Today, I ride the land of my ancestors. That was the thought that crossed my mind during the first few hours of riding in China. I feel a sense of strange familiarity here, a connection to lands I have never travelled, and people I have not yet met.

Today’s route in blue

We started the morning early, setting off at 7:45AM, to get to the Laos border early - that was the instruction we had received from our Chinese tour agency, who was helping us with paperwork/arrangements.

Early morning in Boten

An aside: China is often one of the places which riders skip in the ride from Asia to Europe (or vice versa), because it is quite difficult and expensive to ride. You are typically required to hire a tour guide for the entire duration of the trip, pay for their expenses (lodging, car rental etc), at rates which are not too far from costing $200-400 a day. For a 30 day trip which crosses china, this is prohibitively expensive. We kept our costs down, by opting to “self navigate a guided tour”, and only to engage the tour guide for the last part in Xinjiang, where it is not possible to ride yourself, as filling up at the petrol station requires a Chinese national ID card.

The Laos border was very convenient. We parked our bikes (I stayed on mine for fear of it falling over after dismounting), the official came to retrieve our documents, and then filled out the exit paperwork for us(!) - I did not need to fill out my departure card! Then returned our documents. Then, in a hurry, they came back, there was a bit of a kerfuffle, and as it turns out - they had set the date stamp to the incorrect setting this morning, and only realised with our exit. They “cancelled” the incorrect stamp, and replaced it with one with the correct date.

Only in Laos!

Then was the main event, the border with China. This was to be crossed with the assistance of our tour guide, Maggie, who was waiting for us on the arrivals side of the border. We parked our bikes, (tried) to pass immigration first, in order to do the customs check on our bike. Immigration was actually rather amusing, as the fingerprint machine happened to malfunction while I was trying to pass it…and they ended up needing to turn it on and off again to get it working! I went through the scanning procedure about 20 times (Kiat counted) before getting through.

Then, we went to the small nearby county of Manzhuang to get a Chinese SIM card, and our temporary license, and vehicle registration from the traffic police department.

Maggie was our fixer for this, but we ended up getting there about 20 mins before, so were able to sample some of the village eats. When she arrived, we started the documentation, but the police were occupied with an earlier arrival…and it was approaching 11:30am by the time they were ready to see us. Then we got the bad news: it was too close to lunchtime, and they would be closing up shop until 2pm!

I was actually a bit shocked; is this China, the land of 9-9-6, of 1.4 billion people, that never sleeps? Turns out the countryside runs at a VERY different pace to the cities, in quite a nice way.

Soon enough, the metal shutters came down, and the police officers left on their scooters for a home cooked meal and a post-lunch snooze to get through the day. We took the time to have lunch at a nearby restaurant.

Some sort of smoking contraption that looks suspiciously like a bong in Manzhuang

Manzhuang is quite a small town, and perhaps representative of the village experience. People are kind, relaxed, straighforward, and hospitable. The food we had was unbelievably cheap; 1¥ for a baozi (0.14 USD), 28¥ for two bowls of noodles and meat (4 USD). The lao-ban said to us “if you want more noodles, it’s on the house, just let us know. We just want to make sure you are full and have enough food”.

Public restroom in Manzhuang…staying here for longer than i needed to for the picture was extremely gross

The police returned at 2PM on the dot and we were received our licenses. Afterwards, a short speech from the officer: no speeding, please wear a helmet, no drink driving, and please wear proper shoes (not thongs) when riding.

Then we were on our way. Because it was much later on in the day, our original plan to go to Pu’er was no longer feasible, so we rode to Xi Shuang Ban Na, a ‘tier 4’ town with a large proportion of ethnic “Dai” people.

The next few hours demonstrated the marvel of Chinese infrastructure. We travelled through thick forests, with mountains aplenty, but rode among the tree tops on the floating highway, and tunnelled through mountains on countless tunnels, some several kilometres long.

It was beautiful, and felt like a guided tour through nature. The roads were quiet and not at all busy, but we remained prudent and tried to remain at reasonable speeds. I get the feeling that China is not a place to mess around with the rules!

Flagged for a document check before XiShuangBanNa

Xi Shuang Ban Na is a quaint city. People are friendly, and I even had a conversation at the traffic lights with a couple on a motorbike (they initiated!) while scooting to find a laundromat. Side note - another shock, there were no laundromats, and the laundry shops which were open took THREE days to get the clothes back, and said “oops it’s 6:30PM, so we’re closing and can’t help you”. Where is the 9-9-6 energy! The Dai people are a major ethnic group here, and they are known to be similar to the Thai people. This was evident at dinner, where many of the dishes were familiar/similar to those I had in Thailand.

Tonight’s coffee setup

Back at the hotel, I had a very pleasant surprise waiting for me; there was a gooseneck kettle in the room! I was so excited that I made tomorrow morning’s coffee there and then. Lets hope my thermos keeps it warm until then…

Tomorrow; Pu’er, Dali, or somewhere inbetween!

Some stats:

• 248KMs travelled
• 14.7L fuel added
• 4 unique interactions