a place with rice, fish and some peculiar meat dishes. Anders has this thing with rice ( and ?brown coloured noodles?), so he didn?t get too much of the right stuff. All this malnutrition on his behalf resulted in a veritable ?meeting with the wall? right after lunch time. Lesson learned, we managed 115 km in almost 11 hours, with an almost standstill at the end of the day. Because of the elections, we couldn?t get beer with the dinner last night. All of Thailand was so to say ?dried up?!
We also met a few other cyclotourists these last days. Brian from Canada, who is going about the same roads as we are, but in different directions. A french couple was heading towards Singapore after 5 months cycling from Tibet, down Laos and Cambodia. There was a dutch couple cycling Bangkok - Phuket, and lastly we saw a couple cycling with a child on the front. I pass from comments on that one! Everybody we talked to had had a great time with almost no problems or worries.
Today we will take it easy and slow. Anders has to screw on his bike, especially the spokes are getting into a major problem. I?ll also have a look at mine to be on the safe side. We will have a good christmas dinner tonight and start early on tomorrow.

That leaves it to wish everybody a Merry Christmas!

Eat shit,Doggy!

2007-12-18T03:58:00.000-08:00

At the moment we are on Lanta Island, about one day cycling south of Krabi. Here we are resting and living the good life for three days. I am having a ?stomach condition? which is quite all right now and a bad leg ( after a close encounter with the tarmac) which need some healing. We are expecting to continue towards Bangkok in two days with all systems go and all lights green.
Entering Thailand, we also entered dog country. Jesus wept, there are hordes of dog packs along the road. As a counter measure, we have each a spray flask with one bottle of Tabasco and one small bottle of Meekong whiskey put together. When Doggy approaches with bared teeth, he gets a spray of it, stops dead in his track, sneezes, looks bewildered, turns around and wanders back to the road side. So far a complete success, and it does not seem to hurt them to much!
Lanta is a very muslim island. All the way up Malaysia and also during our ride trough muslim southern Thailand, we barely saw women with total facial coverage( I think I counted two). But here on Lanta, there are quite a few - which wasn't the case 5-6 years ago. I?m thinking about the reason for this seemingly radicalized and maybe fundamentalistic development. Maybe it is an effect from the cultural collision with all the western tourists ( mainly Swedish!). In any case I have some bad vibes about the future here.
On our way, we have also seen quite a few ?backpackers?. They usually gathers in certain places in certain cities. There they stay at ?back packer places?, eat western food ( burgers, fries, sandwiches, banana pancakes, etc.)and meet other back packers. In Singapore, we had ?breakfast included? . It was Nescafe with toast and jam ( not much for a cyclotourist!). We were the only ones who instead went down the stair to the local joint which served delicious noodle soup with real coffee for about 1,5 US $!
On the road, we have not met one single pedaling biker. In Georgetown, we had breakfast with a Swede from Askersund, who was heading over to Sumatra and was going to cycle down the islands of Indonesia. In Trang, there were a Dutch (?) couple who were heading south towards Malaysia. They were not very talkative and having a breakfast consisting of coffee, one toast with jam and cigarettes. Good luck to you, you'll probably need it!

King size on the menu?

2007-12-13T03:44:00.000-08:00

Today we arrived in Thailand at Satun, very close to the Malaysian border. The border crossing was made by boat, not exactly Satun Express, but a long tail with a capacity of ten passengers plus our two shining bikes. We stay the night here and continue north tomorrow early.
On the way here, we had a short stop in Taiping and Georgtown on Penang Island. Last night we spent in Alor Star ( or sometimes A.Setar). Alor Star was a shining city, at least as clean as Singapore. It is the capital of Kheda state - the rice bowel of Malaysia. It is also very muslim, which was easy to see when wandering trough a huge department store only selling religious literature and clothes ( Anders bought a pair of sandals, which were good for 2 hours of pedalling -probably made to walk with to the Friday prayer!). We met some very nice and interesting people, though. In the evening we managed to find a chinese restaurant, where we got ourselves some noodles. As an extra guest by our table was an enormous rat ( se picture!), who had easy access to his home in the sewer near by.
Some conclusions about cycling Malaysia:
People - Very nice, easy to talk with ( many know english!) and they are very interested in bikers. Great hospitality!
Traffic - Easy going, cars take wide detours and we felt safe all the time.
Hotels - Wanky chinese ones is our favourite. A room often costs apr.5 -10 $ US for two ( no air con).
Food - We become very fond of noodle soup with fish balls. Mostly we ate chinese food, but also some malay. Three meals a day cost about 3 $ US, when eating in food stalls by the street.
Drink - We have been consummating about 2-3 litres of water a day. Beer and coffee has been forbidden during cycling because of dehydration effect. We also bought quite a lot of isotonic drinks at petrol stations. We had about a week with overcast weather, which made cycling very easy and water consumption lower. Anders became all right after about 3-4 days of hard adjustment to the heat.
Beer - Good, but a beer costs about the double than what you pay for the food. I rest my case!
Animals spotted - A lot of big lizards, the biggest apr. 2 meters. One snake and a few dead ones ( biggest apr. 4 meters!! ). A lot of different birds, especially trillions of swallows making an awful lot of noise in the cities. 1 cockroach! And lastly a few rats.
Total km so far: 3116
Total km in Malaysia: 1082
Punctures: 1 ( Anders )

Hitting the beach at Pulau Pangor

2007-12-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

After sleeping a mosquitobite free night under our nets, we started early with course for Teluk Intan. The city is famous for its Malay answer to the tower in Pisa. Well this tower is actually a combined water- and clock-tower built 100 years ago, though it looks like a pagoda. Coming all this way, it had to get photographed! Next day, we pedalled peacefully along rice paddys on our way to Pulau Pangor on a stright road in a very flat landscape. It is an island off the west coast with some really nice beaches, hordes of malay weekenders and a small handfull of westerners. Here we are taking two days off to lick our wounds, but we took our rides and cycled around the island - 18 km! Most of the island consists of pristine rain forest, so there is no lack of apes, birds and insects making an awful lot of noise most of the time. Muslim or not muslim, the bathing codex is the same: Clothes on in the water! The main road where we are staying is full of a mixture consisting of street vendors selling all kind of «leisure wear», food and sovenirs. The atmosphere is very relaxed, but no one is selling beer to the thirsty two-wheelers ( maybe just as well?)! Well, tomorrow we are continuing up the coast towards the the Thai border. Crossing is expected in 4 days if all goes well...

Another noisy bunch at Fort Dickson and an all time low

2007-12-05T01:13:00.000-08:00

After having a last look at Jonker Walk in Melaka, including watching a contest in Dragon Dance, we sat course towards north. After a hot ride we reached the dusty town of Fort Dickson. Mostly it is a port for coming over the straight to Sumatra, so for a cyclist going the other way, there is very little to see in town. We got our self a room in the only visible hotel - a chinese joint wich sat an all time low in standard. It is impressing how they manage to make a double room out of an old singel! Well, this called for a beer to get restituated after all the dust along the road. But were are the beer? After walking around, we got the direction - ?it is behind, over there!? It sure was behind, on the back side of town in a restaurant. But nobody were eating! Instead there was a large bunch who made up all the drunkards in the area. And wat a noise! Well after a beer, we thought best of leaving but suddenly we were treated with free beer from every direction. Nothing to do but stay and try not to lose face. We managed, and after a hot night in our ?double-room?, we continued to Klang in very heavy traffic.
On the way out of Klang this morning, we met with mr Mahadi who spent a breakfast on the bikers. He had spent 31 years working for Volvo!
Now we are in the old royal capital of Kuala Selangor. Here we got a bungalow in a natural reserv with apes, wild cats and dense forest. Tonight we are going to for the first time set up our mosquito nets, wich we bought in Singapore.

Melaka ( Malacca)

2007-12-01T23:52:00.000-08:00

Having a day off the saddle so Anders have a chance to lick his wounds. Melaka is a fascinating place with a culture mix and influence from dutch, english, portuguise, chinese, malayan and indian aktivities. A remarcable mixture of people and religions!
Well, I'm not going to write more about it now, but go out in town and get a load of it all. Putting up a selection of pictures for you from Melaka town and countryside.I hope you enyoy them!

Black-out in Singapore and Confusion at the Border

2007-12-01T01:04:00.000-08:00

At last we managed to complete our shopping frenzy in Singapore. This meant that we are fully stocked with things ranging from padlocks and some tools, to spare tyres, panniers and mosquito nets.
On one of our days, the usual once a day rain and thunder resulted in a total black-out in our area. This meant that all the backpacker waiting for their turn before the guest house three free Internet pc had to find something else to do than the usual surfing on the inter nett or rummaging through some of Singapore´s countless shopping malls.
Singapore is a peculiar town. Moore people than Norway on a tiny piece of land and almost as many cars. You don´t need to use energy on finding out how to do things - or Not to do things. All the time we are reminded of what is forbidden and what is the penalty ( usually in the higher part of the scale) via tv, loudspeakers or zillions of posters. One motto sees on a lot of places theese days is « low crime doesn´t mean no crime». The efforts to get people rapport «suspicious behavior» and the amount of security cameras in operation could point to a certain amount of paranoia, but we saw really few policemen. However, the Singapore underground (MRT) is the best I have experienced, also incredible cheap. There is also no problem to eat oneself to kingdom come, we did some serious turns at the food stalls.

In any case we were very good prepared, when we at last sat on our saddles 7 o clock this morning, eager to pedal out of Singapore. We came to the Big Chaos at the border area without fuzz. Now we saw that there were lanes for every kind of vehicle - except for our beloved bicycles. Boldly we took the «motor cycle only» lane, and reached the control post together with 1000 motorbikes. No problems, but Anders didn´t know that he should have kept his embarkation card from his entry into the city state. That meant a visit in to the emigration complex at the border and some new turns with paper writing.
The entry into Malaysia went without any problems, so with a 90 day social visit visa, we started peacefully pedal towards the west coast. The traffic jam on the 3-4 lane way out of Johor (the capital of the province and neighbor to Singapore) was something of its own, but a bike is a really practical ride on such occasions. So after some 8 hours and 82 km we reached the cost at the dusty drag of a town Pontian Kechil. The heat is outstanding and we have been drinking huge amounts of water to cope with it. Tomorrow we continue up the coast, hopefully with a good tailwind.... Well, the wind came mostly from the side. We pedaled trough countless coco-nut and rubber plantations and cruised in and out of small villages. The traffic is really quite OK, but one has to be on the alert all the time. The heat is still a problem, specially for Anders who has had an encounter with the Wall twice. Now we have thrown out the anchor in Batu Pahat, a city completely without crossings for pedestrians! It is also completely free for tourists - except for two bold Scandinavians. The name of the hotel is Fairyland - I don´t say no more!

Sleepless in Singapore

2007-11-26T05:27:00.000-08:00

The last day arrived with blazing sun and a good tail wind towards Auckland. We looked forward to a very nice ride, though the traffic seemed to increase dangerously. We passed trough a gorge where there were very little space for our rides, and there were lots of trailers comming speeding trough the bends in over 100 km/hour. We did survive and our heroes came peacefully pedalling in to Auckland in the evening after 143,7 km from Waihi, where we started in the morning.After 142 km Harald had our tours one and only puncture, but it was easyly fixed and we hit our target The Great Kiwi International Hotel. We got our room for $69 ( down from $99 !) and could start concluding (on a scale from 1-10 ):
The roads: 5. Quite safe to ride and the motorised traffic not a big problem. The rough dressing with a mixture of tar and gravel is pain in the ass for the tires, and takes the points down.
Beer: 7-8. Good stuff is Tui, but the best is brewed in the most southerly brewery in the world in Invercargil, but we don¥t remember the name.
The people: 9. Very social,friendly, helpsom and interested in peculiar strangers like us.
The food: ?

Total km from Gueenstown to Auckland: 2034
Total kcal used for riding 2034 km: aprox. 67000
Total kg burnt fat: Aprox. 7 kg

The story now continues in Singapore, starting with a sleepless night in red light district after arriving at midnight, local time. When taking an early morning walk, it was easily noted that i was not the only one with bad sleep that night. Quite a few girls were coming off the night shift and it was startling what a change the street outside the hotel had gone trough between night and day.
Due to need of moore sleep, i changed lokation to Cozy Backpackers Corner - we¥ll see how cozy it gets later on, after i have picked up Boe at the airport this afternoon.
Lastly, i want to thank Harald for a outstanding ride trough New Zealand. I¥ll really miss you, after biding farwell to each other on Changi Airport Singapore!

A GERMAN SURGEON, A NOISY BUNCH AND A SHEEP WITH TWO HEADS

2007-11-21T12:56:00.000-08:00

After spending two nights in Napier, the number one town of art deco in the world ( the town was destroyed in a disastrous1931 earthquake and was rebuilt in the new art deco way), we found out it was better be on the road pedalling than watching Netball World Championship on television. We sat course towards Wairoa, 122 km away along the east coast with lots of road work( picture!). Wairoa is a small town, but of course we found a hotell which suited our needs. After ”dressing up”, we were admitted to the hotell bar trough the back door ( the front was locked!), but we were told that this evening the guests were a ”noisy bunch”. Yes they were for sure, but also very friendly and generous! We had some very good games by the pool table.
The next day we went along the east coast towards Gisborn. Along came a German surgeon on a bike. We had a chat about anestesia nurses and manegment by nurses. I rest my case! Well, on we went and didn´t see moore of Fritz. We came all right to Gisborn, stright to a combo chinese hotell-bar-pub-take away and restaurant complete with karaoke evening. This didn´t look to good! But we had a good night sleep until 05.30 in the morning, when the chinese patrons started their morning bronchial cleaning procedures ( must be experienced!).
Because of a rumour about a sheep with two heads ( dead and stuffed) in a pub halfway between Gisborn and Opotiki, we decided to taket he 145 km ride over the mountain. Eager to whatch the poor sheep, we entered the only village on the topp of the montain. Sorry to say, the pub was closed so we didn´t get our sheep – nor a beer or two in the early summer heat. Instead we stuffed ourself with a burger and milk shake and continued down trough a 58 km long gorge, almost all the way to Opotiki. Total distanse ca 1810 km.

Burnt Skin

2007-11-16T14:36:00.000-08:00

17 Nov. 2007 Burning skin and an all time high

After climbing the hills of Dunedin and scored an all time high of 63 km/h on the way down on the other side, we sat course towards Omaru and Timaru. We have now taken to our harts the splendour of staying on the second floor of pubs, usually at a cost of NZ $ 50 for two persons. Entertainment comes free. In Timaru the music stopped at 3.00 am.
In Omaru we were taken by car to see the Omaru Blue Penguin. Our driver was a 75-year-old lady, who also made a guided trip trough town. Among things, we were shown the Old Town with its lime stone houses. The penguins are the smallest in the world, and after a short wait among other thrilled tourists they came stumbling up the shore to make it to their small wooden cottages, made by friendly human helpers. They spend their night chatting and making friends with one and another, when not catching their totally 15 min of sleep.
At the moment we are sitting on The Tranzcoastal train from Cristchurch, which is going to take us to Picton were we take the ferry to the Nort Island. The speedometer shows 900 km, and it is probably a good idea to have a day off the saddle.
In Christchurch we were invited to three of the daughters to three colleagues of ours on Narvik Hospital. Many thanks for great hospitality!
Harald is having a skin burn condition after 1,5 hour with a bare back yesterday. The ozone layer is 40% less then in Europe, so it is advisable to have good protection. Otherwise all systems are go, and our internal systems (after some minor disturbances) are all showing green light.
Due to lack of internet connections and late arrivals, I am now sitting in Napier typing on my wife’s beloved Mack. Here we are after pedaling out of Wellington with a storm from behind. Jesus wept, we had a good time! We blow 120 km to Foxton, a little rural town with a main street as broad as Champ Elysses! Next day we sat course for lake Taupo and stopped halfway, just before the infamous “Desert Road”. Harald got a bright idea. We were to set new course towards the east coast 160 km away, over the mountins and partly on of gravel road. Well, we got here late yesterday night after 161 km, at least 2200 m of climbing and not one single place to stop at. Mama mia, the beer tasted good and felt deserved!
Total distanse 1311 km.

Braindamage and blizzards

2007-11-07T23:10:00.001-08:00

Southland, The Opposite Of Northland 8.11.2007

According to Harald´s cycle GPS-system, we are now 17079 km from Otto Sverdrup Street in Narvik. It is just as cold and windy as in Northland, only the cold blast is coming from south west - not north west. The population density is also very much the same, maybe the people down here is even more spread out than at home. We have talked more with sheep, than with southlanders so far.
As an side affect of this, we missed both evening meal yesterday and breakfast today.

From Queenstown on, the first to days, we had a gale straight into our faces. The temperature barely rised above 6 degrees and we were hit by hail . I was actually blown off the road once! The last two days we have had the wind in our backs, just as cold and fearful -but at least we are doing great speed.

Also worth mentioning, was our mental condition after 42 hours of travelling. We diagnosised ourself with slight brain damage and managed to loose one pair of spectacles, one pair of sun glasses and the key to our motel room.

We are now in the town of Dunedin. Tomorrow we start riding north by forcing a 700 meter hill outside the town
( the cars can take the stright motorway).

Getting started

2007-10-30T01:55:00.000-07:00

Had an awful time getting started with this blog ( it´s the first time!). As you know, I´m going to sit on my ass for 6 monthhs, pedaling trough parts of the world unknown. Was a bit ambivalent about what language to write in, but choose english before swedish and norwegian. That way nobody will feel bad about That!
Today is the first day off from work and it is time to pack. The Bike is in a big package and all small items are finding their way into to small bags. The weight limit on airplane is a bit of a challenge, but starts to look OK as follows:
Checked luggage inkluding bike: 20 kg (?) ( look at bike: http://www.trekbikes.com/uk/en/bikes/2008/road/520/520/ )
Cabin luggage: 7 kg
Pockets: 5 kg (?)
Own starting weight: 66 kg

As it looks today, are day of depart from Narvik is set to Thursday 1 November. Due to whweather conditions, there might be a good idea to make the depart early in the morning. My good friend Harald ( visit http://home.c2i.net/haraldjm/sykkeltur/startside.htm ) is very optimistic about the weather in northern Norway, so I´m confident we will be all right.
We will go by car to Kiruna ( Sweden ) to catch our flight to Stockholm, Frankfurt , sydney, Aukland and lastely Queenstown New Zealand. After that, we start pedalling!