The Power of Thumb: And then there was Mum

So once again I’ve accomplished my mission (finally), I’ve done what I set out to do. Trouble and awesomeness have stuck to me like shadows and it’s been quite a ride... But it’s over, it’s almost time for new adventures….

 My shortest distance yet (111 km) took 4 and a half hours and three different rides from Tagong (somewhere Tibetish in China), but that’s okay – I actually had company for a change – one Irishman and a Swiwi (Swiss-Kiwi) - and when in good company, little can go amiss! Apart from your mind that is – especially when you play silly car games. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is trying to think of a song with the word “motorbike” in it? For 2 hours. In aggravated silence.

We flew past crazy icy cliffs and hot springs and waterfalls and all sorts of beautifulnesses with three sets of very non English-speaking Tibetan rides!! The last one was hornless (hooterless) – If you’ve ever been to Asia, you’ll know the horn is the most importantest part of a vehicle. You can ride without wheels or even an engine, but without a hooter, you die. Fortunately we didn’t (because when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go and apparently it wasn’t ours. Yet.).

I joined forces with an Israeli hitcher from Danba and we lucked out with the lovely people from China Mobile who drove us the last 387 km all the way into Chengdu. Stopping on the way to feed us and shower us with gifts and show us ALL the touristy attractions on the way including a 6500 m mountain and the earth quake zone and far too many comunisty signs and monuments and pandas.

And that was that. 2687 km. 18 rides. 18 Chinese and 9 Western converts to the power of them. And then, after two years apart, there was mum.

The Power of Thumb

“May your child be born with a perforated anus…” yes, this is China [I’m pretty sure of it!] and even the profanities are arbitrary. And it’s confusing enough just traipsing through the country without throwing [the yet to be invented in these parts] hitch hiking into the equation – but if a life of bewilderment surrounds you, you may as well immerse yourself in it completely!

It was much harder to say goodbye to my little bicycle [Mao] than I’d anticipated; but it just felt right leaving him with an incredible South African family I met in Jing Hong (Yunnan). They’d had a fixed gear bike for the past 15 years and had just moved to the top of a hill… They needed it a lot more than I did! After days spent wandering, and absorbing the intricacies of the city; I finally decided what I’d be doing next and so, at 10-30 pm last Sunday, I wandered the jumbled streets and bought myself a brand new, bright orange backpack… I was all set for an early departure!

The transition to hitchhikeryness was not nearly as smooth as I’d imagined though. Hitch hiking literally does not exist in China! It took nearly an hour to explain [via google translate] to the poor receptionist at my hostel what I intended to do – but I walked away with a sign and a point in the right direction.

A bit further down the road my sign was added to and I was boarding a bus to the outskirts of the city. I must admit that it’s been a while since my last hitching and it took me some time to suss out the perfect spot and hand actions (the Asian ways are quite different to Western thumbing it). I held up my sign that said who knows what and proudly began the 2500+ km hitch to mum.

An hour in I’d created a few minor traffic jams and had caring civilians point me to the nearest bus station at least 5 times. The heavens opened up and I took shelter in a stranger’s garden. Another hour of failure bestowed itself upon me. It rained again. I questioned my mission. I looked longingly towards the bus terminal. I got a new sign.

And then some cyclists bought with them hope and smiles and while we conversed in Chinglish, a whole string of cars pulled up to find out what was going on… My luck was about to change. 

Cyclist number 1 ran off to find some new cardboard for a sign while cyclist number 2 educated the masses in the ways of alternative transport and then the police pulled up and I got my first ride…

My second ride came from a bus driver who read my new sign and welcomed me aboard – for free. And then talked another bus driver into giving me another free ride. 162 km from Jing Hong, I called it a day and checked myself into a middle of nowhere hotel.

I got an earlier start on the Tuesday with an altered sign that read something about “Lincang” (a reasonable distance to cover in a day) and something about “Dali.” My new backpack broke as I walked out the hotel, but I’ve stitched the shoulder strap back on to the best of my ability, and I’m hoping for the best! I walked up a mountain back to the highway and prayed I’d have better luck than the previous day. I did.

Two business men pulled up in a brand new Audi and off we zoomed at speeds faster than many planes fly. The scenery got better by the turn in the mountainous roads and I clung on so tight my knuckles turned white – My heart was racing so fast that I could hardly eat when they treated me to an immaculate lunch.

At Lincang they tried to drop me off – but I knew they were headed for Dali… it really is harder than it should be to try and explain your actual destination – but in retrospect, I should have seized the opportunity to find a safer ride, the worst of the MANY near death experiences were yet to come!

Dali was so incredible though that I’m not actually sure I survived the 562 km [In less than 5 hours] ride, I may have made it to Heaven: good food and quaint intricacies and an old town abuzz with wild music and the perfect amount of craziness!

I lugged myself away from Dali two days later and lucked out again getting a ride all 234 Km to Li Jiang with two friendly twenty somethings in a VW Polo. Man I wish I spoke Mandarin… there’s so much I could be asking, but car charades is just so limited!   

Li Jiang is a cultural experience you wouldn’t really expect to find in China. It’s constantly humming with millions of local tourists dressed in crazy clothing. People stumble from one ‘yak meat of the naxi sister’ shop to the next, stopping to buy pashminas and colourful leggings and an array of things one could never really use and then bar hopping between gangster rap and rock and acoustic sets and pole dancing and… well, it’s the kind of town you could get lost in for weeks. I spent three days doing just that – but mostly because I have no sense of orientation.

I left Li Jiang with a Mandarin-English dictionary and a shirt that reads “I don’t understand” (in Chinese) and because nobody understood me either, I ended up walking more than 12 km (stopping thrice to escape the torrential cloud breaks) to get out of town to an ideal hitch point.

Finally a car pulled up – but a couple of km down the road I began to suspect something amiss. I fumbled for my dictionary and pointed to the word ‘taxi’ – my suspicions were confirmed and I found myself back on the side of the road. In the rain.

A few minutes later I’d met a lovely family who drove me twenty odd kilometers to the next intersection where three business men took me in and drove me to the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

A final family drove me the last of the 204 Km to Shangri-la (or, as they say “Shan-go-li-la”) and the 7 year old besides me more than doubled my Mandarin abilities. I’m now able to speak the astounding total of at least 13 words… I’m practically fluent!

And that’s where I find myself right now, lost in a mountainous haven of spectaculousness and yaks.

1084 Km later I have renewed faith in hitching – even if I’ve just discovered that I can supposedly go no further North. “Why?” I asked. “You don’t know? Something happened. We cannot speak of it.” That’s the answer I’ve had thrice… Looks like there may be some interesting border runs ahead of me… Sichuan Province, here I come!

Is this China? – Tales of a Mekong Stowaway

Bang Bang Bang! Bang Bang Bang! [there was definite urgency in the bangage]. I flung the door open in my PJs to find an exasperated Mike standing there: “Let’s go!” “What? Where?...” I jumped in his car with disgraceful hair and disgracefuller morning breath and sped off to immigration.

I knew there was a chance I’d be hoping on a boat sometime on Monday, possibly… but it was meant to be afternoonly and the reality of all the maybes made me half suspect it would never happen… But there I was at 8am, stamped out of Thailand with about half an hour to make it to the port to board some sort of boat that would allegedly take me to somewhere in China for a yet to be discussed cost… There was no turning back now!

I threw my belongings into my saddle bags, did a facebook update so people could know where my bodily remains could be located [if it came to that], got on my bike and pedaled like the wind [on a particularly breezy day].

I made three wrong stops on route, but there before me lay my glorious timber boat – Fengshun 3. Mike and May-ee, who I’d met on Saturday while trying to organize the non-existent, allegedly impossible vessel, met me onboard. Mike speaks some English and Thai, May-ee speaks Thai and Mandarin and the crew speak ONLY Mandarin… Through the various interpretation channels my 800 yuan ($125) fee was negotiated, and the rules were laid down:

1)   Under no circumstances am I allowed to go to the front, the roof, or the captains sector of the ship.

2)   If they point to my room, I need to go there as quickly as possible and close the curtains.

3)   I am not allowed to disembark in Laos or Myanmar

Mike and May-ee

And that was it – not a lot of rules considering it’s currently illegal to take passengers up the Mekong and that my mere presence onboard made them far more likely to be targeted by Mekong pirates, of which there have been a lot lately!

   

I bid my translation duo farewell and settled into life as a semi-stowaway. There was no need to have hurried though – it took hours before we eventually departed.

With the Golden Triangle drifting further and further away, the scenery became increasingly awe-spaculous! I met the crew in bits and pieces, but with only charades to communicate with I couldn’t even get their names.

The shower slash toilet....

Meal times bought with them table-fulls of delicious foods and plenty awkward conversation [I assume] about the stranger in their midst! At dinner I was overloaded with rice wine (I think) as they “Gambei-ed” me in rounds trying to out drink me. They did. I was honoured to share a room with the cook – she won the love and appreciation of both my heart and my stomach!

The rest of the 7-person crew included one man manning the wheel, 2 men who sat at the front of the boat with bamboo sticks to check the depth of the water, one man in the boiler room, one man keeping watch, and at any given time - for no apparent reason - there was always one person doing laundry. Geraldine was the only one who had any time to spare, so I spent a lot of time babbling to her – but I tried not to get too attached, I feared she too may be joining the dinner table soon!

Geraldine

Monday evening had me chased to my room for the first time where I sat for a couple of hours with the curtains drawn shut while the world went by outside, Tuesday morning again. On Tuesday afternoon, after I’d finished washing my bike (yup – I had to at least pretend to look busy), we had military board our ship with guns… but the excitement was short lived and they too departed.

Being the dry season and heading up stream is no easy task. Every time we hit rapids or a sand bank (which was quite frequently), 2 of the crew would swim to shore with ropes and tie us to the closest country where an intricate uber pulley rig would slowly lug us forward to easier waters. The crew didn’t mess around.

One section of rapids we conquored

The engines fired up by 5-30 am each morning, and we docked at the very last light – around 8pm. By 10pm (latest), the generators were off and a world of moonless darkness with no light anywhere engulfed us. The others, having worked a 14.5 hour day would all drift straight to sleep, I would lie awake feeling the bugs crawl on me and having a few unwarranted reunions with ‘the rat’.

I’d heard that the trip could take anything from 2 days to a week, so from the second afternoon, any time I saw any sign of civilization my heart would start beating – “is that China?” – I lost track of how many times I asked that question– it sucks to not know, not that it would have made much of a difference I suppose, but I had to ration my coffee and…

Is this China???

Eventually, by afternoon the third, we definitely crossed into Chinese waters – there was no mistaking the flashing lights and massive “Border police” sign. I packed up all my belongings in anticipation, but it would still be hours before we reached the port.

I climbed down the stairs to find Geraldine tied up and stick man number 2 holding her by the neck with something shiny in his hands. I went straight upstairs – I couldn’t watch – she’d come so close to surviving…  Minutes later I watched her be placed on the roof, along with her cage – stick man motioned a “shhhh!” to me and I breathed a massive sigh of relief and broke into smiledom!

When we eventually did arrive, border control were very surprised to find me there and, after they excessively searched some of my luggage, I touched dry land for the first time in three days. Because all the forms were in Chinese, it took me 5 attempts to fill in my immigration card, but apart from that it was problem free. Far too easy even.

I had arrived in China unmurdered, un-shot-at and unrobed; and my little Chinese bicycle [and probably most of the other belongings] was home!