Shelby and I have made jokes about how we would be “cancelled” in the USA if we said some of the things Chinese people say to us. Mainly, calling “foreigner” at any person you suspect to be foreign which in China's defense, is a very ethnically homogeneous society making spotting an outsider an easy task. Especially easy for children to spot the foreigners in the grocery store and chase them around yelling “waiguo ren” (foreign country person, literally) whenever you turn a corner. It may have been grating on me that three kids were harassing us while we tried to do some shopping before leaving our last big town for some weeks. They were only redeemed by the cute factor when after we were walking away from the store one of them came up and yelled frantically “I LOVE YOU” in English and gave us some lychee. You win this time little punk.

Leaving Golmud For Dunhuang

We left the city behind us heading out on the open plateau at 9,000ft (2,700m). We breathed in the dry air of the desert, filling our lungs with ease. Never would I think that the air would be so plentiful at such a high altitude but when you spent a few weeks above 13,000ft (4,000m), you'd be surprised at how good it feels.

It was smooth sailing until our second day from the big city when we noticed Shelby's chain had a weird protrusion to it. As it turned out, one of the chain link connectors had broke on one side. If we continued riding, the broken link was likely to cause the other side of the link to break which would then see their chain fall completely off the bike. We limped our way to a service station area where we lucked out by choosing a restaurant with the nicest owners who went above and beyond.

The Kindness of Strangers

These restaurant workers and owners will forever stick out in my mind. By this point, China was starting to wear me down with the constant stares, unwanted photos and sometimes as my friend Tiffany put it, “talking cat stares”.

A man came up to us as we were eating and in English said

“Hello”

“hello” we responded back.

This grown man then started to laugh loudly and point at us by our very funny response of greeting him back. One of the young women working immediately came and shooed him away from us. I was a a bit shocked, not at the man but at the woman. No one had ever really tried to defend us or even acknowledged some peoples rude behavior here, it made me feel a little bit less crazy.

After eating, they showed us where to camp without us even asking, so we got to set up in a parking lot by their building. The next morning, Shelby's chain wasn't fixed and I was beating myself up not having the tools to try and fix it. My friend Barnard from high schools father in-law once said to me:

“Whats a man without a chain break?” and then he gifted me one. I needed a chain breaker tool and a quick link to fix Shelby's chain. I could have sworn I had both, but after emptying out all my bags and searching three times, I came up empty handed. All I had was the line of:

“Whats a man without a chainbreak?”

It reverberated in my head for far longer than it should have. Luckily for us, the workers saw us trying to fix the bike and asked what was wrong. They volunteered that if we stayed another day, they could get the quick link and a chain break in with their food order from the town we'd been in a few days before, we just had to pay a one dollar delivery fee to the driver. God, people in China can be so damn nice and helpful.

5 Minute Fix

I spent most of the day moping in the tent at how ill prepared I was as the rain fell in waves. Shelby sat in the restaurant most of the day and at one point someone who was facetiming put their phone on a table with it directly facing Shelby's face and then went off and did other things. Shelby politely put the phone facing down and made friends with the workers.

My mood was comparable to the leaky buildings we ate our meals in, plentiful buckets collecting rainwater that dripped through the ceiling. My mood improved some in the evening when the delivery driver showed up, I paid a fee, two workers came to look at Shelby's bike with me and the work was done in five minutes. I felt silly for not carrying the basic tools that would have made this problem a minor inconvenience and even sillier for thinking I already had been carrying them.

We said goodbyes to our lovely hosts who saved the day by helping two foreigners who didn't even ask for it. Before we would see them last, one of them said:

“No one else out here will help you but us. Be careful out there, it is dangerous.”

The usual sentence that is almost a mantra to tell foreigners in China is:

“China is very safe and secure.”

The rest of the plateau

We cycled on without incident, even entering zones that we were warned would potentially be restricted to foreigners. The photos ever increased from strangers, sometimes paid for by handing us a drink of some sort, then a pose for the camera and then them promptly driving off. I started to notice it didn't really matter what we did in the photos, people just stared at their phones as they got back in their cars with a bit of a smile on their face even if we'd done something silly in the photo or even given the bird when someone didn't ask us if they could take a photo.

We had nice desert camps, met a Swiss cyclist in one of the small towns and eventually descended out of Qinghai, off the plateau and into Gansu Province where the signs no longer had Chinese and Tibetan written on them but instead Chinese and an Arabic script. We later learned this was Uyghur.

The highest place on Earth, the Tibetan Plateau has an average height of 13,000ft (4,000m) and we had the privilege to ride across it. It's more wild than the rest of China, the only place I've seen stray dogs, people begging and more hospitality than other parts of this enormous country. Almost every small village we went into seemed to have the police finding us before we could find a place to eat and asking for our passports. One town only had one hotel open for foreigners which turned into a fun spectacle as we walked our bikes behind police who told us to not leave the premise until everything was sorted. What did sorted mean? It meant one of the police supervisors coming in tell is that we must obey the rules and laws of China followed by taking photos of us posing with the police Chief. Something we've become very accustomed to are the photos people take of us. Sometimes with permission and sometimes no, never did I think I would catch Tibetan Buddhist monks sneaking a photo of me from the side or holding phones inches to my face as they reach for my beard.

Where The Trees End

After leaving Yushu, Qinghai and fending off Tibetan Mastiffs, we were growing tired of the relative ease of the paved roads or more so of the traffic on them. Scanning the map, we found a route that seemed to take us to the town of Golmud but on a sparsely used dirt road. After some messages on a cyclists group chat and confirming it was possible to cycle (with a warning of horrible washboard) we decided we'd give it a go. The weather was supposed to be decent, there was a small village to stock up on two and a half days worth of food and a new test for us as dirt roads are quite sparse while China continues to develop and modernize its infrastructure at a rapid pace. We were going on a plateau where the trees ended.

Chumar Ho to Golmud

It was beautiful, it was getting our asses beat by the washboard, it was solitude like we hadn't experienced in China. The road was amazing even though the road was causing us to build calluses on our butts… the only people out on this part of the plateau were yak herders living in small shacks and yurts for the summer. We had a couple offer us a ride in their truck but we turned it down hoping to see them further down the road for water but we never did.

After filtering water at a river that seemed like it could have been at sea level with mountains only off in the distance, we had a man come by with genuine concern that we were on the wrong road. He checked our passports, called someone with cell service from who knows where and asked to make sure we knew the direction we were going didn't have any human settlement. We set off and for the rest of the day, the only company we had were the wild donkeys living up at 13,000ft.

Yaks and Drones

We stopped to take so many photos, this has to have been one of the most unique things we had seen yet. We crossed a mountain pass at 15,700ft (4800m) and were greeted by stunning views of snowy mountains, Tibetan prayer flags and a random cctv camera that occasionally sounded an alarm. Very Chinese.

We descended, I took too many videos on our way down of the unreal scenery as we continued on, aiming to get up a second pass that day of the same height. As we continued along a valley floor, a yak herder spotted us from on a hill and came down to intercept us. He was wearing a face covering for the sun and asked us for a selfie, a very normal thing to do in China with foreigners. We asked him if we could take one which he said no to which we found odd but shrugged it off and cycled on. Five minutes later, we heard the buzzing sound of a drone which then was following us, getting probably some epic video footage of us and it moved around to get different angles. The photos in China are non-stop, especially in the rural areas and they can sometimes feel more invasive rather than establishing a connection or memory with someone. This drone was probably the most invasive feeling one as he followed us and didn't stop until we started waving our hands no at the drone as it got its many angles of us. It affected me so much I thought about smashing my action camera as we sat down to eat 30 minutes later.

The Pass

We still had one more pass to go up though and it seemed like storm clouds were brewing in the distance. We moved onwards as passing hail storms occasionally pelted us with small pebbles of ice. I started to develop a headache as we filtered water from a river before the final climb, probably brought on from stress and the glaring sun, which is so much stronger at altitude.

Up and up we went, bumping along on washboard and waving to the the few cars we saw that day. The storm clouds seemed to be heading our way as we tried to go as speedily as we could up the mountain trying to outrun mother nature. My headache continued, the sun was setting and my toes got cold as we neared the top. Several false summits later and we were on the edge of the highest part of the plateau. We set up camp, cooked and fell asleep after such a long and beautiful day

A Long Descent

White, we woke up to a world of white. The storm had hit us but instead of a downpour, we got a few inches of snow covering our tent and bikes. We were camped at 15,700ft, the world felt different than the one we had fallen asleep to as the Christmas vibes were showing through in June. We packed up, I lost a strap under the blanket of snow and we start our long descent from 15,700ft to 9,000. The snow turned to sleet, the sleet turned to rain and the road, a nice hard mud. We look like odd scientists wearing rain ponchos over our not very waterproof rain jackets as we gradually go lower in elevation. The lush green plateau gives way to semi-arid desert and eventually we seem to be beating the clouds and rain as we cycled into a mining area filled with trucks. We make it back to the highway which is filled with traffic and after a stop into a halal truckers restaurant, we cycle into Golmud, a city we'd been told was off limits to foreigners but which welcomed us with the modern amenities of China.

I had a friend come and visit me while I was cycling in Colombia in a little tourist mountain town that was green, lush and filled with coffee plantations. Our time was spent hanging out in a few of the towns nicer cafes, visiting the coffee plantations and going for some hikes. On one of our hikes to a waterfall, a woman who ran a doggy day care lost control of her dogs, one in particular was aggressive and I watched helplessly from the top of some rocks as this little bastard latched onto my friend’s ankle. He came out bloody, some bite marks but nothing too horrible and to top it off, they did have vaccination records so he didn't have to get a rabies shot.

China has had the most chill dogs I’ve ever seen and we’ve been pretty lax with them minus one or two occasions where one ran out from a house and us stopping the bikes seemed to calm them down. That was until we reached the true Tibetan Plateau in a sparsely populated high altitude landscape where herders live in shacks and tents for the summer and have huge Tibetan Mastiffs that are supposed to fight off bears and other animals. I’d been nearly bitten quite a bit in countries like Peru or Ecuador but it seemed like a lot of the dogs weren’t enormous creatures bred to take on huge apex predators.

After a camp at 4,800m above the snowline, we descended out of a cloud and into the grassy landscape. Dogs barked at us as we passed little settlements but they were usually chained up, behind a fence or not charging us. Shelby was well ahead of me going fast in the cold cloudy landscape when 5 dogs came out of nowhere and started surrounding them. I muttered curses thinking I was about to watch Shelby get mauled ahead of me and being unable to do anything as these beasts closed in but luckily, a car was behind Shelby and started blocking and running their vehicle at the dogs to keep them away. Thank god!!! Shelby was in the clear, but then it dawned on me that there was no car to block for me and Shelby was zooming away to safety and I’m sure wouldn’t be coming back. Generally speaking, its a good idea when an aggressive dog comes at you on a bike to suddenly stop as that tends to calm them down. I was going downhill and thought maybe they wouldn't be able to catch me or want to keep up which wasn't the best line of thinking since they were keeping up with Shelby. I expected to be swarmed but just one dog came at me, this huge furry bastard who didn't come at me from behind, he didn't come from the side but he came head on in a sprint at a bit of an angle. I had a vision of him jumping, knocking me off my bike and mauling me while I screamed. He nearly did knock me off the bike but he didn't jump. I barely made it past him, my heart was pounding, adrenaline was running high, this was one of if not the closest call I’ve ever had with a dog and it could have been much much worse…

Other close calls with dogs

Quick and notable mentions of dog encounters I’ve had or seen were:

-A dog that torpedoed my friend Guillaume off his bike in Peru by running into the side of his bike which saw Guillaume chase the dog across the street with a rock

-Me yelling “Come and get me bitches!” as three small dogs came out from a house in Peru and me thinking I could outrun them but the only place I almost ran into was a fence when they got close to my feet.

-Cycling through a street in a narrow village with a Romanian cyclist in Peru when a dozen dogs seemed to come out of nowhere. One dog ran up to me and had his head turned and mouth open to bite my ankle. I carried rocks at this point in time and somehow nailed this dog in the face right before he chomped down. This only seemed to anger him as he paused and then came at me a second time even angrier. I managed a second rock to his face and he finally backed down.

-Dogs coming out from a house and me trying to fend them off and the owners just laughing as their dogs try to draw blood. This happened more than once in different places.

-A Great Dane coming out to chase me in Texas as I battled a headwind and his owner screaming bloody murder for his dog to come back. The dog would jump up like he was going to pounce and then pull away at the last second.

A silly song I wrote about dogs

Little bastards charmers now

Everybody gather round

I’m a meal on two wheels passing through your town

I crossed onto the wrong street

Now they’re coming after me

The perfect seasonings for a feast

Im sprinkled in dust and bike grease

Here come the hounds!

Here come the hounds!

Little bastards and charmers now

Here come the hounds!

This is a break from writing about my current trip from China to Europe. I get a lot of time to think while cycling and I’ve been thinking of writing about some of my other adventures and in this case, mishap. This is one of my stories from working a season in Alaska's Arctic in Coldfoot, a truckstop on the edge of the Brooks Mountain Range. This happened in January 2024 after I’d finished cycling Argentina to Texas and was saving up for the current trip of Asia to Europe.

The Sun Is Back

Sun shone through my windows facing towards the kitchen entrance to a worn down cafe. Everything was worn down, the floors, the kitchen, tables, our living area affectionately called “Crew Quarters”. Most everything is leftover infrastructure from when the pipeline was built. We lived in old trailers stitched together to make a long hallway with block heaters run on heating oil which is one step away from diesel. I never expected to smell fuel and have a sense of home fill my nose but here I was looking out at the cafe, the “Big Tent”, a semi idling in the parking lot, its exhaust visible in the cold and me feeling a sense of urgency. The urgency was the sun and warm weather which had been absent for two months; for two months the sun’s rays had not touched this lonely truckstop and for two months I had struggled to remember to take vitamin D pills and to turn on my “Happy Light” or “SAD Light” depending on who you talked to. It actually was a way to get passive aggressive with eachother if someone was moody.

“Have you been taking your vitamin D pills?” Usually said with a bit of sass and sarcasm.

The sun was now staying above the horizon for a few hours and a cold streak of -40 had finally broken and it was 0F outside. How could I pass up this opportunity for a bike ride and to be outside for longer without worrying about being too cold? 0 degrees and a bit of sun felt balmy at this point and I wasn't going to waste it. I filled up a liter of water in my thermos, put on long underwear, pants, rain pants, a lighter coat, warm boots, hat, face covering and a scarf. I always got warm quick and tried to avoid sweating by not wearing too many layers. Sweating is the enemy in the cold and it can get you killed fast as it cools your body down in extreme temperatures. Better to pack light and quite honestly, I wasn’t going far. Five miles out and five miles back on some flats, a short enough ride to enjoy the sun before it set.

The Ride

I was out of crew quarters and the rusting camp that is Coldfoot and rushing down the Dalton Highway in the direction of Prudhoe Bay where Alaska’s oilfields sit on the Arctic Plains. It felt amazing to be outside on the partially iced pavement, the sun illuminating everything as if it were spring and the layer of white that covered the world around me. I felt ecstatic and invincible cycling away from camp and the drama that had been brewing, stewing and occasionally exploding during the harsh dark months. We were a crew of around twenty people who were up there regularly and tensions run high when there are personality clashes and not many outlets and we’re all vitamin D deficient. This was a much needed break to reset me mentally.

I got to the five mile mark and I didn't want to return to camp just yet, back to the drama, taking orders from stressed out truckers and running food from stressed out cooks who sometimes yelled when a ticket came into the kitchen. I felt good, the weather was nice and it was a moment where everything feels possible, a feeling I was familiar with from cycling the length of the Americas almost twice. I kept going, a runners high coursing through me as I passed the black spruce trees that dominate the landscape.

I kept cycling and I effortlessly pushed on, I felt like I could go for fifty miles and turn around and do fifty more. It all just felt so possible and so good to be out of camp for at least a little bit, I ended up cycling thirteen miles to the turnoff with the village of Wiseman, a small community of around ten people living lives off the grid. I thought of cycling down to our company’s cabin that we ran Aurora Borealis tours from because I didn't want to stop but looking at the sun and seeing the shades quickly turning to sunset colors, it was time to turn back. I got some photos of some Sun Dogs, a truck passing on the road and then I changed directions to go back south towards our lonely truckstop and the direction of Fairbanks still around 250 miles further on from Coldfoot.

Trouble

As soon as I turned around I realized why it had felt so effortless to keep on cycling, I had had a tailwind that was helping propel me forward down the road which had now changed to a chilling headwind that felt like little strings pulling my bicycle backwards. The temperature was dropping and rapidly to the -20s and before I realized it and could stop myself, I was sweating with all the effort that came with cycling into the wind. I started to get cold, I felt it creep past my coat, through my meager layers and touch the sweat that covered my body and started to collect on my clothes. The realization hit me hard as the temperature continued to drop that this was going to go badly quickly, I needed to be back in the ramshackle of buildings that is Coldfoot and it had to be soon.

I pushed and I pushed but my legs felt heavy, they felt like they had no power, like I was peddling and just spinning the crankset and was going nowhere, the black spruce trees passing by me much slower than when I cycled by them the first time. My stomach grumbled and I drank more of my water which was getting difficult as the mouthpiece was starting to freeze over. Not that it mattered horribly, my body was craving calories, fuel, something to put juice back into my legs but I had nothing. This was the first mistake I’d made that day but I didn't realize it before I was too far from camp. I didn't eat anything before I left and I didn't bring any snacks, I hadn't wanted to waste the sunlight but now it seemed like I was closer to wasting my life.

Cookies, we sold giant, unhealthy, calorie packed cookies that we got for free working at the cafe. If I had grabbed just a few peanut butter cookies from our stack, I would have had something. I never thought about those sweet treats as being a survival item until this moment as I unscrewed my water bottle lid to get the last bit of water which satisfied none of my growing hunger or the lead that was seemingly forming in my thighs the longer I stayed outside.

It had been so easy to glide with the wind thirteen miles down the road and now every mile back seemingly elgongated as if camp was slowly drifting down the Dalton like a branch drifting down the Koyukuk river. My jacket had a layer of frost on the outside from the sweat that seeped through my layers. It was getting darker and it felt like I had tunnel vision as the sun slowly got lower in the dragged out sunsets that happen at this latitude. The tunnel vision was from my eyelashes gathering moisture and starting to freeze shut. I wiped and wiped but the ice reformed and my long lashes would stick together limiting my vision of the long shadows forming on the road.

The trees around me got taller, a sign I was near Marion Creek, the five mile marker, the place I should have turned back at. If I had just turned back like I’d planned, this would have been a forgettable ride, a safe one, one where I came back to the cafe, ordered breakfast and went about my day normally preparing for work in the evening to serve truckers fried greasy food. A few semis had passed me on the road towards the cafe but at this point, I wasn't thinking straight. I didn't try to flag anyone down before because I had too much pride to stop someone for help, but the last five miles I didn't stop anyone because it never crossed my mind to. I started to zig zag on the road not quite able to go straight anymore. I stopped multiple times to get off my bike and walk but then thought it would be too slow and got back on my frosted seat. I was cold but I wasn't feeling it as much anymore, the snow around me seemed soft and maybe like a good place to rest and close my eyes. My face covering had frozen over some miles back and I did my best to keep the frozen piece of fabric covering my face but it kept falling. The allure to walk, lay down and to just stop grew with every inch I crawled back on my crooked line towards camp.

In Camp

To my surprise, the turnoff for camp appeared, the north end of Coldfoot. I made the turn and felt ecstatic, I was going to live! I got off my bike, I was so tired and I could barely pedal. I walked down the driveway a bit and then got back on the bike and then stopped again when I saw a coworker walking our manager’s dog. At this point, I didn't realize it but I was hypothermic and I wasn't coherent with my thoughts or my speech as this coworker later said:

“How’s it going?” I ask as I stopped to chat.

“Good, you went on a bike ride?” he replied.

We talked briefly for thirty seconds before he asked

“Do you have a bandage on your nose?”

“ummmmm, no.”

“You have frostbite. Get inside now!”

The bridge of my nose was white, my face covering had come down and it stayed down despite my best efforts. I didn't have a clue my face had started to change colors and that scared me. My coworker described my behavior as seeming almost drunk when we talked later and he knew immediately something was off. I hurried into the cafe and asked someone else if my nose was white a bit frantically. It quickly got color back and I asked someone else to take a photo. It was red but not white anymore luckily and I calmed down a bit and ordered one of our most calorie dense meals. Biscuits and Gravy, a pain for the cooks to make but I didn't care if anyone yelled or grumbled at me when I sent the order through. I slogged to the upstairs office to eat and talked with our resident dog musher. Talking to him was a struggle, not because he is difficult to talk to but because my tongue felt like it couldn't quite move in my mouth right. My words slurred, my thoughts felt slow, I couldn't articulate anything quite how I wanted and this is how I realized just how not present mentally I actually was. I ate, I left and went to take a hot shower as I felt how cold I actually was being in the warm cafe.

In the shower, I think my toes may have gotten some frostbite too as they felt like someone was stabbing pins and needles into them as the hot water rolled down my warming body. Tired… I was so tired I sat down in the cubicle and before I knew it, I fell asleep. I woke up to what sounded like rain hitting a lake. I’d blocked the drain with my butt when I sat down and was close to flooding our communal bathroom as water threatened to go over the stall’s lip. I almost fell asleep again but managed to stand up, walk back to my room now fully warm and see what looked like a minor burn on my nose in the mirror.

Life Goes On

I had a shift in a few hours, I asked around if anyone could cover for me or at least cover a few hours. My friend Claire was willing and I was so grateful. I avoided asking my manager, mostly because a good chunk of the drama had been between me and her, our personalities clashing hard in this remote work environment. I was too embarrassed to ask her to cover for me, I was too nervous about her judging my reckless decisions on my ride, I was scared she was going to hold it against me and never let me forget. My friend covered for a few hours while I slept, which in hindsight, I should have not cared what my manager thought and called out to properly rest instead of working the front of house night shift in Coldfoot with a bandage on my nose. I’d almost died and somehow I felt guilty and ashamed for it. Maybe I felt I should have known better? Maybe I was hyperaware of how the tendency of this batch of Coldfooters to gossip and judge was. Maybe my manager would have said something or maybe she would have been understanding, hindsight is 20/20 on what I should have done.

I’m Lucky

I was lucky to be alive, I joined the ranks of many Alaskans who live in the interior who have gotten some form of frostbite and probably there is a coworker or two in Coldfoot who tell my story as a cautionary tale. A week after the incident, I was giving a tour and was up on a mountain pass with a group of tour guests who had all just climbed back in the van after taking photos on the cold wind.

“Are You ok?!”

“Is it my nose?”

“YES!” everyone collectively said.

We’d been outside for five minutes in -20 degrees plus a raging wind. A spot on my nose had started to turn a waxy white color. I sighed, annoyed more than anything else because once you get frostbite, you're more susceptible to it for the rest of your life. I climb back into the van and blast the heaters onto my face and hands as my nose turns back to a normal color.

Later that winter, we had four young Japanese cyclists passing through Coldfoot. I marveled at them as they had cycled from Anchorage and had their sights set on Prudhoe Bay. None of them got frostbite cycling in -40 and I felt even more silly getting hypothermia and almost dying on such a short ride in warmer temperatures. As they got ready to cycle out, I passed them as many peanut butter survival cookies as they were willing to take from me.

We spent more time in Shangri-la to get some socializing time in. We left our comfy hotel room to go check into a dorm room at a hostel where Shelby and I got different pods but the same room. The musty smell of men in an unventilated room was an adjustment but quite honestly worth it for the good vibes of the hostel. I do love the ease in which you meet people also travelling passing through hostels. You see some people talking in the common room and you say hello, join in and next thing you know you're a group of strangers going out for dinner together which seems much harder to do in normal everyday life. We chatted, had jam sessions, got to talk to the young foreign travellers like ourselves and the young Chinese travellers which always proves interesting.

“Are all black Americans dishonest?”

It was a genuine question from one Chinese woman Shelby was talking to. She had met our friend David who we met in Lijiang who had told her “see you tomorrow” and then proceeded to have a rough day and not actually see her. She had spammed him with texts and was quite miffed by it all and Shelby had to explain that its a common thing for Americans to say and it wasn’t him being dishonest. I’ve been asked a few odd questions about black Americans while in China and I can only imagine Chinese social media is not always nice in their portrayal.

Looking For Dirt

In my cycling of the Americas, I was always on the lookout for dirt roads that took you to remote places with less people. China has been a difficult to find these remote dirt roads, mainly because development is happening at an insane pace and most roads that once were dirt have been paved over with asphalt or concrete.

Our next big destination was Yushu, Qinghai and we were aiming for a few dirt sections along the way. We got a small taste through a canyon along the Jinsha River which becomes the Yangtze, the third longest river in the world and the longest in Asia. Beautiful is what it was and it made me miss the remote roads with less traffic and easy camping.

An American

The dirt was short lived but we continued on pavement doing passes that instead of climbing over a mountain would climb to a tunnel and go through the top of a mountain sometimes lasting a few miles long. At the top of one of these climbs with a tunnel, we stopped for a break before entering the dark caverns which may or may not be well lit. We looked behind and saw an older cyclist coming up who was definitely foreign.

“Hello!” We called out

“Ni hao” The new cyclist responded with a heavy American accent.

We just met James, a cyclist in his 50s from New Hampshire who had cycled every continent, had a bike you seemingly could pick up with two fingers and an old school approach to bicycle travel. He was raw dogging China with no VPN which meant he had no way to contact home, access western apps or use any Google features like Google Translate which didn't matter much because he didn't have a sim card anyways. At one food stop, he pulled out a worn map of China he was mostly using to navigate in conjuction with Apple Maps.

James would join our cyclist family for about a week and it was a lovely week to have some more company.

The Herders Trail

James is more of a roadie when it comes to cycling but I think the prospect of having company helped him make the decision to join us on a dirt road that would reach an almost 14,800ft (4500m) pass. We set out to camp at the start of the dirt road, passing by summer homes of yak herders, people waving, the ever present phones sticking out of car windows as they went past, no moment undocumented seemingly in China. The morning came and we all three sat in the tent drinking instant coffee trying to get warm as we waited for the sun to hit our part of the valley. This moment actually reminded me of when I was travelling with a Danish couple in the Altiplano region of South America. They’d invite me into their tent every morning for tea and to warm up as we waited for the suns rays to bring the temperature from 5 degrees Fahrenheit back to a balmy 45.

The sun slowly hit us, my green tent unthawing and then dripping onto us as the temperature rose immediately to where we stripped off our layers until we were in our cycling attire and read to go. Herders on motorcycles buzzed past us giving us thumbs ups, cheers and inquisitive looks. Up the valley we went, our way taking a turn and the road shrinking down to a trail that got more narrow the further in we got. This new valley became steeper and the herders camps less frequent. I hadn't been on a trail this narrow and steep in such a long time, I gasped for breath on all the loose sections that required an extra bit of muscle to clear on my 80 pound bike. Why do I have so much stuff? I openly wondered as I miracously pedalled onward. James was never far behind me, the difference was he had skinny tires but his bike was light and I envied his capacity for minimalism. We only really stopped to talk to some yak herders coming down from the pass we were going up but communication proved difficult as they spoke mostly Tibetan and only some Chinese and I was translating into Chinese. We stared at eachother for awhile, the occasional laughter until James and I made the final push up what was now a single track trail to the top of the pass.

Shelby showed up half an hour after having pushed and rode their bike up the steep path and us all sitting down to eat PB&Js which felt particularly American of us. We converted between metric and imperial units to get the height of the pass, enjoyed the landscape, managed to sing a few songs with the ukulele and then descended on a rippy track down the other side. I may have been the only one to actually enjoy the singletrack until it widened into a dirt road.

Lijiang was a nice respite where we took a few days to recharge in a hostel.

“I just talked to an American for awhile downstairs.” Shelby told me this as I had been sitting in the room vegging out and the news that there was someone I could talk to without a translator got me excited. When I was cycling in Latin America, I don’t know if I ever got this excited to hear about another American in the vicinity but China really does change some things. I got ready, and hoped he was still downstairs and sure enough, there was an American on the couch drinking tea from the tea set he carried. It was a nice respite to have a conversation and relate to someone else travelling through China as a foreigner and someone from my own country. It was good to meet you David if you by chance read this.

We did some chores in Lijiang like trying to fix my inflatable sleeping pad. When we left and had our first night camping, the patch work was in vein as I woke up partially on the ground laying on a flacid piece of bedding that resembled my deflated ego the closer to the ground I got.

We were on our way to Shangri-La and decided to take the more scenic route which involved us steadily climbing passes like stairs gaining elevation and barely losing any. One night camping before entering the famous Tiger Leaping Gorge, we went down by a river to scope out a place to camp. I met some people walking around the river who were from the government to crack down on illegal fishing. I exclaimed how beautiful the the mountains were at the entrance of the gorge trying to show my excitement at being somewhere so beautiful.

“I grew up here, it’s normal.” was the wildlife cops response. Fair enough sir, fair enough.

Another two men stopped to chat with us as we looked for a good campspot. They surprisingly had a pet goat with them that as we spoke with translators, couldn't get enough of the salt on my legs and kept licking me. We bid them goodnight as the sun was setting and said goodbye to our new goat friend who couldn't keep his tongue of of my legs as they dragged him off. We got our bikes, set up the tent, saw the government people looking for illegal fishers leave and then saw the illegal fishers arrive in the dark walking by our tent to get their catch.

Into Shangri-La

After getting through the touristic choke point of Tiger Leaping Gorge we climbed and were greeted with a view of Haba Snow Mountain, another high peak above 18,000ft or above 5,000m. It was a fixture for a few days as we climbed more mountains stepping up in elevation to reach Shangri-La until it finally disappeared from our view which meant Shangri-La was getting closer and closer. By the time we arrived in Shangri-La, it was an overcast day, we were descending from a pass down to 11,000ft roughly to a touristic town with a population that would be impossible at that altitude in the United States. We moved through the smooth cobblestoned “Ancient Town” alleys to our hostel only to arrive to a construction site with loud jackhammers, cutting of steel and welding going on. We needed a rest after all the climbing and we needed some social time with other people before going back into rural China but this did not seem like the place to do it. I sighed as we pushed our bikes through the construction and down the alley where the hostel was located. We were greeted by a insanely nice host who told us she would put us up for two nights in a different hotel at no extra charge. They got some packages we had ordered that were were sitting in different recieving facilities around town, brought them to our new hotel and told us how most of the Ancient Town was not ancient and most things were new which wasn't much of a surprise to us, this is China. Development goes at a rapid pace that still surprises me when we see it in action.

We settle into a nice hotel room, take hot showers to scrub a week’s worth of dirt off, do laundry to get the sludge off our stinky clothes and then we sleep.

We were actively dodging pedestrians walking in front of us when a man with a German accent pulled up beside us on his bike.

“Everybody loves Shaxi.”

It was some of the advice on routes he gave us since he had been coming here and living since the 90s in China. We changed our route direction on his advice and bid Ludwig goodbye as we passed through the last chokepoints and past Lake Erhai.

Birthday Celebration

Shelby turned 27 that day and celebrations were short. We ate at a barbecue place where Shelby could pick the veggies and tofu they wanted. We made our way to a campspot other cyclists had posted about which was absolutely beautiful on a smaller lake with no tourists save us and women in traditional dress of the area. We rarely get my ukulele out when we’re camping because we’re too tired but we got it out this night and did some sing along songs and even tried making our own to the melody of someone singing across the lake. We fell asleep and were woken up by a woman on a boat below the structure we were on checking her nets.

To Lijiang

The road to Lijiang was pretty, the climbing got even more intense with bigger climbs everyday. Shaxi was a quaint “Ancient Town” which classically had very few things that were actually old. We camped by all the Chinese car campers outside of town, got overcharged for a meal where the drying sausage above my head dripped some juices and continued on towards Lijiang.

The night before Lijiang we had beautiful views on another huge switchbacked climb. Our campsite was less cool, the humidity settling in the little ravine on a switchback we had chosen as the sun set. The next morning though after finishing our climb, we were greeted with the insane views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain or Yulong Snow Mountain. It stands at 18,360ft (5,596m) and it made me stop my bike in its tracks. We stopped to eat breakfast, take photos and just stare at this huge snowy mountain in front of us. This was a taste of what was to come and it made us both excited. The upcoming riding was going to be tougher, but we had been working our way up ever since the flats of Cambodia to now. The next huge destination was going to be Shangri-la, a place I thought fictional until seeing it on a map. (Turns out it was fictional before the government changed the name to promote tourism in the area in 2001... it worked.)

I groggily wake up in the darkness to the sounds of wretching. The walls of the homes here are a bit thin and I think the sounds are coming from outside where maybe someone drank too much and is vomiting on the street. I fall back asleep, exhausted after finally having got to Dali from Kunming. I wake up again and its still dark and someone is still wretching outside, until I realize it isn’t outside but in the toilet downstairs.

“Shelby, is that you?”

“Yes…..”

“Can I do anything for you?”

“No…”

I’m still groggy and I fall back asleep only to wake up again with light outside and rain to Shelby dry heaving again. I wake up more alert this time and go downstairs and ask how many times they’ve gotten up through the night… six or seven times. I only woke up for two of them and I feel bad and also realize Shelby is probably severely dehydrated and needs electrolytes and something to help stop the diarrhea and the vomiting. I hope on my bike in the heavy rain and ride the couple kilometers to the pharmacy where my translator decided to stop working as I step in sopping wet trying to explain I need something to stop diarrhea. I’m shown three different things that I can’t translate and buy them all. Turns out I bought Ginseng, some type of powdered clay and I can’t remember what the last thing was. I cycle back up to a still wretching Shelby and we try out the clay stuff which kind of helps but doesn't really cure it.

Our Wonderful Host

We spent more time than we thought we would in Dali, we planned on two days and that’s what we told our host and what she said would be good. Our host is a Dutch woman who we never actually met besides communicating in WhatsApp and Wechat. She’s been a warmshowers host for a long time and she had recently moved back to Kunming but still had her house in Dali which she offered us to stay in.

On our ride to Dali, I had run into the back of Shelby's bike when two dogs came out of nowhere. I reached for my action camera while Shelby stopped abruptly infront of me. I wedged my front tire in-between their wheel and frame. On later inspection, I cracked their rim and destroyed some of the spoke nipples. Our host said we could stay until a new rim could be ordered. When Shelby got sick, we didn't know how long it would last. Vera, our host kindly said we could stay until they were feeling good enough to cycle. We had a house to ourselves, space to spread out and a private place to be sick and get better.

We eventually went to the local clinic after four or five days. It was a public one and kind of chaotic but the people working there were so patient with us as we used translators to describe what was happening. They saw us immediately, Shelby gave a stool sample and we were told it was some type of bacteria. They put Shelby on an IV drip which when we sent a photo to Vera, she said it was a “classic Chinese experience.” getting IV drips is apparently common enough here. Another friend who used to work in Wuhan said students of hers would regularly skip class because they were getting IV fluids because they were hungover.

It cost Shelby about seven dollars at the public clinic for a consultation, the drip and some antibacterial medication for their stomach.

Getting Ready To Go

Shelby wasn’t one hundred percent feeling better but we were anxious to get back on the road. Vera offered to let us stay for as long as we needed but to book one night in a hotel so that we would be registered with the local police. I had been stopped walking around her neighbourhood by one policeman and some locals asking if I was living there, which I answered no. I also realized it may have been a translator error since often, people ask how long we will be “living” in town or in a hotel instead of “staying.”

I’ve had several bouts of bad stomach issues in my time travelling, the worst probably being in Chiapas, Mexico where I didn't eat for three days and barely drank any fluids since it would send me running to the bathroom two minutes later. The worst of it was three days, but it seemed my stomach was fragile and I would have stomach issues off and on for a month. It seemed like Shelby would also have issues off and on for awhile. We decided we should take our chances on the road as our visa time was ticking and China is huge.

“How many days did you get on your visa?”

“We got 90 each.”

“Man, I only got 60.”

We're talking to our first warmshowers host on this trip, an American Alex living with his Chinese girlfriend Li in Kunming. He spent roughly five years cycling the world and finally ended last September and is now somewhat settled and inviting cyclists in to pay back all the kindness he received on the road. Someday maybe I’ll be settled enough to pay back all the kindness I’ve received for over ten years of off and on travelling.

As Americans, we need to apply at a Chinese Consulate in the states in our region. Since I’m an Alaskan resident, my Chinese consulate is in San Francisco which meant I had to go before hand to pay for and receive a ten year tourist visa and luckily I got 90 days entry. For whatever reason Alex got 60 days which means he has to do border runs every 60 days to stay with his girlfriend.

The Cyclists Meet Up

We moved to a hostel after two days when Alex and Li go on vacation because of workers day (May Day or Labor Day). Fun fact, one reason that most of the world celebrates labor day on May 1st is because of the “Hay Market Affair” when labor activists in Chicago we’re executed without real evidence when a general strike turned violent and a bomb was thrown. Funnily enough, Americans don’t celebrate labor day on May 1st even though a big reason the world does is because of it.

We go to a hostel with character where another German cyclist we met, Timo gets ready for the end of his Asian and Oceania tour to go back to Germany and spend the summer with friends and family. Through a cycling group chat, we organize a meet up with other bicycle travellers at the cheapest bar we could find. Some chain with a cartoon reindeer holding a beer that sold drinks for between .80 cents and a $1.20. The crowd consists of Shelby, me, Timo, Alex and Evelyn who we’d ridden with before and three Belgian teens. We sit on tiny chairs around a tiny table in the cold and share our stories from the road. The common thread though is that the road seems to be ending in China for all them except Shelby and I. At least the cycling road. They all get one month visa free which can be extended by a month or reset by doing visa runs. It seems like to maximize their time in China, they all decide to ship their bikes further on in China and to backpack around during their stay.

More talk about if this is a good beer being served in a plastic cup. If it’s a wheat beer or a white beer, how they’re only served in a certain type of glass back home but eventually the Belgians buy a two liter bag with the best excuse ever of “it's for the culture”. The Belgians fascinate me, they all met doing scouting back home. They operate like a scout troop, three people in a tent rotating who is in the middle, rotating chores like dishes and cooking, and taking turns with who updates their Polar Steps (like a blog). They also have entered China without a VPN so they don’t have access to most western apps. They’re a cool bunch.

We all talk about our different experiences in SE Asia, some positive, some negative, the funny cultural differences and before we know it, we’re the last ones in this mall as the rain starts and we have to say goodbye. It always feels good to have some solidarity with people doing the same thing as you and who really can understand what you're doing. We hug Alex and Evelyn as this will be our last time seeing them as they prepare to pack their bikes and train farther ahead without a hope we’ll catch them.

By the time we get ready to leave Kunming, it feels like we’re cycling off alone into the unknown, all the other cyclists opting to take a train through this vast country. China is big and I feel small on my bike as we slowly make our way towards the Tibetan plateau thinking of how much easier it would be to watch the landscape from a train seat than my bike seat.

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Stinky Tofu

I told myself I would never try stinky tofu, the tofu that they intentionally let mold grow on. I was surprised when after meeting up with Alex and Evelyn again that we found outselves in a little hole in the wall restaurant with some tiny chairs and benches around a barbecue pit and us looking at blocks of tofu that seemed to have some discolouration to them. The town of Shiping, Yunnan is apparently known for it’s tofu tradition and we’d asked for recommendations for a place to go. The barista at a cafe we’d gone suggested this place (funnily enough, the barista wasn’t at the cafe when we showed up and Shelby was allowed to use the espresso machine in her absence.) By the time we realized the discoloration was mold and we were in a stinky tofu establishment, we were all too coy to get up and leave after the excitement of getting us sat down in a restaurant that maybe was as old as this ancient town.

Our tofu chef was a man at the head of the barbecue pit, cigarette in one hand, flipping tofu with his other bare hand as everyone looked at us with curiosity. We all probably had a nervous look as we slowly realized that this was moldy tofu, I think I broke out in a laugh when I saw everyone's face and realized mine probably looked the same. The blocks went on the grill, a sauce and spice powder were given to us and we watched as another cigarette was lit and our chef went to work, nicotine running through his veins. Some things stay the same in every country I guess.

The soy protein that had been allowed to mold now sat on our plates, freshly grilled. Awkwardly, we try to eat with chop sticks but everyone motions for us to use our hands instead. My fingers are calloused from ukulele and half of my mouth is partially numb after a botched wisdom tooth extraction which does give me the benefit of being the first one to bite into the scorching hot bricks. I’m a bit confused after the first bite though, instead of revolt or nausea my mouth is watering for more. I dip it in the sauce which is a combination of some herbs and the numbing spice that is common in China. This is amazing! All four of us thought we would hate it but we end up ordering more.

A man sits next to us and we start talking into a translator. He welcomes us, drinks some rice wine served by our chain smoking chef and the lunch becomes even more enjoyable. We play Rock, Paper Scissors, he gets the courage to sing us a song and we decide to steer the conversation somewhere else when he asks what we think of Japan. Satisfied with lunch and our new friend, we leave and soon Shelby and I part ways once again with the Germans and we start right into a climb late in the day. We camp in a forest near the top, we have a fire which we almost never do and settle down to rest after an eventful day.

We’re the attraction

There is a difference between being a curiosity to people and feeling like you're an attraction at the zoo. China really loves to oscillate between the two with us never really knowing how an interaction is going to go when we meet someone on the street. I probably have been on guard since our run of bad luck in Vietnam where people were incredibly instrusive with us with taking photos, manhandling us to get in their photos and a final bad experience of a man asking me if he could “get to know” (have sex with) Shelby. Its probably why I was on guard after a man followed us in his electric cart vehicle for over half an hour. Why we never got our translators out, I don’t know but hindsight is 20/20.

We had just made our way onto a bike path around Yilong lake and were keen to check out some trees that were blossoming. Right as we got on the path, a man on the road stopped us and asked where we were from. Its one of the few questions we can answer in Chinese and we say we’re American. He says some other things and we decide to get going down the path as it was getting to be late afternoon and we say goodbye after he gets out his phone to take pictures or video of us without asking. Shortly after though, this man is driving next to the bike path in his electric cart and is yelling things at us. Its kind of funny at first but it persists. Anytime we say something to him, his phone comes out and he is recording. If we look at him, the phone comes out and he records us. When I get my camera out, he gets his to record us. After thirty minutes of this, I get annoyed and I get defensive and end up yelling

“Bu Yao!” with all the wrong tones I’m sure. It means “don’t want” and I yelled it multiple times loudly and then turned around to go the other direction. The man finally stopped following us. The few videos I got of him yelling at us are hard to understand according to some friends who are Chinese. He maybe was trying to help us take photos or find a place to stay? Either way, the language barrier was huge, it felt invasive and next time Shelby said I shouldn't yell.

We cycle down the path to the blossoms and a few people wave us over through the crowds of people posing for photos. They ask about our trip with translators and then gift us some fruit they're selling but not before they record them giving us the fruit which is kind of funny. Sometimes it seems like photos and videos are more the activity than whatever the activity is actually supposed to be. We eat our fruit and watch as everyone poses for photos but no one seems to be taking the time to look at the flowers after they pose with them.

Down the cycle path we go until evening when we find a spot off the path, the wind dies down and the skeeters come out in force as we dash into the tent. Shelby goes “Snake” mode and kills all the skeeters that made it inside the tent and we sleep soundly.

While I was riding alone through China, I accidentally entered a military restricted zone. I wrote a blog and a silly song about the experience but the worst part about the whole thing was an Aussie cyclist we’d briefly met a year before calling me a “combatant” and saying China had a right to defend itself after I posted about my experience (Tankies are wild). After reading through a cycling group chat of China, turns out its something that just kind of happens. The restricted zones are confidential, there are no signs and you just kind of wander in, get questioned, your stuff searched and they kindly escort you out. Not the funnest experience but really not that horrible of one as everyone was calm and as kind as they could be given the circumstances

I’d be a liar if it didn't cross my mind that maybe they would say something to me when I crossed back into China and I was a bit nervous they'd question me about it. Turns out I had nothing to be worried about, this border had been the most normal and orderly crossing yet. Minus the guards who said to Shelby

“We like your president” with a tad of a mocking tone.

“I don’t” As Shelby walked away.

It’s amazing how much politics comes up while you're travelling abroad.

After two police checkpoints, it feels like we’re really in China as we cycle in the dark to our wild camp. The next day, we actually ran back into our friends Evelyn and Alex as they were eating egg fried rice. We decided to meet for dinner later which involved us walking into restaurants, translating menus and us all trying to decide if we would eat there or not. I’m probably the least picky eater out of the four, I like spicy food and I eat meat and I was a hungry cyclist. I may have gotten a little impatient wanting to stuff my face with literally anything as the group deliberated where we would go entering and exiting different establishments.

“So like a child” Evelyn laughs a bit.

We’re talking about different ways people eat food as we struggled to get the last pieces of rice from our bowls with chopsticks. I had just told a story about how a former girlfriend’s Czech grandma roasted me for how I used a knife and fork. Turns out Americans have a way of using our cutlery that is seen as childish in much of Europe.

Rice Terraces of Yuanyang

We convinced Alex and Evelyn to go cycle up to the famous rice terraces of Yuanyang. They couldn’t find any cheap tours or alternatives to get up there from the town we were in so we shared where we were going to camp the next night. If I’m being honest, I thought Shelby and I were going to smoke them up the mountain. In reality, they left behind some non-essentials like camp chairs at their hotel and left before we did in the morning.

“I don’t know if I can make it. There is a nice loft here for 17 Euro we could take.” Evelyn says as we meet at a restaurant in a town high in the mountains still a few hours away from our intended campspot. The room seems exquisite for only 17 Euro and I would be tempted to hide in a nice accommodation like that too if I was struggling a bit.

I can tell she is drained and dreading more climbing to the rice terraces but looking at her, it seemed like she was having a mental block more than a physical one. She has been riding a bike that weighs between 90-100lbs (40-45kg) for over a year now and she had just left a lot of her stuff behind to make this overnight trip into the mountains. There was no way she physically couldn't not do this, Alex and her had legs of steel from slogging their camp chairs across Eurasia. Some encouraging words and she was out on the bike climbing, never far behind Shelby and I.

The terraces didn't disappoint and we had an epic camp spot on top of an abandoned building with a little view of an UNESCO heritage site.

Climbing

Shelby and I did our best to avoid climbing in Vietnam, mostly because the roads were a bit steep for Shelby to go too quickly on and we wanted out of the heat sooner rather than later because they’re legs we’re suffering from heat rash. We’re in Yunnan, China which is known for it’s mountains and our route to Kunming from Yuanyang had very little that was flat. I wasn’t exactly sure how we were going to go on the climbs but after watching Shelby tackle the 5 or 6,000 feet of climbing to the Yuanyang Rice Terraces, I figured we'd be fine.

“You kind of get into a groove where you can start knocking mountain passes out one after the other. You're exhausted all the time, it is never easy but somehow you're able to do climb after climb.” I think I’d been talking about my time in the Andes where I regularly climbed passes over 16,000ft (4,900m). Really I was kind of stealing a line from an Australian park ranger we had met who had done some cycle touring of his own.

“It never gets easier… but you get better at it.”

Once we finally got out of Hanoi, our breathing got heavier and it seemed difficult to fill our lungs completely with air. It may have been due to the fact that the sun was a reddish orange color in the haze of some of the worst air pollution I'd ever seen. By the end of our first day, I felt like I was having mild asthma and was grateful to hide indoors at least partially from the seemingly toxic air outside. The heat carried on and we had dreams of cooler weather and clear skies in China.

“Hello!”

My concentration on getting further was broken by one of the many hellos people yell at us from the streets but this time it wasn't from a local but from two friends. Alex and Evelyn were drinking coffee at a cafe a few kilometers from where their homestay was. I was dead set on tackling a steep hill that lay between us and this homestay and all of a sudden the brakes were hit and I remembered to try and enjoy the moment as we sat down to chat before heading over to the homestay.

Heavy Bikes

When I’d started my Pan American adventure, I’d been extremely lightweight for the adventure I was setting out on. Roughly 19,000 miles (30,000km) and I had about 45-50 liters of packing space with my uke strapped on top of my dry bag that was in turn strapped to my handle bars. It seems like most cyclists start off with too much stuff and slowly get rid of the things they don't need. I felt like I did the opposite where over the course of several years I slowly added things I didn't need and some things I didn't even use. Most notably was a Calvin and Hobbes book in Spanish I had bought in Argentina with the intention to use it as practice for language learning. I carried that thing up to 16,000ft I don’t know how many times and I only read the first few pages over the course of a year and a half.

Alex and Evelyn are suffering from too much stuff on some extra heavy bike frames. We spent two nights together at the homestay with the owners doing their best to get us to drink the “Happy Water” (homemade rice wine). I was quite honestly zapped from the heat and pollution and welcomed some time to do very little but drink coffee, sit in A/C, take a dip in a resovuoir and talk with Alex and Evelyn. The conversation turned to their bikes and how the weight was weighing them down emotionally and mentally.

A Day Riding

We left to ride a day together and on all the hills our friends would come to an immediate crawl as we cycled past them. On the downhills though, they’d come barreling past us on their tank like bikes and us catching back up to them on the next hill. We kept a good pace and even though Shelby and I are a bit faster, we never waited for long to see Evelyn and Alex coming around the bend.

A stop at a small restaurant on the side of the road saw the saddest bowl of rice noodles i’d ever seen. My personal bowl was decent with a bit of color, so were Evelyn’s and Alex’s. Shelby’s though came out in a bowl of hot water and plain rice noodles the shade of printer paper. They're a vegetarian in a country where vegetarians are a rare sight, especially in the rural areas. It wasn’t the first time they were served something extremely plain but at least they did their best to give them something they could eat.

After a day of riding and having to turn back to a town after an accommodation wasn’t able to take us for the night, we ate dinner.

“Mustard can be quite spicy if the seeds are ground very fine.”

I laughed a bit at the though of mustard being spicy and I’ m a bit grateful the culture of spicy food has drifted into the US from Mexico. We get some ice cream and then head to a ten dollar hotel for the night completely spent from pedalling our loaded bikes in the heat all day.

Same Route Different Paces

The next day saw us deciding to do our own things because our paces and styles were maybe a little different. Shelby and I took a long swim break to cool down from the heat and the Germans rolled up while we were drying off. They hadn’t done a lot of swimming in SE Asia because they had gotten sick from some other swimming holes which to be fair, there is a lot of pollution in this part of the world, the worst I’ve personally ever seen. But the heat, the very blue water and us egging on our overheating compatriots saw them jumping in and their core temperature dropping even in the crazy heat.

We got lunch together and said goodbye as Shelby and I decided to tackle a pass under the afternoon sun, trying to get as far as we could because the next day would see us arriving at the Chinese border.

Lao Cai

We spent several days in Lao Cai getting ready for China and trying to enjoy the last good coffee and bread we would have for quite awhile. We got our VPNs set up, made sure our Chinese apps were up and running and had one night out with Evelyn and Alex sipping rice wine and reminiscing about Vietnam. The endless photos, stares, good coffee, bahn mi, majestic mountains, the pollution, traffic, history and our own stories from back home. There was probably no better way for us to end our time in a country we all had mixed feelings about than talking with friends we’d hopefully see down the road.

We’d been hearing about Hanoi traffic maybe for as long as we’d been in SE Asia. The scooters and motos acting like giant schools of fish moving in a huge mass but somehow no one was hitting eachother and luckily no one was hitting us. Not until we saw a scooter seemingly almost get sucked under the rear end of a truck. We hop onto the sidewalk around him while the truck driver gets out to help the guy right his overturned scooter. Shelby said the scooter hit the edge of the sidewalk at a weird angle and thats why he fell over. We plop off the sidewalk and continue on further into the heart of the city.

“Its a left!” Shelby yells over the idling traffic. They're leading us through the city, they dart, I follow closely behind.

Left hand turns scare me sometimes, you have to somehow cross the sea of metal and petrol fumes as endless waves of scooters go forward. I shoot ahead and dodge pedestrians and end up getting stuck behind a car who can’t make its way forward down a narrow street. I look around and I don’t see Shelby for a minute until I see that they didn't make the left hand turn but turned right and U turned so they wouldn’t have to make the dangerous left I just made. Smart…

The small streets are crazy but following Shelby makes it easy for me. I don’t have to think as much as they listen to directions in their ear buds and weave their way through the ever narrowing streets as the Old Quarter gets nearer and nearer. A quick stop for coffee in a seemingly nice cafe makes us feel out of place in our cycling clothes that are soaked through with sweat. We get our bearings, enter a small dark alleyway and we’re in a studio loft apartment that will be home for our time in Hanoi.

Our goal in Hanoi is to stay long enough until we get bored. Really we mean long enough to rest from the road and recharge our mental and physical batteries.

The Germans

“I couldn’t sleep at all last night. This British girl came back to the hostel late and was drunk crying talking to her boyfriend on the phone. She was all like

‘I love you! How could you!”

We met back up with the Germans in Hanoi who were all staying in the same dorm room right in the center of the Old Quarter. Alex is telling us the chronicle of a young British backpacker who is apparently having long distance boyfriend issues. I’m living for the secondhand drama of their dorm as we eat bahn mi.

We meet up for drinks after a late lunch and chat about the road, Asia, politics and upcoming China. Chris seems like he has had the time of his life in Asia so far with many exciting stories and adventures to talk about. Alex and Evelyn seemed to have had a rougher time in SE Asia not having enjoyed the food, densely populated landscapes or the weather. They’d cycled from Germany all the way to Turkey and then took a flight to Malaysia. Thats when it seems like they got worn down from food poisoning, being sick and a culture vastly different from their own. They seemed rather burnt out and missing a lot of things from back home. One thing we all agreed on for Vietnam though was that the coffee is amazing and we need to drink as much as we can before going to China where a good coffee is expensive and rare.

We’ll Never Leave

We hang out with the Germans a few more times before they set off, Chris is taking a flight to Korea to meet up with a French woman he’d met when he started this trip and Alex and Evelyn towards the Chinese border on a path we would follow soon.

“She was really dressed like she was going out to party, I don’t think it went well with her boyfriend back home. She didn't show back up to the hostel last night.” Alex updates us on the loud British girl and the hostel dorm drama.

We were supposed to leave the day after Alex and Evelyn left but when Shelby and I woke up, we didn’t have the motivation and spent one more day in Hanoi. I got my teeth cleaned, bought a mesh shirt to help regulate the crazy heat and drank so much delicious Robusta coffee.

The next day we made it from the Old Quarter only to the north end of the city. My hip flexor was giving me sharp shooting pain and I could barely keep up with Shelby, normally its the other way around. We stop after I swore quite loudly and then I laid in a cafe’s hammock for several hours until we could check into a new room. We went only 7 kilometers that day.

The next day sees us crossing the Red River out of Hanoi and us jumping into some back roads and paths. I offer to take over navigating from Shelby who lead us out of the city. I tried to outsmart our mapping apps and ended up leading us over a different bridge right back into the Hanoi. I cursed and laughed as we got to the other side and drank some coconut water a woman wearing a hijab gave us as we cycled over the bridge. It seems like we would never leave Hanoi.

Camping on the beach

The sun had set, the dirt path that had turned to deep sand in sections was near a luxury golf course that we managed to miss. I watched as the fishing boats set up in deeper water, their lights creating an unbroken dotted line across the horizon. Its late, I’m tired and I walk through the sand back to our temporary home for the night kicking little granules onto my calves which stick to me in the heat.

Bzzzzzzzz

I climb into the tent with Shelby and the mosquitoes are out in force as the wind dies down and the darkness settles. Styrofoam lines the coast whereve we run into it and my bike is even leaning against one massive chunk by the tent. In some forested sections of coastline, you can see where storm waters surged deep into the foliage and left the rubbish behind stuck on bushes and trees seemingly destined to live there until the environmental movement gains traction in this part of the world and someone picks it up. We drift asleep to the hum of mosquitoes safe in our little oven of a tent.

Telling A Story

“I don’t feel like I’m telling a good story.”

I’m complaining in a restaurant about how I haven't been enjoying posting on social media. It requires me to spend a bit more time than I’d like on my phone trying to edit together clips about our journey. Travelling alone, I had more downtime to do the combing of footage and taking time to write but now I’m spending time with my partner. It feels a bit odd to ask to stop talking while we’re in a tent so that I can edit some videos to post online.

Writing feels different though, maybe its because of the anonymity of not having to speak into a camera or that I feel you have more control in how you tell your story. Maybe its nicer because you don’t have to make any noise while stealth camping when writing about your day.

Its dark, I’ve ranted too much and its time to leave our dinner spot. We stop for a fun drink at a cafe and then cycle out of the touristy area on a new and wide side road.

Arf arf arf!

A little ankle biter comes at us but he can’t keep up and loses interest walking back to his little dog home. The street lights disappear and we’re in darkness besides the beam of our head lamps.

“Turn off your light!”

The glow of a few fireflies turn on and off in front of us as we continue down the dark road away from the nice hotels and hostels. Its nothing like what I’ve seen living and travelling in the eastern US but its nice nonetheless. Its whimsical to be cycling out here in the dark as we make our way to our camp spot.

Camp for the night is an abandoned resort or maybe not even abandoned but never finished. There is little to no property tax in Vietnm and apparently people get some type of tax write off keeping a half finished building on their property.

We find a spot in the back under the skeleton of a two story building with no walls but at least a roof above us. Some frogs ribbet in a way that makes me think someone is on the second floor even though there are no stairs to get up there. Shelby assures me its not human as we crawl into our tent with the fly off and try to lay as still as possible to not generate any heat in the hot humid air. We wake up sticky, but satisfied not having paid for a night in a dorm even though they’re so cheap.

Germans

We saw three nice bicycles outside of our hostel. We’d only cycled 30 km but our frames and wheels are coated in red dirt from a side road near the ocean we took. Another bike is also covered in colorful red dirt telling stories of off road travels.

We’re walking away from from dinner at a vegetarian restaurant and I see a tall thin white guy standing outside of another dinner spot. I glance at him maybe how all the Vietnamese glance at us as we walk down the street. I see two other white people paying for food at the front.

“Excuse me. Are you cycling by chance?”

“Yes! Those must be your bikes that showed up today at the hostel!”

They look like cyclists and i’m probably a little bit too proud that I guessed who they were in public. Evelyn and Alex are a couple who have been cycling for a year. Chris is also German and has been cycling for some time. They all started in Germany but took flights to SE Asia to skip the winter of Central Asia. Chris had just come from Laos which is famous for it red dirt roads that are in horrible condition.

Shelby introduces them to Mixue, a Chinese ice cream chain. Walking with our sweet treats, we take photos with curous kids and teenagers who build the courage to ask us in this non touristic town.

“Dude, lets ride the go-karts!”

The town has a park with a bunch of go karts and small two wheeled kids motos that Shelby and I hop onto. I’d seen one of Shelby’s friends post about doing these while she was in Vietnam and I’d been dying to try. We’re zipping with all the kids trying not to hit them as we have a blast. The Germans patiently sit on the side like our parents as we run around like kids at the playground. One kid impresses me doing drifted circles on his kart everytime we cross paths. Its a fun night and its spent in good company with three new friends, all with a common interest in traveling slowly by our own power on a bicycle.

In the morning, we say goodbye and I have a feeling we would meet further down the road. We pedal off as they stay the day in town and get their bikes ready to a bus ride to avoid some of the heat of beautiful and complex Vietnam.

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! YOU BITCH!”

Shelby yelled this from behind me as a little ankle biter actually got close to wrapping its teeth around their ankles. It snarled and sprinted trying to get its head up high enough to get Shelby as they passed by. I already knew I needed a break to hide away from the stares of people and seeing Shelby yell at this little dog with such visceral feeling solidified my view that we needed a break. We had had two days of weird encounters and needed a hideaway.

Day 1

We stopped in a small village for breakfast after staying in a homestay the night before. Shelby usually is the first one to go up since they’re vegetarian and need to make sure that they can eat. Some laughs, smiles and giggles later, we have some pho in front of us. A man at a table next to us is staring which is actually quite normal. If you don’t look like people from here, especially in the more rural areas, people are going to stare and you do just have to get used to it. What was different about this guy was he got up from his table, sat down at ours and continued to stare a few feet away from us. We say hello in Vietnamese and English but he doesn’t greet us back as we eat our pho. We decide to ignore him but then he stares and doesn't say anything occasionally looking at his phone. Usually when you catch someone looking and lock eyes, people feel a little embarrassed and look away but when I stared back, he maybe glanced at his phone for a second but then he went right back to it. He had his mouth slightly ajar as his gaze shifted from me and then to Shelby. After fifteen minutes of this, I wrote into the translator

“Why are you staring at us?”

He waves his hands as I put my phone in front of his face and he keeps staring. I realize he maybe can't read and play the second message out loud.

“Please stop staring. It is rude.”

He finally got the hint, said “caphe” and left. We went to pay for breakfast and the ladies charged us double what a normal soup would be which we paid and left feeling a bit like a circus show with mediocre pho in our stomachs.

The landscape was pretty here though with karsts filling the landscape which eventually changed to big hills, small mountains and agriculture. The heat had picked up as we pulled into a truckstop to use the bathroom and hide in the shade. This truckstop had a shower, score! I take my shirt off under some shady trees by the side of the building looking for my soap in my bag. One guy starts walking directly up to Shelby but doesn't see me on the other side of the tree my bike is leaning against. I say hello and then he notices me, pretends like he was looking for something behind the bathroom and walks away as quickly as he came. A bit odd but ok.

There is a bus that is refuelling with passengers on board. It seems like they're middle aged women who take notice of us and start to slowly gawk at us from afar but start to close the distance saying hello. Shelby makes a joke that they're looking at me because I don’t have a shirt on and I do my best to ignore them as I dig through my bag for soap and a towel. The ladies make they’re way to us and I’m increasingly on edge but they go right past me and up right to Shelby who is sitting. They practically sit on them and immediately start taking photos.

“I think they’re drunk!” is what Shelby yells at me as this gaggle of ladies swarms around Shelby. Shelby tries to stand and then the ladies start to pull Shelby physically where they want them in their photo shoot. I’m increasingly getting more angry as they start to manhandle Shelby like they’re a cute plush doll. I tried to get my phone out to tell them to stop but I’d turned it off because it was overheating. One of the ladies then comes to me and starts trying to take a selfie and I repeatedly say no! I put my hand over her camera and she physically removes it multiple times with an annoyed look before I walk away behind a tree. These women have no shame and treat us like we’re goats at the petting zoo. I didn't see it but Shelby said one of the woman looked like she worked for the bus company and had a concerned look on her face. Shelby said “goodbye” in Vietnamese and this woman with the bus company started to shuffle the drunk ladies back to the bus as I’m getting more and more heated. As they round the corner I give them the bird and start cursing at them as they get back on their bus.

The bus pulls away and I’m fuming as I take a shower failing to really cool off. When I come out clean, Shelby tells me how another man approached them and tried to touch their tattoos, asked if they had kids (which might just be small talk here) and then asked who the other bike belonged to.

“my boyfriend.”

He immediately backed off not because Shelby said no but because I am their boyfriend and it seems he respects another man rather than someone who looks like Shelby. When Shelby went to take a shower, this guy made licking motions from his truck as they entered the stall.

“I hate men!”

I don’t particularly like when this is said because well, I am a man but to be honest, it makes sense why this sentence gets said a lot.

We cycle away as a new group of men arrive to talk to us but we don’t want to.

“Fuck this truckstop and fuck this region!”

School just got out and this fills the roads with young people on bikes and scooters. Two young guys give me a cold water bottle which is so sweet and puts me into a better mood. Five minutes later, two young guys on scooters going the other way cross into my lane with big smiles. I start to wave hello but they spray me with some liquid and laugh as they speed away. That kind of broke me a little after everything else that day.

We pull into a town, get groceries and ignore all the kids and adults who are gawking and starting to surround our bikes. Normally we’d smile and be good sports but after everything today, we left without saying hello.

We decided to camp by a reservoir and some really nice teens talked to us as the sun set and gave Shelby some hair clips. As we pushed our bikes up a dirt road after washing the day away and the sun had already set we got swarmed by termites. They crawled everywhere, into our backpacks, on our faces, into our hair as the winged bugs searched for a new home apparently on our bikes. We cycled down the hill and onto the dam and picked termites off of eachother under the footpath light in the dark. The wings of the termites littered our bikes as they lose their wings when they land. It was a rough day.

Day 2

The next day of actual cycling wasn’t horrible as we got to the coast. The heat was insane and it drained us of energy. We chatted with a military officer at our lunch spot who, when we told him we were Americans, funnily said

“I thought you were maybe American” pointing towards Shelby “but you I thought were from somewhere else.”

I already have a clue on what he’s going to say but prod him to go on as he searches for the word in English.

“I thought you were Arab.”

I burst out laughing. While cycling in Mexico, I’d been called Taliban or Osama Bin Laden.

Later on as we cycle down a bike path, two girls on a scooter flip us off as they ride by us. I look on in disbelief as I turn my head and give these young girls the bird!

“Did you see that Jace?”

“Yeah! I flipped them off!”

“What? No! They we’re giving us Korean hearts!”

I’d mistaken their Korean hearts sign as them giving us the finger. I felt bad and was mortified when they pulled up next to us. I started to apologize in English profusely but they either didn't see my bird or didn't care. They asked for photos and we’re quite nice in the end. This is when I realized I needed a break, when I started to look at everyone suspiciously and assume ill intent.

Two young guys further down the road come cycle by us on bikes and they’re actually sweet. We chat. One of the guys is recording which prompts me to get my camera out and its a nice interaction. We wave goodbye as they cycle home after the sun has set. We set up our tent by the ocean in the trash that litters Vietnam’s coastline.

The Man Outside Our Tent

Its hot and we’re both partially naked trying to not move or generate any heat. Our tent flaps are open and that’s when a light suddenly shines into our tent and Shelby screams. We yell to go away, we’re naked but of course he does not speak English. I get him to come to my side of the tent where we both get our translators out.

“Sorry, we were startled, we didn't have our clothes on.”

“Thats, ok, that’s normal… I saw your lights and thought it strange and came over to see if you were fisherman.”

“nope, we’re travelling by bicycle.”

“Is this your wife?”

I respond yes even though Shelby is not my wife and is non-binary.

“I really like European girls, can you help me get a European girls numbers?”

“no, probably not man.”

“Its been so long since I’ve relieved myself… could I get to know your wife?”

Did this guy just ask if he could have sex with my “wife”? What the fuck!

“No, absolutely not. Its better you go now.”

“Oh, yeah, I was going to go to sleep early tonight.”

He walks away but then comes right back shining his light into Shelby’s side of the tent. I shine my light full blast back into his face and he leaves. I tell Shelby what he asked and another “I hate men” comes out. After everything thats happened the past two days, maybe i’m also onboard with this.

The next day, we’re both on edge after a sleepless night afraid the guy would come back, Shelby almost gets bit by a tiny dog and we decide to take a rest day in a touristy town a days ride away. Tam Coc, its filled with foreigners and we blend right in and don’t have anyone staring at us. We sleep soundly that night in a homestay not worrying about creepy men coming by in the night.

Vietnam’s Mountain roads proved to be steep as we slowly made our way to Da Nang. Our first day cycling I got pretty impatient with Shelby as we had had a late start and our pace had dropped to something much slower than I was used to as the hills here are steep. We talked about it over lunch and I had to change my expectations for what we would cycle in a day while in the mountains and I apologized. The main plan was to cycle to Da Nang and then up the coast to cooler weather in the north.

“You need to mix it more” Is what our host said to us when we got dry noodles after showing up.

A Dutch man travelling by motorcycle had his bowl taken away and the owner of the hostel started to mix it for him. He was getting babied by a woman his age while Shelby and I exchanged glances laughing a little as the Dutch man looked uncomfortable and unable to do anything to stop his bowl from being properly mixed. I passed on taking her yoga class and got a coffee instead.

Vietnamese coffee is delicious and addictive. They use Robusta beans which are stronger than Arabica beans used in the west and their extraction method is something called a Phin (like a French press but filtered) makes a concentrated dose. Cafes are everywhere, its cheap and I know I have to enjoy this before going back to China. Shelby comes back after awhile and we walk around the town and drop into what seems like a small fair but with loud music, lights and almost no one dancing. Its very Vietnamese.

Waterfall Camping

We had read online we could pay to camp at a waterfall near Da Nang. We did a big day to get there and by the time we arrived it was dark and no one was at the entrance except a few barking dogs, notably a fluffy white one who seemed like she wanted to bite my face. We set up our tent, ate bahn mis and laid down. Around 8PM a motorcycle pulled up right beside us and shined their light into our tent blinding us. In broken English he asks “Where from!” it seems kind of aggressive and I get out of the tent.

“Woman!” pointing at Shelby to get out too.

We’re unsure how this is going to go, are we about to have our stuff searched? Is he going to kick us out? Call the police?

“Phone!”

He means a translator which Shelby gets out.

“Here in Vietnam, we take security very seriously.”

Ok, this isn’t going to go well.

“Thats why you'll be safe here with me. I’m police.”

Oh, this is starting to go much better.

“Please come up to the house and I’ll feed you”.

We’d already ate but went up anyways. He was a little drunk but the good kind of happy drunk. He grabs our hands to get us past his barking dogs with a comment about how the fluffy white one hates men (I knew it!). We talked for awhile and he was really excited to have us there. Do we like the food? The people? Beautiful country. Eventually the Vietnam war came up and through the translator told us about it.

“I hide in a cellar for ten years. We build tunnels everywhere and no one could find us! No food during this time. Kids today don’t have to struggle like we did. Now its peace and we’re friends with the US. Trump even came by to do business recently.” I like everything he has to say except the last bit but it was kind of incredible for him to tell us a bit about being a teenager during the war. The Vietnam War is such a part of American culture in films, movies, memes online which still get posted and here we are in the place where all that content originated. Maybe we expected people to be cold with us because we are Americans and our country has done horrible things here but really, people have been nothing but wonderful and meeting this man really was a cool experience to at least get a glimpse of a view from someone who lived it.

I told my parents about going to Da Nang the next day.

“You're Uncle Doug served in Da Nang on the base there”.

Crazy to think that this man we’d been invited to have food with was not too far from a family member who was on the otherside of the war. Life is crazy.

Da Nang

Nothing too special happened in Da Nang besides eating good food, catching up with Eric from the Netherlands who had cycled from Laos to here and us planning our road north through the heat and humidity of the Vietnamese coast.

We pull into a temple for Shelby to use the bathroom and Charlene pulls in a little while after. She parks her bike and walks to the edge of the driveway and immediately blows chunks. Shelby gives her some tissues and hurries off to do their business. We had decided to go back to the main road because Charlene was feeling ill and didn't have a lot of energy when we were en route. It turns out to be a good call because I later have diarrhea and the only thing I can assume is that it was the boiled eggs i’d made for breakfast had been bad and Shelby somehow got the one good one. We pile three into a hotel room and Charlene offers to take the floor, it's a short day but its ok since its hot anyways.

Bolaven Plateau

I maybe have had a habit of convincing people to come cycle with me and then dragging them on some crazy dirt roads that involve a cartilage grinding amount of climbing. I convinced two Quebecers to come cycle the Peru Divide with me in rainy season which was not the best idea on my part if the goal was for them to have fun. I took a former partner into the Patagonian steppe with a seat that was far too small and she got pulverised on the washboarded gravel (I still feel bad about this one, sorry Claire!). Then Shelby came with me to the flattest continent on Earth where I proceeded to lead us into the mountains of said flat continent.

We had our first real climbing of the trip onto the Bolaven Plateau and I wasn't quite sure how it would go as Shelby had had their ankle calcify in Australia from overuse and a heavy ungreased bike. Would the calcification return and we’d have to make other plans? Would Charlene be a speed demon on the climbs after spending a year building muscles across Euroasia? None of the above happened, Shelby's ankle held up, Charlene was a turtle on the climbs like us and we had fun visiting waterfalls and camping in cool weather while drinking lovely coffee. Locals yelled hello and a few young teens at a waterfall worked up the courage to ask us for photos. It is interesting to see that Shelby and Charlene went swimming in two piece bathing suits and of the young teens, the boys were without a shirt and shorts but the girls basically went in fully clothed. Just a note from the different cultures we come from and what is and isn’t accepted.

A Birthday

Charlene turned 27 while we were together and she actually changed her route that would include a huge descent off the plateau only to climb back up so that she could spend it with us. She almost joined the 27 club on that huge descent as she went to pass Shelby, a van was behind her also passing and uncharacteristic of the area, didn't honk when it went to pass. The van veers left, slows down and barely misses Charlene as we speed by dodging huge potholes in the notoriously bad roads of Laos.

We got to our camp spot, an abandoned stilt house next to a stream where we wiped the grime off, cooled down in the now hot weather and made mackerel ramen dinner with some small cakes for dessert. Happy Birthday was sung and Shelby serenaded with a few of their classic songs they play.

The next day saw us descending even more away from the plateau, the heat picking up and the inevitability of us parting ways with our new French friend. A coffee together, a stop at a closed gas station for the bathroom and a goodbye that hopefully we’ll maybe see each other in China. Safe travels to Singapore friend.

Next for us was three big climbs to get into Vietnam and hopefully cooler weather.

“I’m a millionaire” Charlene says excitedly waving her money in a small village as an old woman watches from across the street while we gather around an ATM. Charlene is wild, excited and seemingly has no social anxiety as we navigate new situations together as a newly formed bike trio. About 20 minutes earlier we almost lost her as she had her head down in the rain and swerved to avoid a truck parked in our lane and didn’t see a bus coming in the other. It would have been a shame because we made a pretty good group I’d say.

Don Det and politics

Don Det is a touristy spots in southern Laos, its become quite popular with European tourists, especially French as we may have heard more French than Laos or English. We meet at least five other cyclists either on the island or just near the ferry to it. Its a popping spot.

“You chose the right mode of transport. You don’t have to worry about the oil shortage.”

A backpacker says this to me because Thailand has just stopped importing oil to Laos because Thailand imports oil from the Middle East. My country has just started dropping bombs in conjunction with Israel and its infuriating to see this happen and I’m embarrassed for what our orange puff of a leader is doing.

We stop to chat up a German bike traveler eating lunch which then leads us to chat up a German couple who are interested in our bikes. One of the guys starts talking politics with me and for the most part I agree in some way or another with him on how crazy the US has gotten. One thing interesting I found was him saying it feels like a betrayal from a friend which he is very right to feel. After awhile I move the conversation onto something else because talking about US politics starts to feel repetitive, unproductive and really, just sad for me.

Kids

If kids in Cambodia were excited to see us then the kids in the 4,000 Islands part of Laos were positively manic to come say hello. Hello or Sabideeeeeee (Hello in Lao) are heard all day as we cycle and take ferries from island to island on dirt trails and small paved roads. Sometimes it feels like the kids are just waiting for some cyclist to pass through so they can yell a greeting at them. Small tiny voices drifting from the shadows of homes. Aggressive, short hellos from young boys, a gaggle of kids sprinting across a field to say hello in the afternoon heat. One kid yells hello and we respond and every other kid in town must have heard our foreign voices because more greetings come from seemingly thin air and I can’t seem to locate where all of the voices originate from.

Kids hear us coming and line up on the street to yell at us and stick their hands out for high fives. A couple cheeky ones pull their hands back as we go to high five them. Syke, they got us in a move my older brothers used on me as a kid which brought back memories. I even hear the highest pitched “fuck you, fuck you” i’ve ever heard in my life which is almost adorable as he sticks the tiniest middle fingers at us while we pass and he smiles.

Some kids on bikes speed past us, they’re young and slowly outpace Shelby and Charlene on our tank like bikes loaded with non-essentials. I decide to race them and speed ahead on the dirt road and I start to yip loudly as they turn their heads.

“wowwwwwww!” They both say, seemingly like they’d just seen superman pass. Those kids were a lot of fun.

Charlene stops in the middle of a raised one lane dirt path as a pickup comes down going the other way. The three girls in the back seat are ecstatic to say hello and stick their hands out to high five as the pickup somehow gets around Charlene’s loaded touring bike. Never have I ever had an experience quite like this and the other cyclists we meet who have done this route say they recieved a similar treatment of hellos. Near the end of our day, a kid sprints at us leaving a game he’d been playing in a school yard. We’re too slow and he outpaces us with a huge smile and stops as we pedal away from the village into the dusk.

We meet three other bike travelers that day. A French and Argentinian couple cycling the world and later a young American from Hillsboro, Oregon. I was surprised when he knew my hometown, nice to meet you Ryan!

Sleep

We push on in the setting sun and the hellos dwindle with the light. We found a nice covered shelter by the Mekong river where we jump into to wash off our grime. Later we read that the Mekong is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, but we luckily didn’t start itching later that night. The rain starts to pitter patter and Charlene must move her tent as there is a hole in the roof above her.

This had to be one of the most unique and fun days of my trip so far with manic kids running around. It made me think of my more wild nieces and nephews who if they lived in a place that allowed them to run and yell at strangers, they probably would.

“Four dollar”

We have two one dollar bills that are being saved for a potential stamp fee bribe from the border guards. We don’t have four dollars in dollars.

“We don’t have four dollars. How much in Riel?”

“Four dollar”

This goes back and forth for ten minutes, we know how much 4 dollars is in Riel but already know we’re getting scammed since our photos will be taken by the border guards. They won’t give a price in Riel when we ask and only repeat to us more aggressively.

“Four dollar!”

They try to shove the Riel back into our hands and when we put our hands up, he throws it on the ground and the Cambodian money scatters across the shack’s floor. I pick it up and we walk back to the border guards to ask if we can pay the boys in Riel. They nod yes and we go back to the shack with the aggressive teenage boys, hand them a bit more Riel and they hand over our passport photos. Children acting like children but also, I’m trying to avoid getting scammed for an amount of money that is very low for me.

Our visa forms are filled, we pay the offical $40 visa fee and they ask us to sit while they process it. They call us back up and our photos are taken again and then they ask for two dollars each for the stamp. Its an unofficial fee and my ego was just hurt by some teenagers boys which shouldn’t have gotten to me. I start to contest the fee and point that there are no signs that say to pay $2 for a “stamp fee”. After one minute he ignores me and I stare standing at the window until he gets up and pretends to do something else. I’m ready to wait.

Shelby and I sit and watch independent travellers pay the stamp fee and pass through with smiles.

“Shit, let’s move our bikes, that bus might hit them.”

We go move our bikes off the road and onto the sidewalk. We grab our journals, battery banks, water and look like we’re ready to settle in, even laughing a bit. That’s when a man waves Shelby and I back up as they still have our passports behind the counter. It’s a different younger man who listens to the man next to him speak and then he translates.

“I’m sorry there has been confusion on you not knowing about the stamp fee. We’re going to let you pass this time but next time… you need to pay.”

A stern warning but this younger border guard seemed to be deferring to an older gentleman and didn’t seem to care so much. We got our stamps, saved two dollars and salvaged part of my ego. The funniest part about this whole experience was this was Shelby’s first land border crossing. What an introduction.

The roads immediately were of worse quality and we went a short distance to a guesthouse after getting sim cards and exchanging cash. We let Charlene know what to expect and we shower the day’s grime off our overheating bodies. We look at the goats, our phones, Charlene’s progress as she waited out the border guards as well. Dinner is had later that night all together, we’re still a bit hungry at the end and we plan when we’ll make our way to Don Det, one of the few touristic places in the south of Laos.

Charlene has cycled here from France and makes a comment that this has been the worst border crossing of her whole trip.

I’ve looked enviously at around the world cyclists I’ve met who aren’t wearing shoes but instead are donning sandals instead. They're feet have funny tan lines and anytime a rainstorm in a hot climate rolls in, they don’t worry about getting trench foot in shoes that stay warm and maybe take a few days to dry. My turn to join the shoeless cyclists as the heat skyrockets and so does the smell from my tattered shoes.

I buy my sandals just in time as a downpour hits the city and I don’t have to worry about how long it will take my shoes to dry off. This purchase marks the end of our time in the big city and we start our slow progress to Laos the next day.

Leaving Phnom Phen

I didn't have time to really react besides swerving out into the street a little on my bike, Shelby having done the same in front as we leave Phnom Phen. We had just started a rhythm of starting before the sun rose to maximise our cool riding times. We rode by a man who had a sheet of glass the size of our heads who threatened to throw it at us and slice us open Final Destination style. As I glance back at him he has his arm outstretched with the glass in hand staring us down with a death glare. Luckily that was the last of any crazies in Cambodia minus us who continued cycling in this insane heat.

Shelby’s leg broke out in a horrible heat rash and there doesn't seem much we can do to stop it but to limit our time in the hot sun. One day we found a nice hut with hammocks and laid there for the hot part of the day. Another day we ate lunch and then slowly cooked under the metal roof of the restaurant, the fan not cooling us off anymore but just blowing hot air on our overheating bodies. One other day saw Shelby hitting a proverbial wall of exhaustion going up some hills at the end of the day, barely any power as some clouds rolled in and we arrived to a hotel just as the sun set.

What an odd hotel indeed in a small village, not much going on and here is this new building among the metal roofed homes and little shacks put up. Everything worked in the hotel but the elevator and we probably were the only residents for the night. What we didn't know as we discussed making the final push to the Laos border was that we had caught up to Charlene, the French cyclist we met several days earlier. She was camping in a school of the same village where comically they asked her to teach English for the day.

Towards The Laos Border

Strung Treng was filled with trash and really much of Cambodia is filled with plastic and rubber. Some of the nicest people I’ve ever met minus glass panel dude but it is hard to see the trash lining the highways, streets, the Mekong River and knowing most of our trash we throw in a bin will probably end up on the highway or if lucky, burned. Another sad note are the Mekong River Dolphins which are near extinction, we cycled up the trash lined highway to go see a spot where less than 100 still live.

“Push to the border?”

“I don’t need to stay here, let’s cross”

“Food and coffee?”

“Food and coffee.”

We find a western breakfast joint and are sitting when an announcement comes on over loudspeakers. The son of the woman running the little restaurant goes running outside just before hand and I decide to peak my head out and feel like a voyeur into something I’m not supposed to see. The busy market street with people, tuk tuks and scooters has no movement. Everyone is standing still in the middle of the road as the loudspeaker goes off. I duck back into the restaurant and tell Shelby to look and they come back in with wide eyes at the spectacle of stillness on what should be a busy street with movement. We still don’t know what the announcement was. Anthem? Something patriotic? Something specific to this town? Dunno.

US dollars from an ATM that we exchange for denominations of 20s. We’ve heard that the Laos border is corrupt and it is better to have exact change. A quick stop at the pharmacy for some basic supplies and we’re off closing the gap between us and a new country.

“I need water.” says one of us

“next place we see, let’s stop.” Another responds.

There is no shortage of shacks and homes selling water and snacks along the road. We choose a small one and right as we pull up is when two monks get off a motorcycle and go to the shack too. The woman running the shop gives them water bottles, money and then gets on her knees as they chant for her. It feels like another voyeuristic moment as we wait to buy our water. Its only small bottles and we’re to shy to say no and continue on for bigger bottles of water. An interesting glimpse into a world I’m foreign to.

On The Border

“Let’s eat lunch before we cross. Make sure we have everything” I say as we approach the borderlands between Cambodia and Laos.

While sitting next to locals and a smattering of foreigners in the shops before the border gate, I message Charlene to ask how the border crossing went.

“I’m 27 kilometers from the border crossing, where are you?” Charlene texts me.

She hadn’t crossed yet

We unknowingly passed Charlene and made plans to meet up on the Laos side of the border later that night after she crosses. Now its time for us to cross this corrupt border.