Darwin Airport was a slight shock to the system; the Australian-ness of it all truly whacks you sideways, knocks you for six, blows your socks off: the broad accents and shoulders, the twang of conversations peppered with 'yeah' and 'yeah-nah' with equal ferocity, the freckled skins, the crows feet wrinkled eyes from too much squinting and smiling, the collection of multicultural faces where no one is less 'ocker' than the bloke or sheila next to them. We don't use that word, by the way; women, even in the thickest Australian colloquialism are never sheilas but chicks, birds, babes or girls, unless perhaps you're over seventy or starring in a movie, otherwise it's a farce.

We sat at the sunny midpoint of our journey home, people watching, OUR OWN people, feeling familiarity and total alienation, they were somehow all instantly recognisable as Australian; we wondered if they recognised our nationality too. Within about ten minutes of putting through our luggage to the connecting flight to Cairns, we'd spent $20 on two soy cappuccinos and two “healthy” muffins. Australia, you expensive motherland of ours, we've missed you.

Cairns: family, boats and dogs

Alighting in Cairns airport was only a slight variation on a theme; more “ozzy” Aussies than you can shake a stick at: the more than occasional winning combination of stubby shorts and steel-capped work boots, the easy-going smiling faces and the slightly nasal greetings to all who've arrived on this, our vast shared red soil. Alee has an Uncle and Aunty in Cairns, and once we'd wheeled the box containing TanNayNay outside, a very tall, bald and moustachioed man began dragging it away. Luckily, this fellow wasn't dressed incognito in stubbies, and his lanky loftiness indicated some shared genes with Al – Alby smiled and hugged us both tight, as though we were one of his children – what a welcome. From there, we loaded up the rest of the stuff into the trailer and journeyed into the foothills behind Cairns, Alby's beautiful thoroughly louvred home.

Helen came to the door beaming and enveloped us in an embrace of her own, warm delicious cooking smells wafting out with her, we were in for some serious nurturing it was obvious. Almost immediately, one of Alby's sons Brad rocked up and invited Al out for a mountain bike ride and, despite having been awake for at least twenty four hours, and having travelled thousands of kilometres, Al joined him and lived up to his true nature schooling every other rider on the Cairns world championships mountain bike circuit.

That night showed us just how well cared for we would be; almost the whole family rocked up. Namely Helen and Alby's sons and their partners, Jacob & Chloe (with their golden retriever puppies Lola and Shae), Aaron & Claire (whose seven terrier cross puppies were living on the house's lower balcony) and Brad & Angie. Grant, the eldest lives in Sydney and works like a fiend so we didn't see him but perhaps would get to on our amble down the coast? As if those collection of happy hungry mouthes weren't enough, Helen's nephew Jason and his two mates from Ballarat, Rob and Kyle were up and in on the food fiesta that is Cairns for a week.

We stayed with Alby and Helen for the best part of a week, resting up, rebuilding and reworking our tandem bicycle, and generally getting a good feel for our Australian leg of the journey. Alby and Helen own a catamaran, a great white two-hulled beauty complete with multiple bedrooms, a kitchen and the most beautiful breakfast deck in the world. One full day was spent luxuriating on this luscious vessel on a casual float out to Green Island with Jacob, Jason, Rob and Kyle – luckily the land-based boys didn't object to lending many hands, we're not sure how anyone manages a boat with just two seafarers, there are about ten thousand ropes to be pulled and tied and unhooked and rebooked and watched and hoisted and secured… Not to mention steering and propelling the boat in the right direction!

The beginning of the end: free camping with Grey Nomads

It was time to go, time to set out on our last leg of the journey, what a strange feeling! TanNayNay looked shiny and new, this was the first time her wheels had spun on our home soil, she posed happily for the camera with us and Alby and Helen before hoisting us on her back and down the road. We hadn't got ten kilometres before Alby pulled up alongside us, waving Al's much-loved DGK singlet out the window, we'd left it behind on purpose, but sweet Alby was so generous to chase us down in case we'd forgotten it accidentally.

Wheeling lightly around the Carins town centre, we picked up supplies and some unwanted attention – making a completely legal, perfectly timely right hand turn, a fellow in a ute took issue with us and jammed his fist out of the window at us in a middle finger salute. Ah, Australians, can't live with them, can't live without them. Upon that less-than-desirable note, we cycled down the Bruce Hwy, eager to get away from bicycle-intolerant people. Twenty minutes along, a big white troopy pulled up in front of us and a diminutive woman hopped out, all smiles and hellos. She and her daughters had just returned from a bicycle tour of their own in South East Asia and were very jealous to see us still on ours; they were itching to get back to 'our' way of life. Waving manically, they drove off into the distance and we were buoyed to continue, relishing in the thought of only the occasional bicycle-allergic folks and the rest, bike-loving.

Kat detected some whirring of wheels, not TanNayNay's but another rider! A girl was tailing us, utilising our bulk to giver herself a little bit of a draught. She'd got so caught up in admiring us though that she'd forgotten to overtake! We chatted with Carlye for a while, discovering that of not only was she a roadie from Victoria but that of course she knew our bike people too – it's an inscestuous world, the biking one.

The great success story of Wikicamps

You've heard of Wikileaks, but have you heard of Wikicamps? Perhaps not quite the same, but in a similar vein: sharing of information that everyone should be privy to: this time, where in Australia are camping grounds where one can pop the tent for free? Camping in Australia, let it be said, is world class: toilet blocks and power outlets, wildlife galore, and a fairly easy-going attitude all round, however, you pay the price for these luxuries, often dolling out more than you'd pay for a fine dining experience in the same location. No, Australia is not known for its cheap camping; and yet, there we were, along with sixty or seventy other people, making the most of a free camping spot. Perfectly located next to a babbling brook and a quaint little sugar train river crossing, lorikeets chirping in every eucalypt, toilets so squeaky clean you could see your reflection in the floors, and all for free!

Babinda looked like an inviting if tiny little town, but we made an executive decision before we even knew the extent of the camping wonders that lay just around the bend. We parked ourselves next to the river, showered in hot water (!!) and felt pretty happy with this, our first day on the road in Australia.

Next day, Kat managed to get some lurgy or other, awake most of night not able to breathe for the snot; luckily we weren't in any real hurry so we decided to stay another day. Kat rested her aching body, feeling a bit frustrated to be already slowed by sickness and pain, but the Babinda camp ground treated us well and so too did the local supermarket: hummus! In the middle of nowhere, hummus was available in the supermarket, brilliant! Luckily we stayed, becuase we met a rather magical human whom we may have missed had we left early: Brutha Monkey emerged late morning from inside his enormous colourful bus of love. We'd been admiring the paintings and indeed the old bus herself before this creature unfolded himself from the narrow doorway.

Brutha Monkey was of indeterminate age: perhaps fifty, perhaps seventy; his spirit however, was youthful, brimming over with secrets and cheeky smiles. Every tale he told was laced with magic, sparkled with awe and whipped out of his motor mouth with great lashings of time; he rather enchanted us. Kat was warmed by his presence and even Al was tickled a certain shade of vermillion. He drove off in a purple-black plume of diesel, leaving behind a Facebook contact and a bit of confusion.

At 8am the next day we were ready to leave, having made some loose plans before even arriving in Australia. We'd solidified a stay with a friend of a friend's parents – more on that later – and so we had a few days up our sleeves to roll around the roads before we could impose ourselves on them. We decided to take the longer, windier, in-land route and make use again of the glorious Wikicamps. Get used to seeing that word, because it'll likely punctuate the rest of this Australian leg!

Rolling past the rather monotonous cane fields and turning off that highway named Bruce, we found ourselves winding up and down some hills, the trees becoming thicker and the hue turning green instead of platinum, blonde and tarmac. In this ripe green viridity, we passed a strange place called Paronella Park, a castle-like structure mossed over and dripping with ferns. Thicker still were the cars and caravans full of tourists, mostly people tracking up from the South we guessed because the popularity of the park in the middle of nowhere (there's a lot if that in Australia!) could only be attributed to some excellent marketing, and we'd seen nothing more than a small sign back at the Bruce Highway turnoff 40 kilometres back.

A young woman invited us in, offering an inedible package deal (two for the price of one plus a night's free camping!) however, being the frugal Alleykats we are, even the aggregated $52 was too much for one night. We rode on after crossing the Paronella Park swing bridge and marvelling at the strange collection of mossy buildings that made this place look like something out of the iron ages, definitely out of place on the coastal roads of Far North Queensland!

Liverpool Creek was our next destination, we arrived just before ‘The Rush’ – and only a few campervans, camper4x4s and campertroopies had set themselves up – taking the best 'possies' (that's Australian for positions, said pozzy) of course. We nabbed the best of the rest and set about making some late lunch, it was that early we'd decided to settle! Lucky thing too, becuase within the hour four or five monsters lumbered in, great white and grey bodies, some balanced on two wheels, some a plimmoth on four, large enough to block out the weak sunshine. They settled themselves, lots of toing and froing, parking just so; they rolled out their verandas, they plugged in their batteries, they angled their aerials and satellite dishes and were ready to stay. We'd run into one or two of them as they refilled their canteens or used the toilets like the rest of us plebs (instead of dirtying their own loos inside the vehicle, y'understand). What a life.

Baz came over early in the piece and invited us to warm up by his fire, we said we'd be around at dusk. It was easy to tell which caravan was theirs; great billows of thick white smoke pumped out of a blackened pot belly boiler, their lights were dim, but bright enough for us to see that Baz wasn't the doddery old fellow we'd originally had him pinned for, no, he had an accent as broad as a backstrap, and a wife around the same size. Their hearts were plants firmly in the right place, even if we were perhaps from as far on the end of the scale from them as was possible. Pam was inside and out, cooking up a roast dinner, Baz was stoking the fire and by stoking I mean glugging in a thick blue highly flammable liquid every time the fire looked to have quietened from roaring to smoking. They smoked thirty cigarettes between them in the hour we spent at their fire, their voices gravelly and kind, regaling us with tales of family who just wanted them to come home.

Baz and Pam had sold everything, home, cars, belongings: the lot, and had bought up a decent fourby (that is a four wheel drive, a four-by-four, said fourb-i for you non-Aussies out there) and a lovely little caravan. The insides were plastered with photos of children and grandchildren, knickknacks galore and the meagre belongings of two happily retired Aussies with a 15 year grand plan: drive Australia and spend their lives enjoying the “finer things” – no worries, no post, no responsibilities. They were the very definition of Grey Nomads: homeless but for their home on their back. They were incredibly kind, offering us food, cask wine and warm conversation. They'd seen and done it all, they felt and now it was time to retire from the weightiness of home and really treat themselves for their last years. Their family, despite missing them awfully, did see it as a great way to have a holiday: just go and visit Nanny and Pops! Perfect! They had it sorted all right.

Coincidental meetings

Friday was the day, we were ready to foist ourselves on Fred and Kathy: our good friend Paul's good friend Loretta's parents – what a mouthful! Now, you all remember Paul, world champion bike rider and world champion nice guy. He'd lucked into a great new friendship with Loretta while we'd been away and we'd known her by extension for a few months. She had offered her house to us, via her parents, via Paul, despite not knowing us personally. Paul is a wonderful judge of character; and it appears that so too is Loretta! We'd bought a ripe pineapple and a box of Roses as a gift for Kathy and Fred and then immediately realised they deserved so much more. What charmers; what generous, kind and open people – to offer their home to us with only a nod from a fairly anonymous friend of their daughter's (they'd not met Paul either!).

We met Kathy first, she was all smiles, kindness, and gentle motherly inquisition, and we loved her instantly. Then Fred rocked up, on a quadbike no less, deeply tanned and a smile so white and true that it shone in the slowly disappearing afternoon light. Seconds later they'd all but adopted us and we were chatting like we'd not seen each other for a lifetime, and had known each other longer. We learned about their lives: their kids, their families, their Australian Story. We learned a little of what it took to be cane farmers and saw for ourselves everything that it requires (sheds full of tractors, machines, motors and tools; the platinum swathes of their sugar plants abutting their property and a heck of a day job!) It was a charming, somehow warming thing to be cocooned by cane, Alleykat imagined at length what it was like for Loretta growing up here.

That night, Kat cooked a vegan Shepard’s Pie for us all, and just secretly, we think the omnivorous two were pleasantly surprised: vegan food can be very convincing, hearty and filling when treated with affection! We four stayed up rather late chatting and enjoyed collectively shouting at Q&A taped from the night before.

Quite suddenly that evening, something more serious happened; we'd met Fred and Kathy's two dogs that first afternoon, Opie and Macy, Opie was loving and really just a big puppy, Macy was rather standoffish but only because we were new and not 'her people' yet. Opie was quiet that evening which apparently is unusual for him, more unusual than that, he didn't finish his dinner – Fred decided to take him to the vet upon hearing a particularly loud doggy-cough and seeing bloody sputum dangling from Opie's doggy-chops: a bad sign. Macy tried her best to get in the car with them, clearly sensing something more profoundly wrong that was observable to the human eye – sadly, Opie died overnight, and Fred buried him in their beautiful Australian garden.

Although it wasn’t the happiest of beginnings to the day, the rest was much more enjoyable – Kathy took us out exploring the farm, we wandered down to the river at one edge of their property, guarded the whole way by steadfast cane soldiers. Their stoic heads pointed straight to the sky or bowed with weighty reverence to the life around them. Cane is a remarkable little plant – much like bamboo, it grows quickly and fiercely, rampant once it begins to climb with its brothers and sisters all around. We learned a little of its laborious upkeep, the planting, tending, harvesting and clearing. There were acres and acres upon acres and acres – Fred and Kathy are clearly doing something right, their farm continues to expand and produce. Some paddocks were bare, deep auburn soil churned thickly with the cane remnants of yesteryear – Kathy had taken her shoes and socks off to wander the whole way, and Kat was encouraged by the soft brown pillows of earth, how glorious to feel the Australian soil below your feet, between your toes, cushioning your weight.

At one stage, we attempted to take a short cut and became rather lost, looming cane plants leaning a little menacingly in towards us as we followed Macie’s nose out the other side. A single spider crossed our path – Al, who was leading the rescue team at that stage, held back the heavy bows of cane with the spindly creature dangling at a safe distance. Kathy wasn’t fazed in the slightest, however we did our best to keep out of the way! Twenty minutes later we’d pushed our slow way out the other side of the field, it felt a little like we’d been in there for hours, it was good to be able to wander freely again. An iconic Aussie lunch was had back at the Lizzio ranch – jaffles, made in a jaffle iron bulging hotly with baked beans, tomato and pickles, stuffed full of oozy goodness. Alee, the supposed Australian didn’t know what a jaffle iron was, but he sure did after he’d wrapped his eating gear around that delicious hot sandwich! More conversations wound their way around our lunch, words flew through the air, more friends joined the table

Fred and Kathy took us to the movies that night, driving for an hour or more back the way we’d been earlier, the wettest town in all of Australia, Babinda. We hammocked our bottoms in the deck chairs in the large home-made cinema, four in a row with popcorn and jelly snakes to boot as we watched Divergent and admired the beautiful people as they did brilliant things. After the movie, we met Fred Lizzio. We weren’t cracked in the head, no, Fred had a second cousin who just happened to live 150 kilometres down the road from him whom he’d met comepletely by accident a few years before. Alfino ‘Fred’ Lizzio not only was the second of his name we’d met in mere hours, but also had a daughter named Loretta. Coincidences are fun.

The bucolic life seemed pleasant in its hard work and hand-reaped pleasures, surely this tirelessly working simplicity was a positive backdrop for children growing up in Far North Queensland! With affection and a new home away from home, we left Kathy and Fred’s place after a hearty hot breakfast and road towards Ingham and a hill, deemed scary enough to warn us about in each of the towns we paused in on our way there.

Ingham allowed us to munch on some vegan pasties as we mulled over our options. It was clear that Kat’s back was going to be a problem, but just how much of a problem we couldn’t say. The hill “so steep you’ll have to hop off and push” turned out to be a 200m climb, a gentle little spin had us cresting and breezing down the other side, laughing at the Australian notion of a hill.

Cane farms: the palm tree plantations of Australia?

Riding through landscape, beautiful only in its platinum uniformity the cane fields stretched ever on around us. There were fleeting periods of excitement for Kat and her fellow trainspotters – when the seriously cute cane trains chuffed by, but beyond that, the roads were straight and achingly similar kilometre to kilometre. On this mostly straight ride, we’d ride past street names with a distinctly Italian flavour, realising that perhaps the Lizzios weren’t the only family with an Italian background in the area. As it turns out, cane farming in Queensland is an almost inherently Italian-Australian vocation: unofficially exchanging hands from hard-laboring Pacific Islander slaves in the early days of settlement, the mid-1900s brought a large Italian migration. These Italian men and women endured the back-breaking labour in the sugar fields and too, the insidious racism and fascism. Sickeningly, Italians (and other ethnic minorities working in the North of Australia) were stereotyped, institutionalised and scapegoated throughout most of the 20th Century, finally achieving relative equality and a sense of belonging after the 1960s and 1970s; truly a long time coming. The strongly tied communities and mostly Mediterranean social glue binding the tens of thousands of families together back then, does still today. Cane farming and indeed, much rural Queensland continues to be multicultural and inclusive in the face of odds too often stacked against them.

Kat's back is back to broke

Back on the cards was an action plan to deal with the continuing pain problems Kat was experiencing with her lumbar spine – somehow since we’d landed in Australia, it had regressed to the point of needing daily, two hourly pain medication to make it through our time on the bike. We tossed about ideas for our journey home, dropping no balls, but not getting anywhere either, just stuck in a rather repetitive cyclic motion. Neither of us were loving the riding, we somehow no longer felt settled with the idea of taking the planned three months to ride “the long way home”, down the coast, but what were our alternaives? We juggled ideas of part bus, part bike; part plane, part bike; part train, part bike; but needed something to help us make our minds up.

Casual Racism: Australia's dirty little secret

Back pain: the bane of Kat’s bike-riding existence and possibly now the dark cloud looming large over our trip. Riding into Cardwell, solutions to Kat's back was the first point of call to perhaps organise a bus for Kat. The information centre was typically Australian: accents so broad you could plonk them on your head and be shaded by the sun, the people behind the counter were helpful and kind hard-working public servants, formerly dressed, nametags buffed and pinned firmly in place. Unfortunately, the free roaming staff were another case entirely: an old bloke who seemed officially employed, with a firm sense of his own fashion, instead wore glasses far thicker than his whispy long hair, socks and sandals, long loose khaki shorts, a loud Hawaiian shirt and, in similar style, was partial to a noisy opinion. We're sure that a part of him meant well and was interested in helping and serving people visiting his town, but he ranted and raved at us for half an hour about conspiracy theories and his passion for bigoted Australian history.

During our trip, recent and historical conversations both have involved Alleykat in many discussions regarding how many rewarding and endearing habits there are about countries overseas. Occasionally these engagements extend to less-than-desirable elements or habitual behaviours that have turned us off instantly within certain cities and recently, have lead us to wondering what kind of stereotypical behaviours attract and repel visitors in Australia. This fellow embodied too many of these nasty stereotypes for us to deal with, we rode on – leaving behind this stereotypical bloke with his racism ripe and ready. Onwards to Townsville!

Townsville: warm showers indeed

It had been four nights and five days of riding since we'd bathed and admittedly I didn't smell us, Al didn't smell us; but I promise you, we smelt. Unfortunately, it's one of the less glamorous elements of long haul bicycle touring, showering is only really an option at infrequent rest stops and since leaving Kathy and Fred, we’d obviously not encountered one of those for a good while.

Upon meeting Jen at her house in Townsville, our lack of cleanliness became obvious: Jen's house is clean, fragrant and well organised: we could almost see our Hansel and Gretel crumb trail of dirty destruction. Jen gently suggested, (with a smirk we returned in kind), that we get in the shower (yes, the warm shower) and to please chuck all our stuff in the washing machine if we wanted; clearly a desirable outcome for all involved! Jen then took us to her and Mick's bicycle shop, The Bicycle Peddler, to say hi and get our recently broken dynamo hub looked at by the very skilled mechanic, Mick himself. Jen and Kat went shopping for the evening's meal and the boys googled how to dismantle said dynamo, but with limited success.

Dinner however, was a highly successful operation: Jen is a master in the kitchen, casually whipping up two vegetarian/vegan-friendly delights – a green curry with spice paste made from scratch using ingredients grown in her own garden and a glorious walnut and fig cake risen to water-bathed perfection in the couple's whiz-bang barbecue. For you non-Aussies out there, this is homage to the true versatility of the Australian barbecue, not a ‘shrimp’ to be seen! Al smashed a few servings of the curry and the cake, his second dinner in preparation for his epic ride the next day.

We’d rolled into Townsville on a bit of a mission: to get us both to Airlie Beach, where we planned a stop and rest before a slightly altered route in land and straight-lining it the 2,800 kilometres to Melbourne from there. We booked a bus the following afternoon for Kat and Al decided to travel light and challenge himself just a little, a mere preparatory 10-percenter, 280km in a day.

At 5:30am everyone was up and ready for a full day, Jen and Mick were riding to one of their weekly group runs up and down some mountains out the back of Townsville. Kat whipped up a stomach-stretching, belly-to-toe warming bowl of banana and nut porridge for Al and sent him on his way for the dawn ‘til dusk ride from Townsville to Airlie Beach.

Airlie Beach: nurtured and fed

The very kind Jen dropped Kat off at the bus stop, where immediately, having the open, please-talk-to-me face (impossible to change unfortunately), a man slung himself with wobbly imprecision, loosely on the expansive bench seat, right in Kat's personal space. The smell, Kat hoped in retrospect, wasn't even in the same realm as the sweaty whiff Alleykat had arrived in Townsville around their person. This man smelt like he hadn't seen water in years, bathing instead in a cocktail of cheap liquor and sadness. Still, one sometimes cannot help how one smells and surely, like the proverbial book cover, shouldn't be the sole port of judgment. After sharing Kat's orange, the loose-lipped man and she spoke a little incoherently about where we were from and where we were going, one of us giving vague answers and the other being perhaps a little too intrigued (no points for guessing the correct roles!). When he began insisting that we share a cab back to the centre to perhaps discuss life over a beverage or two, Kat somehow managed to bundle him into his own cab and kept her fingers crossed that he wouldn't return before her Airlie-bound bus arrived.

Making a new friend named Sharia Lina on the bus, Kat learned a little about the life of a German travel blogger and talked away the four hours on the bus to Airlie Beach, where the very gorgeous Jen McLean was waiting in the car on the pick-up run. We took the collection of very heavy bags inside the enormous McLean/Arnold house (aka The McArnolds) atop a very panoramic hill, in the aptly named Panoramic Court.

Promptly, upon discovering Al's proximity to us, Jen suggested we drive out and remove some of his burden. Night had fallen hard, the darkness eclipsing the last of the sun’s rays which, just moments before, were clinging to the glittering ocean surface on the horizon; not exactly desirable for those of us who'd ridden almost 280 kilometres and whose bicycle lights no longer worked due to a broken dynamo! Jen and Kat drove behind Al as his support vehicle after removing the few remaining kilograms on TanNayNay's already slim frame, trying to keep him in the light of the car’s headlights.

The homeward climb was truly impressive: for those of you who don't know Al personally, he is truly part-bike. Climbing a 30% kicker for almost an entire relentless kilometre isn't most people's idea of fun after riding 280 kilometres into a head wind all day but for Al, the journey wasn't complete until he'd stood up in the pedals and wrenched TanNayNay's bulk up that final flare.

From that moment on, we were truly treated like part of the family: with love and support, we were super lucky to have them as another home away from home. Jen is super cool and super caring, this extends to the kitchen where she prepared delicious vegan-friendly foods for us all around the clock: from morning soy coffees, lunchtime soups warming and perfectly flavoured, snacks like homemade hummus and free foraging in the plentiful pantry. Dinner was often a family affair, the definition of family extending every night a little further – to sons and daughters living with their mum and dad, an occasional guest appearance of further flung children, their friends and future housemates and, of course included us Alleykats.

Whenever available, Kat revels in a full kitchen: multiple stove-top burners, an oven, a blender and true luxuries like fridges and freezers, and drawers and cupboards full of cooking utensils and kitchenware. A few times during our stay, Kat got creative and cooked up a (vegan) storm large enough to moisten the mouthes of as many McLeans and their mates as were present.

Juddy runs away

There were family members of the animal kingdom too, residing at Chez McArnold: two cats Sunny and Joey, a velveteen rabbit, a few tortoises and a bundle of joy: Juddy the labradoodle. Juddy was everyone’s fan, dolling out licks left right and centre and playing endless games when not sleeping in a curly black heap. He dug himself deeply into Al’s bad books however when one afternoon he snuck by Al’s legs and lolloped out the door, crazy glinting in his eyes from miles away. The mail woman felt bad, apologising for delivering the parcel that let the dog out of the bag… but she had to continue her busy delivering day and Al had to give chase.

Thirty minutes later, the mailvan pulled up out the front of the house again, and out hopped a sweat-soaked Al, with a goofily grinning Juddy in his arms. Juddy had thoroughly enjoyed their ‘game’ of chasey all the way down the hill and around the suburbs with neither of the participants wearing shoes. Al popped a now slightly confused black dog outside, banished from cuddles and comfortable beds, floors and couches to rest on. It wasn’t until two days later that Al had forgiven; he will never forget though!

Daily yoga, resting and general enjoyable coastal wandering took up most of our days. A massage was man-handled in there along with constant heat packs and comfortable seating, nourishing foods and not a care in the world and yet, nothing seemed to work. Kat’s back remained painful to the touch, painful to the bike ride and painful to think about too deeply.

Homeward Bound

The night before we were due to ride out, the gentle rolling of midnight waves in the background, the decision to go home was made. Although Kat thought she could probably deal with the next thirty repeats of 100 kilometre days if it was life and death, the constant pain became a limiting factor. We decided then and there to go home, it was time. We did ride out the next day to Mackay, not Melbourne, the city that was in our sights down the road.

More Warm Showering with Peppe and Jeannie, who’d not only generously and at short notice allowed us to come and stay with them, but in typical Warm Shower fashion, had gone above and beyond – locating and lugging home two bike boxes for our impending departure. What total champions. We ate an Amaya (of World Biking!) special of homemade Mexican refried bean wraps, a lovely little bit of cross bike-travel pollination on our now official last night of the trip.

Peppe and Jeannie warmed our hearts and ears with stories of their own bike touring adventures and hosting experiences, it’s a rather incestuous platform we’ve all discovered! We slept well and were taken to the airport by Peppe in his ute: perfect for bike-hauling. And then suddenly we were home, and there was my Mum, resplendent in Melbourne black and cheeks rouged with happiness. We were home.

Don't forget to catch our film on the Australian leg!

More of our diaries

This is the final diary from our trip from Europe to Australia!

⇒ Read all about our Asian experience HERE

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

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The boat from Satun (Thailand) to Langkawi (Malaysia) was short and sweet, as were the steamed buns in the international departure lounge at the ferry terminal. Our threesome were triply glad we hadn’t eaten much before our second boat ride of the day: it’s not nic-named the Vomit Comet without reason! At least a third of the ferry’s passengers were hurling up their previously digested foodstuffs and hoping that the next 100 kilometres of ocean would be more forgiving. They weren’t.

We were allowed two movies while on the boat: The Croods came first, a delightful children’s film with more than enough adult-fodder, and the second was an all-Malaysian, all-guns, all-fight-driven storyline, semi-plotless action flick called Balistik. We thought nothing of this interesting spelling until we reached the shores of Malaysia, where almost everything is written in a kind of pidgeon English: bas for bus, klinik for clinic, balastik for ballistic and so on.

#GeorgetownLyf

We retrieved TanNayNay from the roof of the boat, thoroughly encrusted with salt spray which would come back to haunt us, despite Al giving the dirty girl a thorough rinse the next day (salt is poison for bikes, unfortunately!) We decided on Couzi Couji Hostel because it looked extremely nice: open, communal and friendly, and also was a mere 23 ringet per person per night ($7). We booked for two nights and set about finding our feet in the city that was to be our home for the next five nights. And what a home it was.

We were right around the corner, on the spicy literal of Little India, a truly wonderous place to visit, for the sheer wandering joy and of course, for the food, glorious food!! We dined like vegetarian royalty, eating to our full and beyond on huge meals Thali style (five or more curries, bread and rice on a banana leaf or metal tray symbolising said leaf), slow-cooked dishes, speedily-made breads of all varieties (roti canai, of course, dosai and naan) and strange spicy or fruity sweets. Everything was delectable, we were led by our noses, our eyes and our guts; we were in heaven.

Our two nights at Couzi Couji were fine, we met some interesting people and had some of those conversations that both open one’s eyes and make one see the need for enlightenment of the masses. The first of said conversations, an eye-opener, was with a girl, let’s call her Shae. Shae had recently graduated from Arts/Law (the same course as Maj) and had stumbled on a very important fact in life: blinkered learning gives a horse a limited life. After a year filled with unbridled passion and some ok grades, Shae had learned to study well for tests by regurgitating chaff: exactly what her professors tutored, thus earning top grades and graduating successfully. However, she felt like the corporate law rat race that her degree whipped and saddled her into wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t real life. So Shae decided to unblinker her eyes and gallop for the unknown – nine months later she’s travelled half way around the world and feels as though she’s learned more about life and the reach of the law than she could have with a four year degree to her name. She listened with hungry eyes to Maj’s story about becoming a lawyer and demanding more of the profession than dry, corporate office work. Maj helped Shae (who had expressed her dissolution with the whole profession and doubts about her return to it) to see that being a lawyer can be about people, communication and making real world differences.

Meeting and talking with people like Shae consolidates our own belief that worldly expereince is necessary in life, whatever form it may take, and it was indeed worldly experience led us to another conversation, this time to a fellow, now named Reeno. Reeno’s travels have taken him global too and have changed many of his passions, understandings of life and world views but, unfortunately, have done little to alter others, namely about women and their rights as humans.

We worked out that we three had all spent time in Georgia (if you want to read more about our mixed Georgian experiences, please click HERE). Quickly we gathered that our experiences were almost parallel except for the treatment of women by men, Reeno confirmed our understanding of the male psyche, and indeed, the Georgian one of heavily competitive manliness, godliness and family devotion, but compatrioted himself with the filthy Georgian men we’d encountered (by no means all Georgian men, of course!) who took every advantage of Kat they could – sexual assault and preditory sexual behaviour was rife and for us, cast a dire shadow across the face of the country. But, even when Alee confirmed Kat’s descriptions of the men and their behaviour, it was still met with disbelief, ‘well, what were you wearing?’, demanded Reeno, as if that answer (jeans and a down jacket as it was winter) would have any relevance to the dispicable actions of altogether too many Georgian men. Reeno, we had to invent multiple children and marriages as a disincentive to their interest!

However, as with any conversation, it was all interesting and part of the varied fabric of life – it is not always embroidered with beauteous images in the richest of silks. Our two evenings were exceptionally late: Couzi Couji was a ‘party friendly’ hostel and, as such, parties raged until the wee hours of the morning, and if one were to wander downstairs close enough to dawn, there, woven round and draped atop the furniture and floors would be sleep: snoring bodies only just passed into the state of unconsciousness after the previous evening’s hullabaloo had dampened to a dull roar. Needless to say, being the slightly less well-known all-night-ragers we Malleykats are, we decided to move around the corner to Crystal Guesthouse, a small family-run business who’d let TanNayNay sleep inside after 11pm.

The Romance of Malleykat (Maj + Alee + Kat)

Our days in Georgetown were filled full of friends one, two, three, of food and of both feverish discussion and delightful frivolities. We discovered a few cafes and restaurants that quickly became our local haunts: The Alley, an unfathomably cool coffee shop with friendly attentive staff, excellent barista skills and a range of satisfying cakes and clothing; a whole street’s worth of Indian restaurants and a little shop which sold steamed buns of drool-worthy variety and whose two teenage proprietors (or daughters of) were as enchanted with us as we were with them. Maj and Alee decided to challenge the resident Malaysian riders’ times on the local mountain and came close to many. Most people were shocked to see them riding both down and up – bike-hiking is much more common up this 15% average climb!

We rode TanNayNay as a threesome, alternating Maj and Kat as rack-perchers (it’s an excellent bum workout!), we visited national parks and beaches, Maj and Kat breathed dragon’s breath at a Kundalini yoga session, and we discovered another dragon at a Chinese Night Market which also had a vegetarian-specific food stand and mini crumpcakes made right before our eyes. We three basically couldn’t get enough of each other and so didn’t!

On our last full day together, after getting caffinated at The Alley of course, we visited the beach at Batu Feringghi, just around the coast. Although the beach itself wasn’t spectacular, Maj went for a dip and threesome lounging on the sand in the sun was an agreeable pastime. It seemed Batu Feringghi very much catered for Arabic customers: Middle Eastern food and signs written in Arabic script; this suited us veggie-munching Aussies perfectly! We feasted on a lunch of sumptuous olives, fresh tabbouleh, plump felafel and rich, perfectly seasoned hummus; an unexpected delight for sure in a Malaysian beach resort town.

A gloriously late night: our last evening together, we visited The Alley a final time, making proper use of their 12pm to 12am opening hours. The waiters and waitresses got word of our imminent departure via our intertwined Instagram feeds, or perhaps our carrying Aussie twang, and gifted us a serve of churros (with thier signature salted caramel dipping sauce) and a citrusy Alley-mocktail. Two hours of sleep perhaps wasn’t really enough to propel us through the next day, but goodbye hugs from Maj and the prospect of a second visit from her in Australia certainly was. And then there were two.

A fervent ride down the coast to Malacca.

Palms. PALMS! Sime Derby palms. Palm oil palms as far as the eye could see, row after pineapple-frond-topped row of thick, sweetly syrupy smelling palm trees mar the landscape of much of the west coast of Malaysia. There are around 5 million hectares of palm plantations for palm oil in Malaysia. The agriculture industry consumes 33% of Malaysia’s 32 million hectares total size and palm oil is the fastest growing crop (from less than half a million hectares in 1975). Palm oil accounts for around two thirds of vegetable oils used on the earth and consumption is set to double by 2020, clearly this spells disaster and devastation for Malaysian forests, wildlife and people: the “little guys” who suffer at the hands of big food business.

Within the first few hours, Alee detested the smell of palm oil in production and began to wish we were elsewhere, the industry that surrounded us pumped out smoke, steam, sweat and tears and didn’t make for inspiring riding. That night we were glad to turn off the road in Bagan Serai early enough to have a 5:30pm dinner at a conveniently placed small vegetarian restaurant, serving delectable Indian curries and perfectly paper-thin dosai (a round of bread half way between a pancake and a naan). We pedalled off, full and tired ready to stretch our legs out in comfort another night, but were sorely disappointed.

After half an hour of searching, the cheapest place to stay was 90 ringget ($30) and so we gave up and headed to the outskirts of town to find a camping spot. Along a dirt track we were happened upon by Freddie and his mountain biking mates who above all believe in karma (and kindness and bike riding every day), the result was an invitation to stay with Freddie and his family for the night and a round of thorough Malaysian hospitality.

After showering, we were admittedly zonkered after a mere couple of hours sleep the night previous, but a round of badminton with Umie and Freddie, her coach (and owner of the badminton club!), was perfect. Freddie drove us around the surrounding towns, took us out to coffee (where we didn’t drink coffee but warm cinnamon soy milk instead!) and graciously allowed us to excuse ourselves to bed immediately upon returning home. Thanks Freddie and family!

The next few days took on a familiar routine: up early and ride in the relative cool of the thick morning air, pause to stuff ourselves full of porridge and fresh fruit mid-morning and ride as far as our legs would take us. We camped among the palms one evening, where luckily the palm oil smell didn’t permeate our open-to-the-night-sky tent – it’s not until the palm fruits and kernels are processed that they begin to reek of that sickly sweaty, sucrose smell. We breakfasted one morning at Fireflies Restaurant, where the kind proprietor and his family gifted us Malaysian sweets, masses of roti canai and their outdoor kitchen to make full use of, and then wouldn’t let us pay him a cent. There we waited out a heavy passing storm front, then not one hour later we were riding along, watching the blank green fronds of palm trees dance idly before our eyes at every turn.

Roti Canai: the Greatest Thing About Malaysia?

Roti Canai became our saviour. Each day without fail we’d tenderly, lovingly, slavishly shove handfuls of the flaky, malleable, ghee-rich roasted bread into our mouths and would unfailingly end up happier and more ready for anything.

Roti Canai evolves from a small, unassuming lump of pale dough to a golden round of perfect pastry: its carb-rich life begins as a lump of raw, slightly salty mixture. With its similarly unfettered brothers and sisters it sits, waiting the capable hands of whichever masterful roti-obstetrician we place an order with to tenderly pick it up and fling it roughly to a board, spreading it thinly, rounding out and streching it to the size and shape and perfect hide-thin consistency required. As it is stretched to just-before breaking point, it is moistened, glistening and trampoline-like with melted ghee (clarified butter) or possibly palm oil and just when it looks like it will split, the experienced roti-chef flops in right onto a roasting barbecue surface, the hot plate gently sizzling the skin of the roti-dough pizza as its carer ensures even cooking on the one surface. The four sides are flipped into the centre and further flaps are wrapped in to create a loosely circular shape before the whole thing is transferred to a cooler cooking surface for a final gentle sizzle.

These piping hot rounds of roti are almost ready, but, don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the folded bread; the clapping action of the roti-handler is essntial to the succesful lightness that comes with this seemingly dense fried bread product. The quick multiple snap-clap closures of the hands around the blazing hot freshly cooked roti pump tiny air pockets into its mass, and break up the original slighlty crunchy, flaky skin to create the perfect roti texture – a labour of love that we’ll sorely miss.

Malacca, The Historic State

After camping on the beach in Port Dickson, our final day of riding before Malacca took us on similarly pleasing adventures: we were finally cycling smaller, sweeter roads. Right down along a beach boulevard a Dutch expat approached us, inquiring as to why he sees quite so many cycle tourers on his particular stretch of quiet beach-front road? We told him that it is hands down, the nicest stretch of road along all of the western Malaysian coastline, sitting there on a practically untouched beachfront! He seemed satisfied with that answer.

Then, there suddenly was Malacca, a big city with sky scrapers and quaint, centuries old buildings gracing the streets in the heart of the sprawling town. We stayed at Tony’s Guesthouse, Tony was a charming man, easy to chat with and gain a little insight into what his city had to offer. We’d read and heard from Modern Practicality’s Haley and Matt about some famously good places to eat and set upon them: namely Big Bowl Ice and Selvam Indian Restaurant which we frequented on more than one occasion thanks to their unparalleled fare (and prices too!)

We wandered the streets, along the famous Jonker Walk, which winds through a remarkably beautiful section of Chinatown wallpapered with Dutch and European-style house-cum-shopfronts. This section is rumoured to be heavily populated all weekend as it functions as a market at night and is perfect to pose for photographs within during the daylight hours. As we were only here for a few nights beginning on a Monday, we saw a different, less touristic side to it, taking long detours and following the advice of various bloggers who’d wandered through before us.

We read about an appantly infamous and unique sweet in Malacca, kuih keria: sweet potato doughnuts fried in molten sugar instead of oil, and became a little obsessed with finding their location. In truth we hungered so greatly for them that we rode for a good few hours around in circles and oblongs trying to find the famed vendor/s, as stipulated by the very excellent Robyn Eckhardt of Eating Asia but alas, failed miserably, salivating all the while at the very hint of something so delectable just out of our reach.

As is typical of Alleykat, we managed to befriend some unlikely new comrades while completing various mundane activities. Kat’s sunglasses, which she is notorious for dropping, given they’re the most expensive item of clothing in our possession, desperately needed their lenses repplaced. Upon meeting Mr Ling and Mr Fu at Wang’s Optometry, we quickly forged a lovely new friendship with them, forgetting almost entirely about our goal. Luckily they were simpathetic to our hurried need to move on and get back on the bike, so we saw them a few times in the one day after they generously put our order on the speedy track. We even took some photos for Instagram, which solidified our friendship into the “real world”.

Traditionally in Malacca, one must try the local cuisine, Baba Nyonya food. We’d looked into a few different places and noticed that the fare seemed rather meat-heavy so decided on the least meaty of the lot: Amy’s Heritage. We met the sparkly Amy but unfortunately didn’t eat there as with such little notice due to brazen breezing-in Alleykat style, Amy didn’t have any specifically vegetarian ingredients or dishes to prepare. Instead we ate traditional Chinese vegetarian-specific food at a wonderful little place just around the corner!

The rest of our time was rushed and a little disconnected: Georgetown far outstripped Malacca in our opinion. The vibe and culture of the places on the surface was so similar, but they were so different: Malacca much more touristic and perhaps more difficult to break into, Georgetown the exact opposite, the right amount of niche and open doors for us Alleykats.

After a slow start to the day we rode out of Malacca onto the ‘home straight’. We stopped a few times in small towns and at small restaurants, continuing our infinitely lucky run with the ever-wonderful roti canai as a good part of our daily sustenance.

While riding we met Fadil and his friend who were tracing a similar bike-riding route to ours only in the opposite direction. Fadil gifted us a 100Plus energy drink each and we sat for a while rejoicing in our comradeship out of the boiling hot sunshine. As things are all connected, seven degrees of separation and all that, Fadil and his friend were of course friends of Acid whom we’d met on our first days in Thailand (which you can read about HERE), another Malaysian cycle tourist with equally as generous tendencies and advice for the road ahead. We rode off once more, heading into what would be our last night in Malaysia.

All’s well in love and machete-wielding motorcyclists…

A rough day. After resting with Fadil, our guard was down, although admittedly we don’t have much of a guard at the best of times. A man on a motorbike pulled up next to us and began talking to us, asking after a few minutes to stop so he could buy us a drink. We already felt a little uncomfortable as he was quite insistent and seemed a little out of his brain, but we began to follow him along the road. Suddenly he peeled off to the left down a small street and we supposed, in our typically trusting Alleykat manner, that he must know a local place to take us to. He stopped abruptly and failed to conceal something rather insidious: dropping a truly enormous machete to the ground after fumbling with it clumsily.

Al turned TanNayNay on a dime and we were riding away from this weirdo as fast as we could. He noticed our absence after retrieving the machete from the ground, chasing us down and attempting to explain himself to us. We went with the ‘thanks but no thanks’ approach, the ‘don’t talk to this creep’ approach, the ‘chat amicably with the crazy guy to distract him’ approach and then the ‘whip out the video camera and film him, asking what his name and game was’. His driving was erratic, he clearly wasn’t concentrating or ‘all there’: he almost ran into us fifteen or twenty times (Al counted). We began freaking out a little, thinking he’ll injure us if we’re not super careful!.

Nothing worked effectively, he continued to insist that he wasn’t going to do anything to us with his gigantic razor-sharp sword. Kat attempted to charm him into submission and while his own guard was down, Al asked him firmly, spoken without hesitation, to leave, go away, stop riding with us. He was affronted and exasperated, how dare we refuse his companionship. He followed us at a distance for the next ten kilometres, we really hoped that he didn’t have gang connections, that he didn’t know anyone in the town we were planning to stay in. We even contemplated riding a further twenty-five kilometres out of our way to guarantee our anonymity. Bugger it, we thought, we’ll be fine, he’s just a crazy. Luckily we saw hide nor hair of him after that.

Leaving Malaysia with our baggage firmly behind us

That night, sat upon our slightly grimy separate beds in Pontian, after a good feed once more at our trusted local Indian restaurant which, in Malaysia, could literally be any of the local Indian restaurants! We were full to the brim instead with unrest: after Maj left we’d been all over the shop; a combination of hurried riding through unfriendly countyside and harried, brash conversations throughout the day: Alleykat weren’t in the best shape of our relationship lives. In the worst, in fact.

Things had too long been left unsaid and we admitted that we’d been rather unhappy smashing down the uninspiring Malaysian west coast, it was time for everything to come out in the open: a few emotional hours later and the air was once again breathable, the cloying heat creeping on our bodies literally in a rash had retreated, unbuttoned from its constricting chromatic collar.

Our final day of riding began, we were on a high, a mere 65 kilometres to do to get to the border. Fuelled by porridge, fruit and roti canai we smashed along the freeway spaghetti (illegally) and arrived in less than two and a half hours, making great time to soar smoothly across the bridge between Malaysia and Singapore where we knew new friends were awaiting our arrival.

Salut and Zaìjiàn, Sweet Singapore

Crossing the border was like riding through a funnel, specially designed for two wheeled travellers: many Malaysians live in their home country and work in Singapore to earn the Singaporean wage, a substantial amount more than the average Malaysian one. We crossed the border early enough to witness the tail end of this daily right of passage. We rode quietly among the hard workers, suddenly realising Singapore was our official last stop before Australia! We celebrated by eating a package of eight roti canai casually panniered over the border and looked forward to meeting Xinhan and Emilien.

Lead through the beauteous streets, satisfied by a good feed at the street food, nay ‘hawker food centres’ (as the former is illegal in Singapore) we were led up some manicured hills to a vista for a quick rest and a chat. We learned that Singapore and a life here is richer and less structured than is rumoured, that it is possible to escape the spit-shone rubbish-free carefully-zoned life by simply getting on one’s bike and riding off the carefully-beaten path.

Kat’s knee was hurting her, everything seemed to be playing up and giving a strong ‘time to go home’ signal, so for the last 10 kilometres, she took the spotless, flawless, smooth option of the metro while Al dug in and pedalled around the smooth roads with Xinhan and Emilien.

As soon as we arrived in Xinhan and Emilien’s home, we felt at ease, the comforts of a real home were indeed such a comfort! We cooked dinner for one another, did a small amount of adventuring around the city, fetched an enormous bike box to fit TanNayNay in and made a new friend in the process. SK runs Tree In Lodge, a green, bicycle friendly hostel whose policy favours bicycle tourers as globe-friendly travellers offering them (us!) their stay at half price. SK does more than that though, he made us fresh percolated coffee while caffeinating our minds with his stories and life lessons. He luckily had a massive bike box stored in his perfectly compact hostel walls, and we bundled onto the bus brazenly ignoring the strict ‘no boxes’ rule on Singapore public transport.

Xinhan and Emilien’s own world bike tour has brought them across 33 countries in as many months as we’d been travelling too, all the way to Singapore to forge a new less-bicycle-centred life for a while. It was easy to see why they’d decided on this beautiful country: the combination of beauty, homeliness and intellectual challenge in their professions made a lot of sense. They worked like clockwork around our seemingly routine-free ways; bags of clothes and bicycle parts bursting everywhere. We left their 17th floor apartment noisily one Wednesday evening and rode hastily to the airport, through perfect parks and sneaky freeway shoulders, more than ready for our final flight to The Motherland: Australia!

Don’t forget to catch our film on Malaysia!

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 8 (Malaysia & Singapore) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Thailand helped us clamber into its warm embrace from the word go: a Thai gentleman helped us navigate the border and the our own Australian instincts got us across the line… we’ve officially made it back onto the left (the RIGHT) side of the road! With that, we were heading southwards, a rather spiriting feeling after many months of riding in circles – enjoyable as those circles may have been – we are riding towards home.

A bike shop was our first stop and there we met Matt, an American on a four month South East Asia trip who is looking for a wife who’ll ride the world with him; he was very jealous of Alleykat’s antics. After a good chin wag, he invited us to his hotel, recommending its cleanliness and central locale, but upon learning the $20 per night price tag, we followed the budget advice from The Lonely Planet. This seven year old information turned out to be very wrong, the five dollar rooms recommended in its usually well-guided pages were also closer to $20 and so we were back on the hunt. A small sign reading Mut Mee Guesthouse drew us down a long, leafy driveway. There were sticky geckos on most vertical surfaces, a library and a quiet vibe emanating from the place. Upon meeting Dina the stunning, insightful, worldly Danish receptionist who charmed the pants off us (almost literally) and informed us of their extremely reasonable prices, we booked in. It turned out there were more than a handful of crazy cats like us staying at Mut Mee: a Malaysian bike tourer named Acid, three young Melbournians and enough characters from around the globe to make us feel as though we were all perfectly at home together.

Getting MutMee’d

The process of getting MutMee’d is one not unknown to many who cross its welcoming threshold. In fact, the whole Thai-Laos border town of Nong Khai is well known for being assigned a temporary destination, ‘oh, I’ll just stay one night’, quickly to be transformed into a semi-permanent residence ‘yeah, I work here now and I’ve extended my visa three times…’. This immediate feeling of ease and homeliness came ringing home with the great collection of people we met while there, we could have stayed on and on with our new team Dina, Grace (an emphatically passionate and whimsical Brit-girl who’s aspirations include becoming an actor and changing the way dogmatic religion dominates the world) and their buddy Tim (a Hugh Grant body double with keen wit, impressive Thai language abilities, and a deft hand at pool).

South East Asia, and specifically Thailand, seems to have a similar effect on many: the ease of living here surpasses most places we’ve toured. Even we, the tent-loving, wild-camp-happy Alleykats have been living it up in hotels, hostels and guesthouses: it is too easy! No more sweating it out in two day old clothes, no more waiting until nightfall to secret ourselves away in a sneaky wild camp, no more waiting three days between showering and digging holes for the loo. Yep, we’ve gone soft: South East Asia told us to! There is no difficult search required for convenience or homely familiarity, the language barrier only requires a few words to navigate and you’ll never, ever go hungry.

Mere minutes beyond informing Angali, the 17-year-old Indian receptionist (another brave, open-hearted and generous soul from Oritzville no less) that we’d like to stay a second night please, we had hired motorbikes and were whizzing our way towards a historical park. The first stop was at 7Eleven, of course, for Tim to get breakfast, our three motorbikes (two hired for Alleykat and Dina/Grace and Tim’s own) were in good nick and were admittedly pretty fun to buzz around on. Kat’s mind may have followed the ‘this really is much easier and quicker, than cycling’ path a few times on the way, Alee’s grinning face wrote a similar story on the speedy zoom up weaving mountain roads.

The historical park was peaceful and not at all well patroned, we wandered amongst strangely shaped boulders and thickly treed landscapes, chatting about family, politics, travel and Thailand. Grace and Kat stayed put for an hour to do some yoga and bonding while Dina led the boys to a scenic cliff and upside down foot-shaped rocks. The sky was darkening and rumbling warnings at us so we helmeted up and breezed back down the hill. Too soon the winds had changed from playful gusts to buffeting blasts, threatening to pull our tyres from the gradually dampening road, so we played it safe and drank hot chocolates for a while in a roadside cafe. Tim had an in depth conversation with the proprietress, demonstrating his finely tuned ear for the Thai language and humour alike, Alleykat were jealous of his skills, vowing we’d make good on our plans to properly learn a second language (and preferably live in the country of voice!). The last 50 kilometres were a storm chase: we watched the turbulent skies open over towns and rolling hills ahead of us and beside, but managed to stay dry (other than our tootsies which received a little splash-back from the road soaked ahead of us).

Just before we arrived ‘home’ (yes, it already felt like home) we spied some strange plumes of smoke squirrelling into the cloudy sky. These, it turns out, were rockets, part of a Thai festival which celebrates the beginning of the wet season and the rising of the rivers. The ‘traditional’ activity we’d witnessed was actually homemade rockets being blasted into the sky: their intended purpose is to blast the clouds apart and make it rain.

On the road, expecting nothing – everything is delivered

We attempted to leave early, but had our plans thwarted by not wanting to leave – it was really hard saying goodbye to Grace, Dina and Angeli who’d become those firm friends we seem to accumulate on the road. We then were introduced to Acid, a cycle tourer from Malaysia who gave us some excellent advice for the roads ahead and extended an invitation to us once we reached his home, a town called Muar of the coast of Malaysia. When we finally pushed out onto the road, the heat clung to us, sweaty little fingerprints on our arms and legs and faces. The hills rolled and undulated along the Mekong’s tree-lined banks, the riding was varied, each little climb rewarded us with a short downhill luxury and the hours passed easily.

Just after lunch, we rounded a corner and paused to suck down a few litres of water, a Thai fellow on a motorbike pulled up right next to us and began chattering away at us in Thai, using his hands to gesture something about two: two this, two that. It was easy to allow him to entertain us, but we weren’t prepared for quite so much entertainment: moments later, an unmarked car full of policemen pulled up right next to us and jump out to accost this motorbike rider. He had a second to think and jumped astride his still running bike and attempt to ride off. Two policemen grabbed a hold of the bike and they went careening off into the bushes, effectively incarcerating the man in cuffs and stuffing him into the car. An accountable audience, we stood rather shocked watching the events unfold – a policeman eyeballed us and we rode off, wondering what it was all about!

Farang! Farang!

From every direction, every mouth, every day comes a word thrown at us: Farang. Farang means guava in Thai, a seemingly innocuous term to be described with but don’t let the innocence of its translation fool you; ‘guava’ or ‘white on the inside’ means foreign, alien, wrong. For the most part, Farang falls into everybody’s lexicon just a way to indicate to your mates that a couple strange people are riding through the town. It wasn’t often we were called Farang out of spite, however, on occasion we felt the sting of ridicule or dislike simply for the colour of our skin: it’s racism plain and simple. It can be appropriated, like ‘processed Farang’, used between Thai friends to make gentle fun of their half-Thai, half-European friends.

It is glaringly obvious how fitting the term is when used to describe your average tourist: fat, white (but for the pink sunburn) and utterly oblivious to the culture they’re prostituting with their mere presence and expectations, but that doesn’t make it right. We didn’t feel like Farang, and Kat objected to being called Farang in any circumstances, but with the right frame of mind, it was a part of Thailand fairly easy to accept.

Each little town we rode through seemed to have its own community feel: some were super relaxed, some bustling and noisy, others almost ghost towns; we didn’t however see many non-Thais. Occasionally a face would stick out like an albino rhino among the grey – a westerner or two might live secretly among the beauteous people and streets, but they’re rare. We pulled into one such town, which had a market and a police station and happened to house a river-adorning hostel commonly frequented by cyclists and motor tourists alike: we do have a habit of accidentally stumbling into such places!

Robert was sat, plucking out a rolling harp-like tune on his guitar, thickening the already beautifully full atmosphere, he called out to us on our way to the river shacks that would be our bedroom that evening and we ended up out to dinner upon his recommendation that evening. Robert was a colourful character whose extraordinarily adventurous life still didn’t preclude his disbelief at our own trip, his late-in-life antics were aligned with the rather typical genre of behaviour of Westerers in Thailand: escapists, adventurers, desiring an alternative lifestyle without much of the challenge of dealing with anything difficult – a life on the periphery of reality.

Our hut on the river was… interesting, dirty but ok, mostly natural rubbish: a tokay (giant gecko) or two lived in the walls and we had clearly invaded his space, not the other way around. We slept quite well within its flimsy walls, the natural world was practically inside with us, but the weather, the smells, the sounds in Thailand, especially in small towns are all rather agreeable – a good a reason as any to live the quiet, unassailable life available to most visitors to Thailand.

The King And I

A royal by any other name would smell as sweet, and despite his surely fast approaching use-by-date (he’s been serving since 1946), sugary must his scent be for the Thais do love their royal leader. Billboard after billboard, placard after placard, photos in shops, framed painting in homes: this royal Siamese fellow graces seemingly every available flat surface – his gaze unescapable, his youth immortalised by revitalising visual incantations dotted densely around the country. The man is more than his royal status, he plays many a role in politics and daily life: ‘long live the…’ is more respectful and widely accepted than most beginnings of conversation.

As we rode, it became harder and harder to ascertain the reality this gold-rimmed demigod: was he a figurehead? Was he a thirty-something play-acting at reigning or an octogenarian hoodwinking the world? Is he deserving of the love that is bestowed with such uncategoric frequency?

Perhaps similar to a musical version of the bejewelled ruler, this living relic (he was born in the 1920s) remains firmly uncrossable, inviolable, never to be dishonoured. We aren’t entirely sure who he is, what he does or whether we’re even allowed to write about him, but safe to say his presence in Thailand is everywhere and while living within his plentiful lands, dare not be an accidental iconoclast, simply state Long Live the … and continue living under his all-encompassing golden cartoon stare.

The riding and resting over the next few days took us through areas of nearly unbearable, sweaty heat and of strange recognition: a Castlemaine for Bangkkokians was our home for a night. We rode up hills steeper and longer than any we’d encountered for a good while (excluding Al’s adventures in Laos of course) and with the hour-on, fifteen minutes-off for yoga -technique (to help with Kat’s back), the inclines were more than manageable, they were fun!

Modern Practicality

Our slight detour across the country (as opposed to our strict diet of southwards movement only) was inspired by online friends, Haley and Matt, world bike riders and budding organic farmers of the infamous Modern Practicality. By a good dose of luck, we were riding into Thailand while they were still in the country, having already been paused living on a farm in a small town called Chat Trakan for a few months. Four days and almost somewhere between four and five hundred kilometres later we were rolling into the outskirts of their little town.

Guinevere greeted us at the door, the young princess she is, she had already been telling us all about her every movement of the day through the closed partition, we could hear her loud and clear but we couldn’t understand a single word she said: Guin is a cat. Haley and Matt’s new baby cat, a noisy little ebony bundle of joy and whiskers, found on the side of the road a few days before our arrival. That evening we dined locally on veggie tempura, pad thai and good conversation – discovering quickly why going out of your way to meet fellow cycle tourers is ALWAYS a good decision!

Aquaponics involves a special mixture of sustainable farming techniques – beginning with fish farmed in tanks, the nitrogen from their waste are filtered out and used to water plants, these plants are all hydro-based specimens which are grown without soil and can thus be grown in larger, denser quantities: vertically or in layers on top of tanks. Matt and Haley have studied the principals of this type of farming (it’s a lot more complex than I’ve described, involving a lot of symbiotic relationships between animals, water and plants) and their journey is being shaped by a series of semi-long-term farm stays (like WWOOFing, learn more HERE). They source opportunities like this that they can learn from for later application, but more than that, much more, is that they give back to the countries and communities they visit. We were very impressed with the whole shebang.

Not only did we learn about aquaponics and life on a farm, but we tried some new things like durian paste cake and Thai hot cocoa (the cocoa was markedly better than the cake, but despite its garbagey sweetness, durian cake is surprisingly ok!). Our presence inspired a rare day of rest for Matt and Haley, it’s not uncommon to find them at the farm eight days a week, not because they’re earning money (they’ve done most of their work for free) but because, as anyone who farms knows, there’s never a time where there’s “nothing” to do! We planned to go our riding, but mooched around instead; chilling out, feeling good and relaxed.

An enormous bruise spread across the sky with the sound of a thousand punches, the storm rolled in for the rest of the day. It tempered itself for a moment, creeping out long enough to allow us time to relocate to a fancy cafe around the corner in the least likely of places: behind a petrol station, where not only did they have a barista, but she knew what she was doing! There, we were once again assaulted by the power of the Thailand might, the tropical weather is more furious than anything we’ve had before. While cowering inside, we played Monopoly Deal (a card game slightly less competetive than the original bordgame) and drank copious amounts of coffee and hot chocolate to make up for being a bit wet and chilly in the storm. Storm front after storm front thundered through the skies like so many bands of wild horses racing through the rolling hills of clouds, occasionally deafening our open ears as we spoke about phobias, the future, chocolate and of course, riding bikes.

Moving Southward

Unfortunately, we had to keep moving, as is the life we lead and began our southwards momentum once more. The ride to Phitsanoluk was largely uneventful, except for eating what Kat hoped would be the last bland noodle soup for a very, very long time. The markets held a few treasures but were mostly like the bulk of South East Asian markets we’d visited: carbon copies of varying quality current fashion goods. The hotel we stayed in cost us a sum total of $3 for the two of us, and was even clean – we hoped this would be indicative of the kind of hotel we could expect for the next few weeks of riding.

A long day on the road doesn’t happen all the time, but it does make a nice difference to simply saw off a good chunk of the trip rather than shaving it inch by inch. An easy 130 or more kilometres swept us into a town called Nakhon Sawan and had us riding around a round about, chock-full of trucks, cars and motorbikes… and cyclists! A small group rounded the bend with us and we flagged them down to help us locate a cheap place to stay. After visiting a few nice-but-definitely-not-cheap places with the four charming Thai riders, their ‘leader’ Thanin took us to a set of little apartments which cost less than $10 a night and are located in most towns (we thought, maybe we could take Thanin along with us to help us in the evenings!) and then invited him along to dinner with us. One of his group members turned out to be vegetarian too (what luck!), and we supped on fine street food without fear of meaty, leggy, eggy contamination of our food.

Vegetarian food in South East Asia is a strange thing, red bean buns pop up occasionally, and one does sight the occasional restaurant clearing its meat-free intentions, but the majority of what we ate has been meat-based dishes, ordered meat and egg free, which doesn’t leave us a lot to chow into! We’d recommend learning very specific dishes in the local language that are already vegetarian and designed to be eaten that way – otherwise the dishes can be lacklustre and don’t convey an accurate picture of how rich the cuisine really is!

Food is never far away in Thailand, street food literally lines many streets and is being cooked constantly. The Thais traditionally eat six times a day – consuming small meals each showcasing a specific flavour or texture profile, using different kinds of ingredients at each session. This way of eating is still practised by a good number of Thais, but the small portion sizes and plant-based menu seems to have changed. The result is a huge number of overweight people, Thai nationals who don’t fit the slim mold of what one might assume is an average shape.

The diabetes and heart disease levels are increasing at an alarming rate in Thailand where people can afford more meat, more processed foods and street vendors can afford to serve up larger meals too. This trend was voluptuously obvious in the next town we visited, Chai Nat, such a cute town with a relaxed vibe, but the sheer number of larger locals (more than 50% of the population were overweight, if not obese) was staggering. We joined the hungrily dining masses in the evening, dining out at the gloriously colourful and salivation-promoting markets conveniently placed opposite our evening’s residence.

Next morning, as was very much our habit in Thailand, we awoke early, packed up our junk in record time and rode 40km before breakky: nothing like it to make you feel righteous and fighting fit for the rest of the day! We reached a tourist town called Ayutthaya, the roads thick with elephants, tourists and temples.

The way the elephants were being treated as objects, rather than sentient beings, made us feel sick and sad – the elephant riding industry is a disgrace. Of course it’s easy to narrate individual tales about elephants and kind carers: sure the people who tend to the elephants are often kind, caring and compassionate people doing a wonderful job with what they’ve been given, however, elephants simply haven’t been placed on the earth for our entertainment, they’ve been here since before the ice ages, evolving for the best strengths they need: to protect their families, to forage in the rainforest and to travel long distances in tight herds. Their spine is weaker than what it seems. They haven’t evolved to carry great loads on their backs, carrying instead with their trunks and heads, using their sheer size and strength for purposes other than human enjoyment. It’s something we just cannot bare and should not be something tourists, especially those aware enough to think twice, are paying and therefore supporting.

Bangkok Breeziness: Free Hotels and Friends All Around

Via crazy roads for the last 30 kilometres adorned with imaginative graffiti we made it into the mammoth city of Bangkok. A few crazy turns and riding on large, heavily-trafficked roads through the outskirts we pulled up to Buddy Place Hotel where our mate Bright’s friend was giving us FIVE nights of accommodation for FREE! Of course it wasn’t quite that simple: the hotel staff didn’t quite know what was happening and we stood around in lycra for longer than strictly necessary, but no matter, with Bright on the phone, all was well and a beautiful, spacious, clean place opened out in front of our eyes. Are we lucky or what?! That evening, we smashed some amazing bibimbap for dinner at a Korean restaurant around the corner. This is what city living is all about.

The next day the military called a coup d’etat, and such it was our entire time in Bangkok. Luckily for us it didn’t really affect our stay. We rode TanNayNay the tandem into town and left it with the very capable staff at BokBok Bike, met Bright and his friend Arthur (ostensibly to do an interview, which we performed in Bright’s car) but really to go and eat amazing food, such as mango cheesecake to die for! Our evening continued in a splurging fashion with free flowing beer and food at Moonshine Cafe, where we met Tay and a lot of their crew and drank beer, talked shit, learned to swear and played pool.

In Bangkok, we did as one does in Bangkok: went walking, window shopping and people watching in the city centre, Chinatown and at Paragon at Siam Square. Our evenings were often with Bright and Tay, or Bright and Sarah, with whom we went to fancy restaurants like Limoncello for pizza and craziness. Without the bike, we were forced on one occasion to take a taxi home during which Alee nearly expired due to frustration (bike riding in cities and all the freedoms it lends you has a spoiling effect!)

A day before we were due to head out of the city, we picked up TanNayNay and had dinner at Natasha Restaurant – middle eastern Arabic fare made to PERFECTION. Alleykat were so in love with the food – the hummus, the felafel, the bread, the tabbouleh… that the next morning we ordered a whole lot to take on the train for lunch and probably could’ve stomached it for breakfast as well. We planned to take the train to Chumphon instead of riding there along the massive coastal freeway, and so met Bright and Tay to say a final goodbye at the train station so we could finally pay for something for them (coffees) and said a warm ‘until next time’. Mere moments later, we’d hopped on the train after paying a TanNayNay bribe (only $3 but Al fumed so hard smoke began pouring out of his head) and we were ready to rock.

We somehow broke the Airstash. I don’t know if you know this about us, but we occasionally need to zone out: we have a magical device called an Airstash (you can read more about it HERE) which allows us to download movies onto our iPads via a wireless signal. We’ve come to depend on it quite heavily and like to joke ‘what if it broke’. It definitely wasn’t a jocular situation when that day finally came…

During our one night in Chumphon we dined on the first bad food we’d encountered in Thailand; we didn’t dispair though because Thailand had been too consistent otherwise to worry. Next day we rode through a steamed bun town and were quite suddenly transported to Jeju Island, South Korea. What a heaven! We devoured eight on the spot and could have easily spent hours there with Maya and Ma’an the two gorgeous girls who expertly pulled out bun after fluffy white bun for us to injest, all the while asking us questions and giggling sweetly to themselves.

The next night our dinner was payed for by a sweet man who didn’t speak much English (and with barely any Thai we couldn’t make ourselves understood well enough) so he popped his English teacher sister on the phone and then explained through her just how much he liked what we were doing and insisted upon paying for our dinner. Our interpersonal luck continued in the next town we paused in: Khura Buri where we met bike tourer Tim from North Carolina with whom we talked about mosquitoes, polyamory and of course riding bikes (is the a theme here?!).

MAJ is almost with us!

Our ‘wife’, as she is known, a best friend from Melbourne named Maj had decided to take some time out of her extremely busy schedule (a 90 hour week is common practice) and spend almost two weeks with us in South East Asia. We’d known about her impending visit for most of our time in Thailand and it kept us warm at night, it kept the fire in our bellies burning hot and made us a little goal-focused! MAJ WAS COMING!!

Two nights before we were due in Phuket we stayed in a little, cheap hotel in Khao Lak, there meeting Francis – a nice man who from hello, did not stop talking and although Kat found out many outrageous things about Francis’s crazy life, he didn’t ask her a single question in two days of talking. Kind of sad, to be so involved in one’s own fanciful life that a lot of the external world is missed. It was here, wandering through more magical food-laced night markets that we discovered the greatest dessert food in Thailand: crumpcakes: a 25cm diameter circle of half crumpet, half pancake, heavily dusted with thinly shaved coconut, black sesame and honey/palm sugar. Heaven, sweet heaven, we ate about six from the same vendor over our time there. Delectable.

Needing to leave early the next morning in order to complete the last 110km to Phuket we rode off in the rain. Francis was very confused. Our first 20km were rainy heaven, through gently winding, heavily forested areas, beautiful and lush. After arriving and settling in Phuket we were driven wild with expectation: Maj’s flight was about to land, it was going to land any minute… it landed! We jumped up and down on our beds in our plush hotel room for three… getting ready, not knowing where to stand, fussing over everything and sitting waiting. And waiting. And waiting, and hoping that Maj was ok, she surely wasn’t so far from us, only 27km from the airport to our front door, not more than an hour needed to do that, right? Five hours after her plane landed, there she was!

She’d been taken on a rather around-about ride of the island of Phuket, relying on bus drivers to know where our hotel was, only to find herself disembarking an extra 40km around the coast at the largest beachside resort, thinking, ‘surely this isn’t right…’ She was right, it wasn’t the right spot, and after another two community bus rides and an expensive motorbike taxi journey, she’d arrived at the sister hotel of ours, luckily within walking distance. We hugged and smiled and hugged some more. Maj was a sight for sore eyes, such was our anticipation, two years in the making. We hugged and laughed and sat on each other and the bed and held hands and felt overwhelmed and happy and ready to spend every single second of the amazing eleven days Maj had incredibly taken off from her hugely demanding job as one of the two founding lawyers of her own law firm. What a boss, what a boss indeed.

In Phuket, we discovered we weren’t in tourist town, Phuket Town is very much run as a normal Thai city, with Thai people running the shops as well as frequenting them. We ate well, of course, dining on lots of fresh fruit, traditional dishes like Pad Thai and Pad Si Yew, more fresh fruit and lots of random coconut based delicacies. After a few days of unbreakingly wet and stormy weather, we had the decision made for us: instead of seeking to dive on the islands of Koh Phi Phi, as we’d thought about, the storms, the wind and rain deterred us and we moved around the coast to Krabi, destined to arrive in Malaysia a few days early and make the most of our time together in Georgetown, Penang.

Krabi was similar to Phuket in that we were definitely in real Thailand, not simply a technicolour version painted for tourists. We spent a few days here, delighting in entirely vegetarian restaurants, colourful/ambient markets stuffed to overflowing with fruit, vegetables and delights (more crumpcakes than it was possible to devour!) We rode around to Ao Nang and discovered we’d made the right decision for accommodation types again: here were all the tourists and their attractions, here were the old white men leering and letching on young Thai girls, here were the stalls that stretched on for street lengths, full of low quality clothes made to be worn to stretching point by fat tourists and there they were, paving the streets and sanding the beaches, everywhere. Maj and Kat got new piercings together and named them after one-another, as is tradition.

We rode back feeling happy with our location, ready to take a few ferries (land and sea) across the Malaysian borders the next day to Penang. We stopped overnight in Satun and went market dining for dinner. Perfect pad thai was met with gusto and the night got richer with deepfried banana balls and oodles of fresh mangoes and pineapple.

Don’t forget to catch our film on Thailand!

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 7 (Thailand) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Laos began in much the same way as Vietnam ended: in the mountains, getting ripped off at every turn, with stray dogs free and wild birds in cages. As Al repeated for the fourth time that morning: ‘this is the last bus I’m ever taking’, yep, it felt like a bit of a shitty start. However, Alleykat ever open-minded, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, braved our first ever bus border crossing, made some Finnish friends, Aino and Jussi, and enjoyed the much warmer weather that Laos brought with its sunny disposition.

The morning leaving Vietnam heaved with frustrations, we’d booked TanNayNay a seat on the bus; paying almost as much for our long bike (specifically specified as a loooong, two person bicycle) as we did for our own seats. We rocked up, with a fellow from the bus company, let’s call him Steve, leading Al astride TanNayNay on his motorbike, and Kat in the minivan with all the baggage. So far, so good we thought too soon. Not so much, when we arrived at the bus station and the man who’d lead the bike to the station “suddenly” realised just how long TanNayNay was – and that she couldn’t possibly fit on the bus. For a while, both of us talked calmly and slowly, assuring the driver and our little “friend” Steve that we had definitely got the bike on the bus before and all we needed to do was take out the front wheel. An unbelievable half an hour later, we still hadn’t left and TanNayNay had been walked onto and off the bus twice. The driver and Steve were “positive” that there was absolutely no way that they could get the bike on and this culminated in them demanding that we should pay extra, again, for the privilege of having our bike on the bus (even though there were a number of motorbikes riding scot-free in the luggage compartments already). As we refused for the fortieth time (given we’d already paid her way handsomely), the bus began to drive off. Al finally snapped and shouted ‘Ok! Ok! Fine, we’ll pay!’ And somehow, 10 US dollars, argued down from 20, made all the difference to the tight packing situation and TanNayNay fit neatly. Unbelievable.

Of course it was all about money.

The rest of the passengers were bordering on livid, given that we’d all been waiting for almost an hour now to leave, and we got a few unfairly angry glares on our way to our seats, even though the whole thing was simply a ploy to get more money and not our fault. I know, dear reader that you’ll be shaking your head and asking why didn’t you just pay straightaway? Principle, that’s why. Why didn’t we just ride? We would have, but we were on our visa’s last day and the distance to the Vietnamese/Laos was far more than was rideable having not already left, it just felt like nothing was in our favour.

The wretched start to the day was topped off by the realisation that we’d left behind at the hotel our entire bag of food: oodles of fresh fruit and veggies, nuts, muffins, coffee and our jar of good expensive peanutbutter. It was too late and we certainly couldn’t just ask the bus driver to pop into our hotel, despite rumbling right past the street it was on only minutes after pulling out of the bus station. The bus trip began as uncomfortable and was worsened quickly by the seating arrangement: the transportation of goods across borders certainly wouldn’t fly in many first world countries – not only were the last five rows of seats taken up with luggage, perishables, and children’s enormous plastic play things, but the entire floor of the bus was carpeted with 60kg bags of corn, making cramped conditions even less comfortable. Along the windy way, we picked up ten or fifteen more people AND their luggage, which was shoved unceremoniously about the heads and appendages of the people at the back of the bus, and the new passengers themselves were made to perch on tiny red plastic chairs, like oversized dolls at a child’s playtime tea party. It became quickly apparent that the money we paid to get TanNayNay on the bus was chump money, tourist tax, anything they could get; it infuriated us (Al) further, prompting a fifth declaration for the morning about hatred of busses and a total ban on any participation with them in the future. Ever.

The eight hour trip through houses on stilts and arid fields awash with white and yellow cabbage butterflies was manageable because we knew it would end and we had a place lined up in Savannakhet. Jussi and Aino were lovely, and once we’d located the Leena Guesthouse (a challenge in itself) we popped out to dinner altogether at a Japanese-run cafe called Chai Dee. There we dined richly on green papaya salad, spicy curry and of call things, homemade coriander pesto pasta. Our time in Savannakhet was cushioned by comforting presence of kind people: we weren’t ripped off at the guesthouse, we had a clean room and were positively surrounded by Nordic people! Jussi and Aino left, but in their place came more Fins: a well-travelled fellow named Juho and his friend, a different Jussi. To our party came three from Norway: Thomas, Asloug and their tiny daughter Rachel and it was a pleasure to have some new friends to dine and chat with sporadically.

We couldn’t locate the market after searching twice, and so ate almost every meal out, enjoying the properly vegetarian options provided by a number of restaurants. Lin Cafe became our local morning haunt with the powder-white faced ladies and amazing breakfasts of fruit salad, yoghurt and muesli, Chai Dee featured at least once a day where we got to know a little of Moto the Japanese owner and his fruitful working life. At a vegetarian-specific restaurant, we met Brian, a man from Vas Vegas. His fiancé’s aunt ran the shop and he was on a six month visit, helping out where he could. Brian’s heritage was Philippino and Chinese, as well as Las Vegan and from Guam. He’d found love in the form of Apple, whos English was better than almost any we’d encountered before. The two of them helped us out with creating our usual magic collection of useful phrases, questions and niceties in the Laotian language. They also directed us to ‘7’, not 7 Eleven, where they knew there was some ‘Western’ food sold, including oats! And you know how much Alleykat loves their oats for breakfast (and if you don’t, you can read about it HERE).

The first of the rains came in Savanahket, a monsoonal deluge at around the same early afternoon rendezvous each day. The rain gods had their alarm clocks synchronised and would pour enormous buckets on the whole town for no more than forty five minutes at a time, after which they’d invariably get bored and go to bother some other weathered relatives.

Ken from Canada brightened our last two days with his infectious positivity and bubbly chattiness. He’s lived almost permanently in Thailand for five years following an horrific accident in which a train collided with him – but as a huge credit to him, it hasn’t affected his ability to strike up a friendly, thought-provoking conversation in mere seconds. The morning we met, we’d covered poverty, Michael Jackson, psychology, pop culture, good food, baking, Bangkok and South East Asian politics before we even swapped names!

Our second last day was made a little uncomfortable by a youth who was also staying at Leena’s – he hovered outside the room knocking relentlessly, peeking through the curtains and generally harassing Kat who was unsure of what to do. Eventually Al swung past and told the boy off, and we informed the manager he was bothering us. The whole experience was little irksome, but we learned that there are a few towns in Laos where older teenagers travel to on weekends to try drugs away from the claustrophobicly watchful eyes of their families, a strange but not altogether unbelievable trend. That evening, perhaps tied to drug taking, but more likely simple run-of-the-mill accident, we witnessed a motorbike crash, a horrible helmetless tumble with a gruesome soundtrack and colour palate. We were left shaken, read HERE for why.

In the four and a half days we were there, the movie and blog for Vietnam had been eked out and we were ready to ride again. Our stay was extended by one full 24 hour period, the Internet in Laos was proving to be the slowest we’d encountered in ALL our travels and uploading the video took about fifty times longer than we’d planned for.

Back on the Bike!

They say Laos was once called ‘The Land of A Million Elephants’; this is definitely not true anymore, not the moniker nor the elephants (there are closer to one hundred in all of Laos, probably fewer) – but it could still be saddled with the title: Ten Thousand (million) butterflies, Ten Thousand Utes, Ten (hundred) Thousand smiles, Ten Thosuand Pointy Mountains, or perhaps most fittingly, The Land of Ten Thousand Goats. The beardy larrikins are everywhere, bounding, head-butting, grazing, bleating. Their little kids are so frolicsome, so happy and chirpy, who wouldn’t want ten thousand of them in every province?! .

After a good whack of time off the bike, save for a few kilometres here and there, Kat was ready to try her hand and her back by getting dissed in lycra bicycle shorts and casting a leg over TanNayNay. The morning greeted us with a fine heat by 8am and once we’d had our last (and best!) breakfast at Lin’s Cafe we were fuelled and fit to ride. The first thing that struck us was that nobody really seemed to be at work, a far cry from the hubbub of Vietnam where people were awake in the tiny hours of the morning (three AM, anyone?!) working in the feilds, opening the shops and eating at the hundreds of little impermanent shops along the roads. There were people awake, we could tell because the second thing we noticed was that everyone seemed excited to see us and want to say hello. In Cambodia we were charmed, if sometimes slightly irritated, by the incessant bellowing and helloing by every squeaky child in our vicinity (read about it HERE), where as the Laos people of all ages cracked huge grins and waved heartily at our passing tandem freakshow.

Riding roads next to the Mekong was relaxing and calm, the small undulating hills felt like happiness under our wheels, the quality of this smile-inducing tarmac was suitably high too, a few charcoal craters here and there, but it was mostly smooth sailing on well-sealed roads. A few honking horns for the ‘horn count’ but none of them even slightly in anger or with a tinge of rudeness, all just hellos AND on such a low decibel level, they were not even too much for Kat’s super sensitive ears. We’d pulled in for lunch at a nice little middle of nowhere place where we were overcharged, as is custom for Falangs, but the vegetarian fare was very good, and actually meat-free, not just meat-removed or worse, meat-related, and then the weather turned. The wind hinted at our general area with provocative gusts and heady, I’m-almost-upon-you blasts. There was a period of an hour or more where we were convinced the daily rain we’d experienced in Savannakhet would roll in, but no – just tempestuous winds, thickening atmosphere and a slight shroud of darkness. Tempting the weather to break on us, we rode on but no rain came.

The day’s riding got us to a little spare-change town and, drawn into a ‘resort’ by the of billboarded offer both of a restaurant and a place to stay, within a few minutes we were in a little tiny thatched hut of a room and we were ok, if a little uncomfortable. Ready for an early bedtime (such party animals, us) we went to the restaurant just as dark was closing the day, and were served in a haphazard way by a couple of giggling girls: one transgendered with neon fushia talons and the other dowdy and lankly raven haired, whose dubious hospitality skills and botched service would unfortunately be indicative of that to come. Mostly, I think they just couldn’t get over the fact that we were white. They even sent someone away with the news of “falungs” to be gawked at and so a few more youths, their amuzement clunky and poorly hidden behind hands gesured in prayer over their laughing mouths. It was a little off putting to have an audience, but we’re not unaccustomed to being stared at. Our closely scrutinised meal consisted of one nice veggie meal and another awful thing: meant to be papaya salad, the beautiful fresh simplicity of which is pretty hard to stuff up but they over flavoured it with too many chillis (possibly to see if we could cope – we couldn’t) and some fermented sauce, we don’t usually waste food but it was totally inedible.

Then, an hour after getting tucked firmly back into our shanti-home, the music started… music loud enough to wake the dead, the thundering augmented bass shook our eardrums seismically until midnight, rendering sleep an impossibility, let alone pain-free ears. And then, as if our aural senses hadnt been assaulted enough, the roosters had a go for a while. A terrible night’s sleep indeed.

More people seemed to have joined in on the holiday celebrations and laizefare attitude toward work during our second day back on the road, which started far more favourably than the first had ended: half an hour’s worth of conversation with a young Laotian fellow named Neece. He’d travelled to this holiday spot with his whole family and was inturning at the resort intermittently between parties. His English was very good and he was pretty excit to practise with us, asking us all sorts of questions and bating us for some back. We left him as he’d begun his first task of cleaning out the chicken coop positioned right behind our ex-bedroom.

The day’s festivities were quite low-key and aqua-themed, with kids all along the road chucking buckets of/spraying super soakers of/hurling plastic lollie-bag bombs of water at us (mostly ineffectively). We were enjoying the pleasant ride: not just for the leafy green surroundings for some of the second day, but the drivers – totally pleasant and content to give us both space and time (neither of which gifts we are used to receiving!). Unfortunately our bubble of the kind, caring, swine-free attitudes and dispositions of the Laos drivers was burst by the frantic, emotive squealing of two enormous black pigs strapped unceremoniously to the back of a passing van. They were clearly in pain and in great distress; and wouldn’t you be too, if you were tied supine onto the rear bumper bar of a van with your head dangling perilously close to the gravelly roads, jolting violently with every crossed indentation, and the fumy stench belching out at you from the red hot exhaust pipe? Where are the Buddhist objectors?! Where are the objectors full stop?! Why do we humans treat animals so poorly? It maddens and saddens us.

That afternoon we met a girl just before we stopped for the night, who could speak nigh-on perfect English and humoured Kat’s claims of being “pregnant” to get out of drinking beer with the raucous women at the small food market we’d paused at (just to make this clear, Kat’s not pregnant, she doesn’t like beer). We came to the quick realisation that everyone seems to be getting into the Laos New Year – traditionally celebrated as a water festival and completely turned monstrous or magical (depending on how cynical you are) with the additional food dye and pastel powders thrown with the water. We aren’t sure how traditional the heavy drinking is as part of the festival but it seems to have taken just as strongly as water throwing.

Wiley Alee of Alleykat argued the guesthouse proprietor from 60,000 to 50,000 because we like small victories. We had watched the cogs turn in his head when we initially asked the price for one night, the slow rotating teeth fingering into each other as his mind worked hard at making him as much money as possible, he started at 70,000.

The Antlightenment

After enjoying a spot of Hunger Games, we needed an intermission and so turned on our bedroom light, only to discover our floor covered in fine-dining ants, an army thereof. It would seem the lights outside had attracted a smorgasbord of flying inchworms and the ants, who had clearly been living here in the middle of nowhere, Laos, for a while and have thusly learned a thing or two about these lacewing drongos. Now, how this massacre went down we’re not exactly positive, and dear reader, I’m sure you’ve got questions, but for now we’ll hazard a guess or two and after you can feel free to agree or write a strongly worded letter of objection. As you’ve no doubt had experience with ants, unless, dear friends you’ve lived a blessed life inside a Tupperware container, you’ll know for the most part they don’t fly, not to hunt anyway. Lacewings on the other hand are like blind larvae on the ground, like excited seals out of water, but are slightly better off in the air, although they are kind of kamikaze light addicts while in flight. I’d speculate the ants knew when to pop their heads out the door and check on their flighty-wormy prey, just to keep combative tabs on them. I’d hypothesise, when these flitty-flappity lace-winged idiots had quite literally flown their wings off after what I can only guess was a whirlwind of empassioned fly-sex, and were reduced to the floor-based status of their vastly more intelligent, exoskeletoned brethren, the ants were already at action stations ready to swarm for the kill. Or, if not to the jugular slice then and there, they were at least ready and able to carry their meat still wriggling, one, two or three a squirmy piece, all the way safely from the ground outside, inside our room and into their nest.

So, why have I flapped on about this for such a long time? Well, goodness knows, but that wasn’t the end of the saga. Being the ‘unfazed-by-ant-infestation’ gromits we are, we elected to grab a slice of delectable peanut brittle, switch the lights off and resume our movie and with that, promptly forgot about the living black on our floor. The movie ended satisfactorily and we braved the lights-on motion once again. The ants were gone! And so were the thousands of silently protesting grubs they’d been lugging about. Ok, they hadn’t completely disappeared, but their numbers had fallen so steeply that the tiles were once again visible and it was really just a few stragglers left behind (they’d probably stopped for a sneaky snack on the way). Captured by their sudden disappearance, we sleuths traced their movements more carefully and it came to light that their nest, now replete with all kinds of dead bug goodies, was actually in the darkness directly underneath our mattress. Perfect.

Half way through putting up our faithful little tent so we could still sleep on the bed we’d paid 50,000 kip for, the manager and some of his friends came to save the day – with a broom and bugspray! Venturing outside we realised that our little infestation (which we must reiterate, we weren’t too bothered by, considering ants are definitely here with more rights to land and spoils of said land than us) was not the be all end all of the situation. The bathroom roof had grown wings and the floor was wriggling. The steps up to the line of four conjoined rooms we were a part of were covered in lines of what would easily have been a million ants or termites. Apparently the whole place had been newly and idiotically built atop an ant hill. We tried to ward off the bombastic friend of manager with his can of spray, believing very firmly in a pacifist approach but alas, he couldn’t be stopped. We moved to the ant-free room next door and the manager’s wife came and made the bed in the room we’d just vacated as though we hadn’t just alerted them to the fact the whole thing was resting directly on a volcano of ants. And such was our antlightenment.

Feeling like a presenter on the set of Grumpy Old Men

We’d timed our stay in South East Asia fairly well, the dry season or the “winter” season begets a couple fewer tourists and a more manageable climate for bike tourers. The landscapes we were uncovering with our bicycle and our eyes were terribly dry and craving water, the rice paddies were cracked mud, wounds in the earth caked into huge scabs by the relentless sun and absent liquid. The dust sometimes plumed up around us, gritty shoulders of roads making TanNayNay’s belt drive squawk and creak in complaint. People it seemed were mostly on hold, waiting for the life-giving rains to return – and suddenly, there were at the celebration of the Laos New Year, the wettest celebration in the world, I suppose to welcome in the start of the wet season.

The Laos New Year is similar to the Lunar New Year celebrated in many Buddhist countries and is a generally colourful and loving experience. In Laos, the story is no different – the hospitality from strangers was often turned up to eleven, and we felt buoyed on by the continuous capituatlion and recapitulation, the calling and caterwauling of ‘sa bai dee!’, ‘hello!’ The people of Laos were instantly more likeable to us than any of our South East Asian leg thus far.

These two days, unofficially three days, and super unofficially (but officially practised) whole week, are celebrated mostly via a nation-wide water fight. The majority of participants are nothing short of jubilant, loving every bone-soaked minute, shrieking with delight and dousing everyone who walks, rides, motors or attempts to sneak past. No one is free from being targeted: grandmas, delivery men, dogs, entire bus-loads of tourists caught unawares and of course, especially not Alleykats riding a bike. In our first couple of days out of Savannakhet, we thought we’d pretty much seen what it was going to be like: occasional groups of children armed with water pistols ambushing us a few times during the day. What we weren’t prepared at all for was the extent to which everyone gets involved – not just in being wet, but in the watery deluge springing endlessly forth from whatever vessel their arms could manage. Pots, saucepans and 25 litre cement buckets were among favourites but, hoses, crockery and super-soakers complete with camel-pak style backpacks for vital refuelling were not uncommon.

Alee’s only hint that he wasn’t in love with this celebration was when he needed to go out and eat some dinner and really didn’t feel like being watered along the way, otherwise his face was fairly upwardly turned during this many-day soaking. Kat on the other hand felt a lot like a Grumpy Old Woman on the ABC show: the first day was fine and fun, enjoyable and easy to cast in a positive light when simply considering the happiness surrounding every impromptu outside shower, the silliness of it and indeed the refreshing temperature-lowering effect one relinquishes from being dunked under water. However, the second day, Kat felt a bit like a cat, a grumpy old cat who didn’t like being uncomfortably wet and was even more uncomfortable with the idea that a nation so thoroughly in want of an ongoing water supply would be scandalously wasting every precious drop of tap water.

In Paksan, a large town midway between Savannahket and Vientiane, we paused at BK guesthouse run by Soy Muong Hane and her lovely English-profficient daughter, Seng Keo Syhavong. BK is a fourteen year old, highly recommended guesthouse named after great grandparents who were furniture makers and intricate wood carvers to boot. The family were thoroughly wonderful and tended to Kat for two nights, who had managed to contract a rather poorly-timed dose of tummy bug.

At a restaurant in Paksan we made a rather disturbing discovery in the same pig-abusing theme as on the road: after dining richly on green curried vegetables and sticky rice, we noticed the three restaurant dogs, who had some serious pep, paying attentions to a sack in the corner. Then the sack moved, and grunted and finally after being harangued by the inquisitive dogs too long got up with a defiant and plainly terrified snort and attempted to walk away. Unfortunately, as the poor little thing was sewn into the hessian sack and left there for anyone’s guess how long, it was rather incapacitated and could only manage a few steps before getting tangled and rolling around aimlessly. After a minute of noisy distress it managed to thrust its little snout through a small “breathing hole” and complained loudly to anyone who would listen. We were stunned into sad silence, what could we do? Demand they let it go? Complain to the manager? Leave without paying? Nope, nothing made practical sense and soon enough the manager himself came out and took the poor thing inside after dumping it roughly into a crate. Again, we asked ourselves, isn’t this supposed to be a Buddhist country? Surely they value the sacred life of all beings? It was a heads up to the treatment of animals worldwide, really, not simply a single case of animal cruelty. Kat wished she could feature on Grumpy Old Women and vent about it.

After riding on and off, making further up the road, the fourth day of a nasty bout of giardiasis, Kat was forced to hop in a small, open-backed van (for all intents and purposes of argument, a bus) and Al, the beast who hates busses, rode to Vientiane alone. Upon arrival, Kat was taken for an inexpensive ride on a tuktuk to a guestouse on the outskirts of Vientiane, where Al joined her a few hours later to spend one night in a room with ten thousand mosquitoes. The next morning it was time to roll up and out – we needed to be in Luang Prabang in order to meet Kat’s mum and dad the next day!

Alleykat go separate ways (yet again) en route to Luang Prabang.Early bird Alleykat made it to the Northern bus station at 6:30am and when we began unloading the panniers from TanNayNay’s sleek purple frame, the bus drivers were already making more than enough room under the bus in a distinctly TanNayNay sized shape. Al put a halt to their efforts, indicating that he was in fact going to ride the road to Luang Prabang on the bike. Stunned into immobility, the drivers then shrugged good-naturedly and went back to their early morning collecting of VIP bus customers. After a brief grasp of each other we parted and Al rode off on a very light bicycle indeed, armed for his ride with only the bare necessities of helmet, double-layered knicks, iPad, video camera and pump.

Busses vs bikes

After leaving Al to his ride (one Kat deemed slightly unnecessary given the bus boy’s kind, free offer to stick TanNayNay under the hull and for it to be an easy ride) Kat clambered inside the VIP bus. Aide from a couple who were mid-argument, mosquitoes were the only other passengers inside at this early stage. Gradually the bus began to fill up and the seat next to Kat was filled by a diminutive, smiling Laotian man of perhaps 20, although he could’ve been 40 given the beautiful, ageless faces of the Laos people. The first two hours after our late departure, Kat didn’t notice anything much as she was obsessively looking for her other half, the riding machine Al. We did pick up many people and their belongings on the way but picking up speed was another thing altogether. At 65 kilometres in, there was the man himself, stomping on the pedals and looking like a bit of a madzer/maddie all alone on a bicycle built for two. Upon this sighting, Kat promptly burst into tears and felt a bit lonely and miserable.

The rest of the ride was a mixed bag, the hills seemed enormous and never-ending, the gradients appeared to be impossibly steep, rocking the bus back on its haunches most of the time. The driver very sweetly pah-pahed the horn to encourage a variety of animals off the road: dogs, cows and even chickens were spared by this kind soul. Kat discovered a few hours too late the reason the mosquitoes were particularly interested in her: the couple behind were carrying perishables with them to their destination and inevitably, the once frozen meat had unthawed and had puddled around Kat’s bag sitting on the floor in front. Yep, the bag was wet and bloody and the perfect drawcard for single mosquitoes on the prowl for a feed. Disgusting.

We paused a few times for a creepy communal piss stop: initially the bus staff hopped off and unzipped, watering the bushes next to the bus, the men quickly followed suit and relieved themselves within centimetres of eachother and in very close quarters of the bus. This was notable, a typically male idea to have a bathroom break where people without convenient vessles to pull out of their pants and empty their bladders, aka women, couldn’t join in the activity. One woman led the way, wading into the scrubby bushes and finding a quiet spot to go, and a few female passengers took her lead. But it wasn’t quite the same. The bus also needed frequent pit stops, the brakes had to be hosed down lovingly as we lumbered around the steep hills and valleys, the bus rolling around tentatively at the whim of the wilderness.

Busses suck and bikes rock, this is true. This mantra was no doubt pumping through the veins of every cyclist along the way: there were Westerners on flimsy road bikes, backpacks strapped to the rear; there were grandmas rolling around every village bikes piled high with goods and food; there were four brightly dressed boys riding their little hearts out, miles from anywhere, staging minature versions of Le Tour on the crappiest full sized bikes, loving every sweat-drenched minute of it. Bikes win, every time!

The second half of the ride was paved with positives and negatives: knowledge that Al was riding this gave rise to some serious jealousy, the scenery was just too incredible and massive to enjoy at all from a bus seat! Conversely, the road quality left a lot to be desired and the drivers weren’t particularly careful when cornering, often crossing onto the wrong sides of the road around blind corners – this had Kat worrying for Al’s safety, especially during his night riding sections. There were many sad scenes languishing among the beautiful; a huge amount of deforestation, raping and pillaging the land, entire hillsides and newly tree-free sections burning, it wasn’t enough to revel in remaining greenery, it’s all going to go isn’t it? We’ve learned about deforestation for the sake of prosperity and there are a number of countries giving aid and investing in the reallocation of land purpose: namely China and a few Western parties interested in Laos, who are building infrastructure and taking invaluable care of many Laos people, but are also responsible for the ravaging of the land without much consideration for the environment, the natural flora or fauna.

Kat made the terrible realisation that this is what our lifestyle drives, it is our new obsession (in the West) with palm oil and similar commodities dictating that the beautiful sacridity of the Laotian landscape should be remoulded, nay decimated, by machines and fire to eventually give birth to palm and pine plantations. It was unbelievably saddening, but appeared to only effect a few passengers on the bus: none of the Laotians looked remotely surprised at this destruction, and only a handful of French fellows looked similarly disturbed, mouths agape mirroring Kat’s face.

Punctuating the green and blackened landscape were a variety of watchers of the bus: an old grandma seated up really high, another with a perfect vantage point was a small child in his own little shelter, a wooden hut nestled amongst the woodland. There was a family having lunch under a tree, many collections of kids on the side of the road, some waving, some working: holding interesting instruments to spear fish or rubbish to sell.

The Laos people are known for their extremely relaxed and easy-going nature. Both their Buddhist religion and affirmations promote it: unless there’s an element of fun in what you’re doing; don’t do it! This gives rise to lax punctuality yes, but also to a generally positive demeanour and a severe lack of stress. We passed loads of colourful people at technicolour weddings and too, people everywhere milling around on the streets. Many towns we drive through seemed deeply involved in communal cleaning activities: many families washing their clothes altogether, lots of fishing and swimming and people getting about dressed only in towels. It seemed, from a brief speculation, that life in these hills isn’t fast paced or particularly eventful, but that it has all the trimmings of a happy, fulfilling existence; lots of communicating and collective activity, lots of smiling and talking and visiting. Perhaps not so different from our lives back in the concrete jungle.

Family reunions and fancy residences

After a single night stay in a hostel alone, a pannier-laden Kat staggered up to the very grand entrance of Hotel De La Paix. Greeted with a warm smile, eucalyptus scented wet face cloth and a freshly squeezed cool glass of orange juice, she checked in ahead of Ruth and Andrew who were in the air above and Alee who was still over the hills and far away. Before long, the warming sound of their voices drawing her out of the lavish, apartment-sized room, Kat’s mum and dad arrived and the were hugs and kisses all around. They couldn’t believe the luxury of our surroundings either! A few hours of catching up and frequent happy hugs, it was time for Al to be rolling in – he’d been aiming to set off at 5 that morning and had estimated a twelve hour effort would get him to Luang Prabang nicely. Around twenty minutes before his ETA, there he was, drenched with sweat, dirty and smiling his face off.

Serendipitously, we’d finally managed to be in the same place at the same time as some fellow bike tourers. Having heard from a few friends and the Internet that two intepid women, Jude and Astrid (foonsonbikes) were essentially riding the route we were doing but in the opposite direction, we knew that meeting up had to happen. Given Kat’s parents had just flown thousands of kilometres to see us, we thought we’d better run the idea past them, but of course had their blessings as with a very similar situation on our first night altogether in Uzbekistan with cyclists Alena and Marcel (read about it HERE). So, in the waft of happy-family smiles, we arrived at Pizza Phan Luang ready to meet our counterparts. In the heady sweet scent of a mosquito coil night, we six devoured some delicious pizza, possibly the best Alleykat had eaten since Albania’s fresh vegetably rounds of pastry. Al had two to himself, needing to recoup some of the calories lost in his massive two day self punishment, aka 372kms through the hills. It was a great delight for Kat to be in such loving company, with her mum and dad on either side, her lover across the table and two new but amazing new friends.

We worked out that Jude and Astrid who were in Luang Prabang for the second time (having ridden around South East Asia extensively they loved this place so much they’d returned before their upcoming border crossing into China just a few hundred kilometres to our north) and were staying one more night and couldn’t help ourselves but make a second dinner date.

In the morning we went to the hotel library for the first of many free breakfasts. On offer was everything on the menu; one could quite literally order everything detailed and out it would come, no questions asked. Al made a mental note for our last morning: eat everything on the breakfast menu. We begun the day well fuelled with coffee, tea, freshly squeezed juice and seasonal fruit platters. In compliment to this we also had muesli, natural yoghurt and honey, pancakes, waffles, English breakfasts and a bread basket akin to the Magic Pudding – cut and come again indeed!

The manager was gorgeous, we first met her at breakfast with a tiny kitten nestled into a bilum at her front. Some patrons had discovered the mewing kitty on the road and had, knowing full well she was a softie for animals, given the poor thing to her. Her “puppy” was an enormous year old Rottweiler and the exact opposit to the palm-sized kitten at her whim. They were all extremely lovely.

The next few days spent in Luang Prabang were pleasantly untouristic. We’d been warned that the city was somewhat overrun by tourists: hippies, louts, technology-hungry holiday makers and noisy families. We felt like the only visitors in most places we roamed! Sure, we still stuck out like a fly in the soup, our pale skin attracting stares and tuk tuk drivers deeply confused by our preference for walking, but we didn’t feel a part of the plague of tourists that are so often a blight on the landscape. We walked easily, there was nowhere we had to be so we wandered through small streets and decorative temples, we climbed the main hill to drink in the view and an iced tea at the top. We wandered along the periphery of the little headland that makes up most of Luang Prabang’s city centre, admiring the seasonal bamboo bridges and general living of life in the rivers.

Lunch and dinner were, without exception, delicious and varied affairs: we ate again with Jude and Astrid at Utopia, this time not foreign food but vegetarian versions of local delights, laap, papaya salad, sticky rice and pancakes. We bid a farewell to the gorgeous couple who were making their four-wheeled way off into the wilderness the next morning – on two bikes, there’s nothing to stop the adventure.

Learning about the Kamu people

Ruth and Andrew had organised a two-day Mekong river expedition, and we set off (after delectable free breakfast, of course!) and were met at the river sided by Lod, our local guide. Lod was born in a small town close by Luang Prabang and has lived in the town most of his twenty-something years of life. Tourism and guiding are an excellent outlet for someone as multilingual and personable as he. We had a wooden river boat to ourselves, but for the cabin crew and the owner of the lodge we were headed to, French Olivier. The caves half way into our four hour river run were interesting with their gilded collection of golden Buddhas and looming spooned-out rooves. We were most excited by a giant purple gecko living in a groove above our heads, spending minutes admiring his 35cm length and big-eyed beauty.

More animals were the shore fodder of the trip: this time elephants. As aforementioned, Laos used to be called ‘Land of One Million Elephants and a White Parasol’. Now, the parasol means royalty so, you might have guessed that the number of elephants isn’t actually referring to the literal meaning. It is referring to a past ruler of Laos and elephants were once associated with being the battle horses of war: the more elephants a kingdom had, the stronger it was during warfare. No doubt, there was an element of truth to it, there were probably hundreds of thousands of elephants in the country at one time, however now that number has been well and truly decimated. Sadly, the number in the wild had dwindled to a meagre 800 in 2008 and has doubtless dropped greatly since. Poaching is just too potent a drug for many people, a sickening trade is ivory. About another thousand, a single thousand elephants live on in Laos to assist people in tourism and occasionally for farming purposes, but gradually the extraordinarily expensive creatures are going to die out unless the government, who are perfectly positioned, with their easily amicable access to foreign aid and the likability of elephants, to make a difference.

We arrived at Kamu Lodge, named for the group of people who live in the village next door, the Kamu people. They are one of a few, perhaps three main groups who live amicably in the hills and dales of Laos. Lunch was served before Lod took us out for the few hours of scheduled activities. Admittedly, we four felt a little like raising a collective eyebrow of suspicion at the planned ‘archery’ and ‘panning for gold’ but were happily proven wrong.

We began by wandering a short way into the heart of the village. After getting over our initial feelings of dickheadery (one does feel a little put off by being so obviously an invader of real people’s real lives: it may look like a movie set, but it ain’t!) we enjoyed learning more about the lives of the Kamu people. One of Laos’s traditional peoples, they plant rice, net for fish and hunt. But of course there’s more to life than that, the family groups share child raising duties and food production alike. The children all go to primary school where there are four classes but only three teachers so one class is alone at any time. This proved not to be a problem for the kids however as we happened upon them entertaining themselves by singing traditional songs of the area. No, it wasn’t staged on our behalf, this is just how school is for the village children, the teachers were doing a stellar job with the noisy, rather tuneful racket going on next door.

We learned that traditionally, girls are married off early, somewhere between 12 and 18 they are married to a young man from one of the next villages along the Mekong. The age gap is traditionally no more than about six years, one gets the feeling there’s no shortage of children being produced to find a good future match with. The next village back towards Luang Prabang is much larger and has three tribes living altogether peacefully, and due to its size, also has a high school where the boys and some of the girls attend. We learned about Lod himself, living in this village on and off, hunting wild cats in the jungle surrounding and selling their pelts and insides in Luang Prabang. It sounds a little barbaric, and of course as concious, conscientious objectors we were a little stunned at the gay abandon with which Lod described hunting with self-made weapons as a common place, fun activity. Very occasionally, a family will sell enough sticky rice, farm animals and animal goods to move up in the world: uproot to Luang Prabang. There didn’t seem to be any joy or activity lacking from the small village consisting of less than 50 families, but it is very difficult to get an accurate understanding of a place and people with such a limited aspect.

We wandered out of the village, passing the single generator for the whole group and too their single shared satellite dish: they may not have running water, a sewerage system or hospital, but they do have access to the world via television. It was then time for the activities to commence. Archery first, with a home made crossbow was actually serious fun, Al and Ruth hit the purple banana flower target the first time, Andrew on his second try and Kat mauled the target directly above and below the main attraction. It was surprisingly fun, we all wanted to have multiple attempts! Kat and Andrew learned how to harvest rice and fasten the small flaxen bales together using one strand of the rice plant, we all watched Lod fish and another guide pan for gold. These activities are genuinely a part of everyday life, not simply a novelty tourist attraction, they’ve been developed over hundreds of years and perfected using new and different materials, change happens when no one is watching.

On our way back down the Mekong after glamping (glamour-camping, look it up) overnight at Kamu, another village was visited, this time specializing in rice wine or ‘rice whiskey’ production, Andrew and Al had a slug at 9:30am for good measure, Ruth learned about weaving and silk production and even bought some beautiful, intricate scarves.

Upon our return, Kat and her mum wanted to continue the trend and so visited Ock Pop Tok. Ock Pop Tok translates into East meets West and was started by a Laotion woman and her English best friend (thus East and West) who came together to manage and create a workshop to employ and empower women in Luang Prabang. It was so successful that its reach now extend all over the country, sourcing the different kinds of weaving art and artisans and paying them duly. It has put a halt on the dying out of techniques and styles only practised by a few women throughout the country, instead enhancing their earning and creating outlets and providing a real, money-making vocation for women and girls all over. We learned about the creating of silk all the way from tending to the silk worm larvae until they form a cocoon, then shedding it and laying more eggs to continue the cycle. The cocoons are then harvested, once abandoned, and each provides a huge length of fine, pure silk. The process involves hours of reeling and winding and colouring with natural dyes, gradually creating the thicker, velvety strands used for weaving. The meticulous work is done by many women and girls, with utmost respect for the master weavers: grandmas and great-grandmas who’ve spent their lives perfecting patterns and methods. The results are splendidly beautiful.

Back in the haven that is Hotel De La Paix, Al and Kat discovered we’d been moved into a new room. A massive upgrade, we now had our own pool! Yes, it wasn’t enough that we were constantly surrounded and spoiled by total jewel-dripping luxury, including a massive infinity pool in the grounds of the hotel, now we could have midnight nudie swims! Our new backyard joined onto Kat’s parents’ one – that’s right our apartment-sized rooms had backyards and gardens, so we of course shared in the extreme relaxation of a private pool.

Highly recommended to us had been the two waterfalls close by: our bike touring friends Alena and Marcel thought highly of ‘Kuang Si’ and even more so of the smaller ‘Tad Se’. We decided on the second falls as apparently there was lots of hiking and opportunities for whole private pools on offer, however, were thwarted by the weather: the Tad Se falls dry up in the dry season and so instead our tuk tuk driver more than happily dropped us off 35km out of town, saying, with a wave, he’d wait for us.

The sun bear sanctuary was a surprise, around ten bears were right there, hanging out in a fairly well constructed micro environment, they live a real life Catch 22: they can’t be wild and live freely like they should because they’d be instantly poached for their valuable gall bladders or pelts, but they shouldn’t live in captivity because they’re wild animals and aren’t suited to an enclosed life. A few had gone a bit balmy, rocking and pacing, typical behaviours of a confined creature and the rest had occasional clashes for territory, claiming ‘their’ swing, ‘their’ paddling pool, ‘their’ climbing frame. An admirable effort made on behalf of the hunted bears but a long way to go to create something symbiotic.

Along the narrow jungle path, crystalline blue water appeared seemingly from nowhere. Quite suddenly we were walking alongside of craggy ponds, drip feeding each other from a waterfall high above, and all with a fringe of water babies: Laotians and Westerners alike dabbling about in swimming costumes, necking sneaky beers, frolicking in the shallows and even washing themselves ceremoniously! Our party of four was after something a little less alcoholic than was on offer in a few of the pools so kept wandering, soon to be rewarded for our efforts with a magnificent face of water splashing gallantly from above, we marvelled at its beauty from many angles and too at the continuing perfect blueness of the water all around us.

Our eyes were drawn to a sting of ‘hikers’ in all shapes and sizes coming from or disappearing to a climb next to the waterfall. Upon following with our feet instead of just our eyes, we discovered a steep scramble of a walk almost vertically up the rocks next to the face. Excitedly, we clambered our way up this near wall of a walk, picking our way amongst rocks, trees and seemingly unclimbable nature-made walkways (we’re pretty sure it was a dry waterfall bed!).

Once at the top the other hikers had disappeared, leaving us alone in the sudden opening out of the top shelf. We caught the tail end of one of the groups and had a giggle as they were gondolaed across a deep section of the sky-high river by a ruddy, diminutive Laotian fellow, he didn’t make a ripple in the water’s surface alone but with great lumbering tourists aboard his bamboo ‘boat’, he did well not to let them sink! Instead, we crossed this section on foot, rather nimbly picking a path trailblazed by Andrew (Kat’s dad), enjoying the frigid waters lapping up our feet. We promptly lost the others, assuming they’d taken one of the many pathway options, but didn’t fret as they looked less likely than we to know where they were going (there were no signs at all!). Our way down was perfect: a little less steep than the way up, but just as exciting and beauteous.

Part-way down we almost walked through the web on a pleasantly enormous spider who was sitting in the middle of the pathway casually spooling her fine silk around a plainly terrified fly. She was the largest Alee or Kat had seen since Korea, perhaps even including the monsters there! After filming her activities (of course we did) the rest of the wander down was perhaps a little less gung-ho!

We made it back in one piece, energised although rather sweaty from our climb. Mango smoothies apiece and a brisk strip off at the water’s edge and we were in… well, Ruth was in! The rest of us followed at a saunter, Al first, then Andrew and finally Kat whose teeth were chattering as soon as a single toe was grazed along the azure water’s surface. Once in, it was heaven, we were four of about twenty people spread widely around the Pamukkale-esque pools, although for a few mintues there, we probably made enough noise for all twenty!

Our way out of the park was clouded a little by guilt: we’d already made our driver wait a good few hours and were about to ask him to wait some more! Alee had noticed a few advertisements around town for the Kuang Si Falls Butterfly Park, we had to visit. We wandered 300m down the road heading back into town and were greeted by some gorgeous bouncy barking dogs and a mostly nude made swimming in a waterhole not dissimilar to those we’d just left. Ineke (and her husband Olaf, whom we’d just seen the full form of) are a couple from The Netherlands who were looking to make a differen in the world, in Thailand they found their opportunity to do just that: they are working on a variety of sustainabilty projects with the locals and the governments as well as running the butterfly park which strives to educate people about the beautiful incects and their enviroment. Ineke took us on a short tour and finished perfectly by letting us get close to the creatures themselves. Two baskets full of sleepy butterflies were opened magically in front of us and most enjoyed the opportunity to lick some salt from our saline-streaked bodies. We had a lot of fun learning, looking and listening – the couple are looking to get volunteers on top of the one lovely woman they already have so, dear reader, if you’re interested, contact them!

The next few days were busy and interesting. We visited the UXO education centre and learned about Laos’s firey past: during the Vietnam war (named The American War, here in South East Asia for obvious reasons) Laos was bombed more heavily than any other country. In fact, it remains the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world. The UXOs are unexploded ordinants, parts of cluster bombs, similar in potency now to land mines, which are spread over much of the country decades after the war has ended. These present a constant threat to the Laos people who are killed (one every day) and maimed (numerous daily) by these hidden ‘bombies’. Children play with them, adults strike them in the fields or dismantle them for scrap metal. Laos is a terminally impoverished country with a huge percentage of the population living well below the poverty line, like over 70 or 80 percent of the nation. These UXOs are being dealt with, but the process is painfully slow, so in the mean time, the numbers of specially trained people (just as many women as men) are growing and their brave efforts are gradually ridding the environment of this artillery that was a part of a war they weren’t involved in. There are hundreds of education officers working tirelessly everyday, educating grandparents, parents and children about the dangers of these UXOs. The education office was well done and had lots of information and options for aid. A saddening but also uplifting expereince.

We made our way through the city, mostly by eating out at amazing restaurants. Tamarind is one similar to that in Siem Reap we visited: run by a foundation which trains impoverished, limited educationally or violence-effected children to work in the hospitality industry as chefs, waiters and owners of restaurants. The food was among the best we’d had in South East Asia, sans any outlandish price tag.

On our last full day together, a real scorcher, humidity up to our sweaty necks, we crossed the river on a car ferry and wandered along the other side. We four found ourselves a town differing completely from the civilised ease of Luang Prabang, instead with a small-town, real-world feeling more closely associated with Kamu village. We spent the early morning walking to the ‘other end’ of the dusty track via the temples, children of merry go rounds and a woman harvesting lurid red bugs from their favourite tree for her family’s lunch no doubt.

On the way back, out of nowhere, we had water unceremoniously dumped, cheekily flung and sneakily sprayed at us. Alleykat had been right, no one is off limits, we’re all doomed to the same watery fate. Kat felt for her folks who she’d assumed had avoided the worst of the Laos New Year madness, but water fights it seems are just part of the course in Laos.

And then, quite suddenly, our eight days were done. A final breakfast (no, Al didn’t eat all seven breakfast options, but did quite satisfactorily with three and a half as well as two whole bread baskets and a few cappuccinos) and checking that everything was packed and said goodbye. This time the tears didn’t wash away the rest of Kat’s day (as they had last time in Uzbekistan) as a little under five months was the only thing in between the next happy reunion. We waved them off around the corner and there we were, alone, just Alleykat again. The staff at the hotel allowed us to stay inside at perfectly cooled temperature before it was time for a quick lunch and ride to the bus station. Al was planning to pull an all-nighter over the hills and far away to Vang Vieng (220km with 5500m of climbing!) and Kat would again be hobbled with the panniers in the bus and meet him at a well-recommended hostel there later in the evening. Al rode off on Kat for what they both promised would be the last time.

Stormy weather brings us back together

Similar to the bus trip there, the bus trip back was a smorgasbord of visions seen foggily out of the dirty bus window: kids swimming in the rivers, people washing themselves and their clothes at any available water outlet and general mountainous beauty. This time the bus driver wasn’t a sweetie who gently pumped his horn to mind animals, instead he hankered for a quick trip without really knowing how to manage a bus: grinding the gears, clunking up and down aimlessly before smashing into the closest to manageable. We spent hours climbing like a snail behind lumbering lumber trucks and trying to make up for it by slamming down the hills swerving into oncoming traffic. A glimpse of Al at 45 minutes in was all Kat had to go on, but safe to say he was stomping it! She was then plagued with thoughts the rest of the time about the fact he maybe he’d forgotten his head torch necessary for navigating the pitch black ahead of him. To pass the time Kat gorged on New Girl, counting herself a firm fan of Jessica Day’s once again, and sat semi-reclined next to a fellow who didn’t mind sharing some nuts or a laugh at shared incomprehension at each others’ language.

Kat’s final destination of Vang Vieng was not that of the bus, they were travelling on through to Vientiane. Knowing this was highly stressful because in the darkness, one has no idea where they are, in addition to this, the driver and bus boy didn’t seem to speak any English or even Laotian because no matter how many times Kat got up out of her seat trying to exit at the wrong place (after wrongly hearing Vang Vieng come out of the bus boy’s mouth) he did nothing to alleviate this need. Luckily, the one other Westerner of the bus did seem to know where she was thanks to navigation on her iPhone and we hopped off at the same time. Once off and with all our luggage hurled at us hastily, we hopped into a Tuktuk with Megan from the US and we tripped into the unpaved backstreets and were inside and unpacked by 1am. That was when the first thunder clouds split open and the racket of watery sheets being flung from the heavens indicated Al’s trip might be a bit wetter than he’d hoped for.

Al’s arrival at 3:30am was hailed by the sudden raised whisper of ‘Kat Webster!’, and continued in a wet, bubbly fashion, he insisted he was wide awake and could ride on until Vientiane, but hit the pillow fairly hard once showered and de-double-knick’d. Kat on the otherhand was awake listening to the storm raging around their nice dry room until 5.

Our first day began with a big leisurely breakfast of pancakes, fruit, muesli and yoghurt, while we listened to a Dutch girl sitting behind us with a few other intrepid backpacking mates narrate the day, the weather, last night and the whole world. She got on Al’s nerves, who doesn’t like talking for the sake of talking, but seemed fairly harmless. The day was full of rest and food, the sun was piping hot, in the mid-forties, so we watched Tarantino’s True Romance and had more rest – surprisingly enough the all night ride of 220kms took quite a bit out of Al. The day ended with a long chat with Megan who is also a long haul traveller who does lots of WWOOFing and learning about the world.

Our second of two allotted days in Vang Vieng was a bit more eventful, we rode to the Blue Lagoon (number one on Trip Advisor) along some rather rough roads and through some very real villages and arrived to find that the talkative Dutch girl from yestermorning who’d been bitching about the lagoon being ‘just a river that hoons flung themselves into’ was actually correct, but too, that the hoons weren’t too bad and it was rather nice to bob around in the freezing cold, perfectly aquamarine blue water.

That night we went to a second ‘rated number one on Trip Advisor’, a local restaurant with quite good food, but terrible service. This seems to be fairly topical in Laos, more so than in Cambodia or Vietnam, the food generally takes a while to come out and more than that, the waiters and waitresses seem unbelievably uninterested in their customers. We’ve been left waiting, we’ve had to get our food ourselves because the waiters are too busy on Facebook or their phones to go and pick it up from the service counter (yes, really) and there’s just a general attitude present in restaurants. We encountered the strange disparity all the way along the Mekong: not so much in Savanahket or Luang Prabang, but elsewhere we got the feeling that they really, really didn’t want us in their restaurants. A disparity because the rest of the Laos people are generally so welcoming and kind and friendly toward us, especially on the bike, but then the frustration or shame perhaps at having Falung (white people, foreign people) in your restaurant just wasn’t worth it. We’ve been turned away by many an eating place along our way, which is just very strange behaviour.

Pedalling South

Finally! Yes, it has been a long time since we’ve had our bicycle decidedly facing home, but this is it! We’ve started to ride south and won’t stop until we reach Melbourne. It seems strange, because we have been riding home from Amsterdam the whole time, but since Kyrgyzstan, we’ve been riding in circles a bit, not really on track to Melbourne.

The first day of the 155kms to Vientiane was wonderful, rolling through undulations and lush land, there was a thousand metres of climbing over this first day, but as Kat had suspected, the bus rides had made the gradients and the roads seem much more extreme than they actually were. There’s something about being saddled up on a bike that makes the hours and kilometres roll by in an agreeable fashion. What wasn’t so agreeable was witnessing our third motorbike crash. The second had been in Paksan during which one completely mangled motorbike was run over on a bridge (no lights, no doubt) and then this, the third. A girl and her younger sister, both helmetless, were the victims. Again we were alerted to it by the horrific sound of metal scraping sideways on bitumen and the dull thud of humans colliding with hard surface. The younger girl had her hands and legs skinned and was screaming in pain, the older had smacked the road hard and was spitting blood and possibly teeth, but forced them both back on the bike, shoeless, to continue the trip home or hopefully to the hospital. The collection of three thongs lying hopelessly on the tarmac as we passed stuck us, this is a common sight on the roads in Laos, lost shoes, mostly thongs. Horrifically, motorcycle accidents may be the culprit. It amazes us that people here insist on riding without helmets or any protective clothing. The day was punctuated with a few rest-and-yoga stops for Kat’s back and ended in a small town and a room complete with more lace-wing flies and bed bugs than is desirable.

The second day began fortuitously: with a handful of amazing fried bananas. Our day would be measured in fried bananas in fact, we collectively ate about 20 during the few hours roll in to Vientiane. We located a not-too-expensive hotel, and after checking in with the Thai consulate, things got messy. We discovered that even after leaving ourselves ample time to get ourselves a normal, overnight visa for our next leg in Thailand (we’d rolled in on the 29th and had to be out by the 4th) we had our well-laid plans thwarted by public holidays. Not one but two holidays around the weekend we were also straddling put us in a particularly frustrating position. It turned out that we got around it by a cat’s whisker: by extending our Laos visa for two days (at a cost) so we could pick up our Thai visa after the long, public-holiday extended weekend on Tuesday. So much for a quick, easy get away into Thailand, right?

The last days were spent meeting new friends: Akira, a Japanese man we met one evening at a Kwik-e-Mart turned out to be a wonderful man, full of surprises and stories. He did a numerology reading for us then and there and a few nights later paid for a few hours of drinks for us. He’s here volunteering for a governmental planning and building initiative and is making friends left, right and centre.

Finally, on Tuesday, a full four days after we’d planned to cross out of Laos, we were reunited with our newly visa’d passports (notably the last visa we’ll have to apply for on this trip) and rode across the Friendship Bridge to hungrily waiting Thailand.

Don’t forget to catch our film on Laos!

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 6 (Laos) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

There’s a fine art to pushing in. The brush strokes are firm and cubist, there’s a certain abstraction to this art – it’s bold, it’s seems rude, perhaps it has a provocative edge to it. It’s hard to understand, but there is a message underneath the colourful madness of it all: we will all find our way.

That is, we will all find our way through the dank office that is the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. Make it through we did, brazenly paddling our way through the crowds of short, well-dressed artists and showing our hidden talents: when satisfactorily inspired, we can push too.

After celebrating with the other gentiles of whom there were none and without any champagne to aid us, we rode in a rather ballsy manner into the flat and uninspiring landscape ahead of us without any dong at all. Yes, we’d forgotten to get out any Vietnamese currency (dong), and so looked lovingly at the various colourful, neon and enormous signs along the road advertising their delicious ‘pho’ (noodle soup) wares without any dong to be able to satisfy our desires. Twenty kilometres in, a small rambling town unfolded itself in front of us and after following a generous Vietnamese gentleman to no fewer than three ATMs, Al used the fourth just down the road to gather the required phallically-named cash moneys. We paused at an innocent looking shop, flashing her ‘pho’ delicacies at us and had our socks well and truly blown off. With three bowls of steaming hot mint- and chilli-laden noodle soup under our belts, the remaining kilometres into the belly of the Capitol’s beast were a breeze.

Twenty or thirty kilometres out the density grew thick and rich, replete with bustling late-afternoon activities: we passed ladies bent with their load carried on heavily-lumbered bamboo planks, their shoulders mountains and valleys which had been carved by the weight of whatever was on offer (fruit, pots and pans, cauldrons of soup and accompanying portable fireplaces – I kid you not). There were men pushing rubbish carts with wheels groaning and protesting at the gravel on the side of the busy roads, there were women riding converted tricycles (perhaps once designed for enjoyment but now complete with cabinets full of food) as well as carts equipped with fry pans and gas cylinders… portable restaurants! The outskirts were heavy with children, playing, riding bikes: two, three or four on the one steel-frame steed, running home from school, flying kites and milling around street corners in dichromatic school-age gangs.

A sea of motorbikes in Saigon!

Bike Surfing: Riding the Magical Wave of Reunion

Suddenly, we were riding our purple wave in an ocean of motorbike- and scooter-riders, tens of thousands surrounded us as far as the eye could see (sea!). We washed along with great comfort at the distance cars, trucks and buses were kept from us: the lanes are segregated and it was perfect. Crowded concrete was our birth into Saigon and there was no escaping it. Alee followed our friend Matt’s perfect directions to a T, literally the T intersection we went left (or rai-chai in Vietnamese) at and ended up where Google maps denoted Matt and Diana’s house was; TanNayNay signalling our presence.

Unfortunately we weren’t in the right place for our 6:30 meeting with Matt, but fortunately we were found. First by a young Vietnamese woman named Lan who took us under her wing and admired our bike as we did the same to hers (a mint fresh Canondale mountain bike). She was super sweet and offered to wait for our second finding, which came within minutes: Matt strolled up, as warm and engaging as we’d remembered from our chance, week-long rendezvous in Uzbekistan all those moths ago (read about it HERE). After hugs and high fives he sliced us at the sides with his knife-sharp wit and we were home and happy, bleeding our enjoyment profusely.

We swapped details with Lan before heading around the corner to Matt’s home’s actual location and there was the ever-gorgeous Diana, ushering us inside and doting on us immediately. Diana is one of those old souls who knows how to ask the right questions at the right time and at this time it was simply: ‘if you could have any drink right now, what would it be?’ After swilling the water that she promptly poured, next on the list was a gin and tonic with lime… perfect. There we were, only really having know each other for a few days in Tashkent, the dust bowl Capital of Uzbekistan, standing around yabbering on like we’d all known each other a lifetime. We settled in to the lushly comfortable room provided, showered and felt fresh and clean ready to get out on the scene… of dinner! The modern French Viet cuisine was thrown lavishly down our gullets, the wine was swilled and conversation was richer than the butteriest dish. How is it that with some friends, one never feels the time of separation and merely continues on from whence was left?

Back to the Future… No, the Doctor (and friends from countries past)

The plan was to luxuriate in Saigon for a few days, no longer than a week and then head up into the mountains behind the sprawling city, to ride TanNayNay and get some authentic cultural immersion which we felt we’d missed in Cambodia (you can read about our real but not particularly cultured experiences HERE). In Vietnam we felt as though there was more of a chance to learn the language, to make friends in far away places and cover some distances that are well of the tourist track.

The best laid plans come unstuck, and Kat’s back, which had been bothering her for a good whack of time both off and on the bike, decided that Ho Chi Minh with all her frills, fancies and friends, was the perfect place to come well and truly undone. The pain increased even after remaining rather immobile for a few days and so the first doctors appointment was made: Family Medical Practice would become Alleykat’s second home for our remaining time in the city. After an MRI that would have been claustrophobic for even the most normal person. Luckily Kat is anything but “normal”, so survived and had a pretty rockin’ time inside the chamber, the machine really does just sound like a fairly enthusiastic DJ playing ear-piercing minimalist trance! With a flash, the results were in: spend lots of money on physiotherapy and other treatments. Oh, ok.

Kat hooked up to drip to get the pain medicine straight into her blood!

Fortunately, we were totally spoiled in Saigon. Matt, an English/London native living with his full-time primary school teacher partner in Ho Chi Minh City, is now an author and is smashing through his second book. To keep his monstrous brain busy, other than working here and there at an advertising firm or tutoring kids from Diana’s school, he’s been frequenting the Mekong Merchant – a cafe with excellent coffee and as much outdoor or air-conditioned comfort as you can shake a very long stick at. He provided a cocoon for Alleykat to nestle in while in the city, there was copious amounts of coffee drunk and enviable amounts of humour and intelligence divulged.

Also living in their Ho Chi Minh harem were Catrin and Kathy Brown. Catrin, whose schedule is busier than most CEOs’ and whose rhetoric is faster than quality time spent with their families, also chimed in on the rendition of ‘keep Alleykat in total luxury’ – she lent her ear, her phone and her excellent eye for desserts to us while we stayed in what is one quarter her house. We met Cathy Brown a few days in – she’d obviously been busy too, a teacher is always busy of course, and she made us feel welcome and well cared for as well with movies, gin and tonics and delicious food sharing. Alleykat are just lucky ducks, there’s no doubt about it.

With the fantastic four we dined and drank out a few times, meeting the exquisite Allistair (who was also monikered ‘Al’ causing occasional double takes and confusion). Al, who shall henceforth be known as Allistair for the remaining blah of this blog, decided after knowing us for all of a few hours, that in Diana and Matt’s absence for a few days upcoming, we could instead stay at his house and continue the life of kings and queens that we’d become rather accustomed to. We moved into his fourth-storey apartment quick as a flash, and realised that hard work internationally certainly paid off! Allistair has a chef who cooks for him once a week and he generously paid her to come and create in the kitchen for us too. As we ladies of life’s luck spent the day writing, reading and playing in our new apartment, Thao cooked up a vegetarian storm. No fewer than 24 perfect packages were left for us, superbly spiced samosas sat steaming, beckoning us with their scent. A curry too was left prepared and not a single dish to wash. We chatted with her on and off throughout the day, feeling wonderfully spoiled by her charm as well as her poise as a cook. I think we well and truly scared the cleaner, who popped her head in right at the wrong moment: we’d just unpacked everything from our panniers in preparation for a clean-out. She looked around, eyeballs unable to take in the sheer sprawl of mess before her and backed out once we’d suggested she visit on our last day instead.

Kat ‘looking after her back’ at Al’s pool. Not a bad way to do it!

We also stuffed our faces variously with friends of friends the charming Ruth and Anys, Lauren, Paul and accidentally bumping into a ferociously larger-than-life character named Dasha.

Parental Interlude Vietnamese Style

After a little over twenty months, we reunited with Alee’s mum and dad, Anna and Iian in the first restaurant we’d visited with Matt and Diana. Our paths were originally on course to cross in Dalat, after we’d ridden there however, given that we’d not gone further than a few kilometres here and there around District Two in Saigon, there we were, together again and eating delicious food.

Alee’s parents came to visit us for the first time in almost two years.

Iian and Anna were visiting Vietnam not only to see us Alleykats, but to make a delivery of books, clothes and vitamins to the children of an orphanage in Na Trang. A colleague of Iian’s is the part-founder of the newly reinvigorated, refurbished orphanage and connecting school. Al’s parents got to spend time with the kids and learnt about the projects happening in and around the orphanage. It seems their trip was partially as pack horses; carrying oodles of stuff for the kids and for their kid too! Alleykat received a pharmacy’s worth of medications and some new clothes including knicks and tshirts. Somehow we go through clothes like we’re wearing them everyday… oh wait, that’s exactly what we do. Perhaps you’ve noticed our attire in photos in the blog and website: we essentially have three pairs of clothing that we recycle day in, day out.

A few days later, we’d stayed at Allistair’s place and had returned to Matt and Diana’s and it was time to say farewell and hop on a bus to Dalat. Dalat is a city set in the hills of South Vietnam, the bus ride up was long: the 300 kilometres took eight hours. The roads weren’t perfect, they were busy and puckered with roadworks and potholes. The speed limit varied from 20km/h to 80km/h and the bus seemed to lumber along the roads as though it were asthmatic. We made it however, the pink bus rumbling away down the hill behind the Sinh Tourist bus stop as we spied Alee’s mum and dad perusing the street just near us. From there we spent a good amount of time wandering the winding, narrow, rubbish-ridden streets of Dalat, enjoying the vegetarian cuisine offered at vego and non-vego restaurants, drinking coffee at the quaint tourist-catering cafes and having rainbows of colour reflected on us from the lush fruit and veggies on display in the central market.

Battling the steam of a Vietnamese hot pot in Dalat.

We visited a number of tourist attractions, the best of which would be disputed casually between us afterwards. Alee’s favourite, gosh knows why, was the crazy house: quite literally what it sounds, a house so crazy, so built up and out and upside down that people come to admire the sheer craziness of it. As Al noted, it would be tacky if it was just one little building in someone’s backyard, but instead it was an entire block’s worth of rooms, buildings, walk ways, ladders, statues and colourful kitsch decorations. Kat’s favourite was the train, of course, a diesel engine pulling three stylish carriages a few kilometres along the rails, through acres of greenhouses, cafes of real Vietnamese life and narrow homes full of people just living. It heaved through streets, alleys and under bridges to our next touristic destination: a garish temple with a dragon constructed out of beer bottles. Iian’s was the chairlift from which we got a really quiet private viewing of a section of forest, the birdsong was able to be distilled easily from the surrounding hush of the pines caving their spiney fingers around our little sky-flung cabin. Anna’s was the various temples visited along the way: a few with resident monks and others with only statues and silence.

Alee going a bit crazy, at Crazy House…

… and Kat a bit crazy at the train station!

Anna and Kat on the chair lift, Dalat.

Various sights from the Dalat region.

Bonsai trees, surprisingly common in Vietnam!

We all enjoyed the company kept on the day trip that we took up to see the surrounding scenes. After viewing one Lat house (a traditional house form, one of which our driver located and we hopped out of the car and then back in after realising we were just getting in the way of regular real life activities by poking our noses in) we headed up to a mountain that could only be accessed by hiring one of the stylish teal four wheel drives at the base.

We met My (said Muee) and her partner Lam who were wanting to share a 4×4 because the cost is standard for hiring the vehicle, whether you have two or six! We felt the low four kick in on our way up the windy mountain and then too soon, we had summited and were allocated 30 minutes (and no longer!) to check out the scenes. As the clouds were thick and tightly knit around the fuzzy extents of our sight, we admired the immediate visions available to us: people posing with a camouflage army vehicle, brandishing fake guns and wearing full combat gear. Of course there was also a more natural option: a mother horse and her tiny foal (or giant depending on your size) whose legs she didn’t seem to be in control of, you could see her thinking: ‘what are these long, shaky, skinny things propping me up?’, and ‘where are my thumbs, damnit?!’ We got on so well with our new friends, especially after they agreed to ask the driver to stop for a moment on the way down the mountain so that we six could go bush-bashing for a moment, that we asked them if they’d like to have dinner with us back in Dalat that evening.

Feeding a young foal that barely knew how to stand.

Hot Pots were on the menu that evening, which were digested with great gusto, although the flavour perhaps wasn’t one we’d go searching for again. It was excellent to spend time with our new friends. Dalat also had within her bountiful streets a vegetarian restaurant which provided us with incredible vegan versions of every dish we’d excluded ourselves from before: namely steamed buns! It is surprising, we’ve noted throughout two supposedly Buddhist countries (both Cambodia and Vietnam) just how much meat is eaten, where one occasionally gets frowned at for slapping a mosquito to death, why there are so few food options without meat. It’s either great chunks of gristly animal, stock made from bones or processed meats cylindrical in their new rubberised form – it’s hard to escape. And too, like in many other countries we’ve travelled through, the very idea of not eating meat is baffling. Easy to understand perhaps in Central Asia where meat, milk and bread have been the staples of the people for as long as histroy’s memory but in South East Asia where even in non-practising parts of the nations, a plant based diet has been normal forever, whether it be due to poverty or religion, why is vegetarianism or veganism so unusual?

Twitching with Delight in Cat Tien Biosphere

Iian is a bird watcher, a birder, a twitcher, and some how got us all keenly noting birds around the town; an osprey crashing through the water’s surface to procure a fish from the shallows, a sweep of swifts and swallows gulping down the buzzing resident insect population humming above our heads and of course feeling sorry for the thousands of captives along the streets – the beautiful wild birds held in cages far far too small for their wings, let alone their desire to be flying free in the skies. Part of our plan with Alee’s parents was to spend some time hopefully surround by birdlife in Cat Tien Mational Park.

Cat Tien is one of the many national parks in Vietnam, and is defined as a biosphere due to the sheer diversity of flora and fauna living within. We decided on a three day, two night package where we’d go on some nature walks, a night time flash light exploration and spend a majority of our time at a place called Crocodile Lake. On our four-hour way there, the bus jolted us around a fair bit but we thanked our lucky stars that it was that bus, with that driver because we’re sure no other driver would’ve stopped to wait for our taxi to chase him up the road and retrieve one of the bags we’d left behind! The taxi took us deep into the countryside, the roads got narrower and the people were riding bicycles and not just scooters. The roads weren’t only paved with tarmac but alternatively with dirt and potholes or great tarpaulins covered with corn drying in the heavy sunlight. We reached the riverside entrance to Cat Tien and were a little dismayed to see three huge busses at the waters edge.

The trees are big around these them, here places!

Iian picking up a new ‘twitching’ recruit, Kat.

The national park welcomed us with a chorus of trilling cicadas, their strings hemming a pattern into our bodies. We were taken to two separate huts and agreed to meet up in an hour’s time to go on our first nature walk. Alee’s body must have object to the bus stop lunch we all imbibed and decided it was time to eject it all, fast. He spent the next four hours vomiting at voracious speeds (perhaps with antivoracity) while Kat went on a slow-paced jaunt in the forest with Anna, Iian and our diminutive guide Duyen. Duyen just happened to be a bird watcher too, making throaty gestures into the canopy to draw out some feathered friends. Iian was rather excited, adding to his impressive internal apiary left right and centre. The stand outs of the walk were Duyen himself, knowledgeable and perfectly at one with the surrounding paradise, a couple of enormous trees and the female and male of the blue-rumped pitta. The female had been an easy pick, there were wildlife photographers shooting her from tiny camouflaged tents, altogether as ridiculous as they sound, she was hopping about pecking at the meal worms the photographers had lured her with – a much frowned upon practise in the birding world. Lucky Kat, nipping at Duyen’s heels further into the dense forest got to see the much more beauteous male while Alee’s folks missed out, his rich azure shone like a turquoise sunbeam only fleetingly once he’d been disturbed by our presence. The walk back along the river and the road were much cooler, a snake bird fwapped and flapped overhead just as the cicadas began their noisiest movement. Later that evening we four would get amongst these noisy wee beasties once more, in a truck this time, and spend an hour foraging in the black jungle with a spot light.

Dinner was an interesting affair, the package deal obviously didn’t cater for vegetarians often and thus a very meaty meal awaited us. Alee had recovered but the food didn’t do him many favours. The same story dawned with the next morning: beef-laden breakfast noodles were a rather nauseating start to the day, even for the carnivores amongst our four, alas, not much else was on offer, no fruits or vegetables so coffee and noodles were slurped as appreciatively as possible.

Unbeknownst to us until the last minute, we could only bring in what we could carry and so a minor omnibus of daily needs was collected in a hurry before we began. We were driven deep into the jungle and walked the five or six kilometres to Crocodile Lake. The Vietnamese couple we walked with were chatty and youthful, stopping to pose for Instagrammable photos along the way. Our guide, Trong, fittingly the only other bird watching member of Cat Tien staff marched us along, worried that our pace wouldn’t be enough to allow us to arrive before sunset. His worries were unfounded, but the scene our timely arrival allowed was magnificent; a single wooden villa sat at the lake’s edge, with no other development in sight. The crocodiles are a re-introduced species, the original families were hunted to extinction, but they’re around – puddling about at the edge of the water, surfacing with eyes, nostrils and tail spines as the best indicator for their size. They grow up to three metres here, we were told, but it wasn’t the reptilian life which took us, but the avian variety.

Various sights around Cat Tien National Park.

Our place was perfect for a spot of birding: there were ospreys, a grey-headed fish eagle, three species of kingfisher in all their chromatic variation, green pea fowl, bulbuls, swallows and swifts and all manner of winged beauties. Alleykat managed to source the only feline friend available and spent a good deal of time purring with her on the deck. We could have stayed much longer I’m positive, however, after an early morning boat ride where we were paddled two-by-two around the lake just after sunrise, we had to saddle up with our gear and hop back on the trail. The walk back was once again festooned with birds aflight, in chorus and elusive amongst the dense leaves and vines. A Russian-style army truck took us back on our bumpy route and we were soon waiting on the main road for the Saigon-bound bus to pick us up.

Once back in the bustling noisy city, it was time to bid each other farewell again, for only another seven months this time, from here Iian and Anna would head down to the Mekong Delta for some more cultural immersion and we would bask a little more in the ever-glowing beacon of light that is the Matt and Diana powerhouse.

Alleykat to disband: Alee and Kat alone?

Three weeks had passed by down in the south of Vietnam, and that left us with only a week on our visa. We wanted to cross into Laos half way up the country, however the border was about 1500km away. It seemed inevitable that we would be putting ourselves on a series of long distance buses, but that didn’t mesh well with Alee (or Kat).

Alee has competed in many long distance cycling events in the past, and calculated that the shortest possible time he could cycle 1000km up to Hoi An would be about 96 hours (four days). He would ride Tan-nay-nay on his lonesome, with all of our gear so that Kat with her recovering back, would have as light load as possible on her 24 hour bus ride.

We advertised the race on Facebook, and Alee seemed to get about 75% of the support. In order to win, he would have to cycle 250km per day on a tandem bike weighing between 50-60kg through the mountainous region of Vietnam. It was going to be a close race ONLY if everything worked in his favour.

After seeing so many doctors that her head started spinning, Kat’s prognosis was to perform various stretches and yoga daily as well as visiting an extremely lovely physiotherapist, Dr Talya Shuhami, and the very worldly chiropractic specialist Dr Wade Brackenbury. Kat was also advised to stay off the bike for a good amount of time, so unlike the reaction when given very similar instructions in Germany, Kat decided to follow the doctors’ orders. Alee however didn’t want to be penalised by having to take busses around the world instead of riding around the world and decided to ride up to Hoi An while Kat bussed. All too soon, it was time for the split: the start of what would be our longest separation in years, the evening before Alee left we dined richly at Hum, a vegetarian restaurant fit for kings. We four spent the later evening with Paul, Catrin and Allistair talking and laughing and can guarantee on our part, wishing that we didn’t have to leave these friends behind.

A frightfully early morning Alleykat farewell was hugged out at the gates, hearts dancing as one in our united chests, and then Alee was gone and Kat was still there. From there on in, each evening, late and with unpredictable strengths of Internet, Alee and Kat corresponded via quick chat sessions. Kat felt lucky and unlucky, a bit torn between wanting to be back on the bike and pushing the boundaries of bike touring and wanting, greedily, to spend the last day together with Matt and Diana.

The last day as a party of three was wonderful, after a strong coffee session as a foursome with new friend Paul, Diana took Kat to a secret Eden, a hidden paradise on the river with a ripe green-tiled infinity pool, shimmering with viridity, where deck chairs were perfectly positioned for sun bathing and reading of books in gently dappled shade. We made friends with Nigel the Tree Loafer (a small iguana who loafed about with us, him aloft a palm tree, us horizontal on cushioned chairs) and generally had a girly good time. That evening, after a quick KattandMattchatt sesh, dinner was The Architect’s House (visited accidentally-on-purpose, as far as I’m aware, barging in on half of Allistair’s date). The food was lush, as it had been at the various other worldly restaurants frequented over our few days back with the crew, and the after party perusal lasted late into the night.

Given it was school holidays, Diana and Matt were off to Thailand to visit Diana’s parents and so at 7am the next morning, Kat had to bid another two of her favourite people farewell out the same door. Catrin kindly invited her to stay the extra few days in the interim between Alee leaving and meeting Alee in Hoi An, giving her complete freedom and inviting her out with her mates both nights. Kat saw both her physical therapists for the last time and admittedly moped around District Two during the days until she could flourish amongst the lovely people sharing their time with her.

The last evening was a busy one, having made firm friends with her physiotherapist, she’d invited Kat for a Friday night feast at her place and Catrin had followed up this offer with drinks at the bar Ruth’s boyfriend Anys’s band was playing at. The new friends feast was tasty and warm, the kindness of relative strangers made my evening full and joyful. A few hours later Kat was in Saigon central, District One, at a bar named DeciBel.

Fast friends are a luxury we’ve been allowed many many times throughout our 20 months on the road: real, tangible friendships have blossomed from the hasty planting of seeds along the way. One friendship we have both tended to and had lovingly nurtured in return is that of Will and Selina. The Aussie/Swiss couple have frequented our journey like young Armedeus Mozart on his father’s piano – wherever possible – we’ve met up and struck a chord in each other’s lives. By some sheer stroke of good luck, Will add Selina had ridden their bikes down Vietnam in perfect harmony for my last evening in Ho Chi Minh, we spent a few hours together listening to Anys’s band The 67s strum away jauntily in the background. I introduced Catrin to my old friends and we four managed to stay until a rather unreasonable hour. In the taxi ride home, I felt lucky, even when the driver wanted me to swap spots by clambering through the vehicle in motion to sit at the front with him (I resisted).

The Race Against Time: 1000km in 96hrs

Day One

At 4am Kat was up cooking my last porridge for a while. By 5am we were having final hugs; this was the FIRST time in almost two years that we were setting off apart. With emotions running high, and tears in our eyes, I put the pedal down and rode out of Saigon.

The first 100km were relatively flat and avoided the heat of the day. I had arrived to this point within five hours and was confident everything would be fine for the rest of the day. I purchased a big Coca-Cola to keep up the sugars, caffeine and carbs – it seems to be a bit of a wonder drink when endurance riding. I managed to shoot out of Tan Phu with 10% of the ride complete and only 5% of the time passed.

The next 100km were hell.

The first problem was the heat. After 10am, the temperature in the sun soared past 40 degrees celcius. When you’re spending over 12 hours cycling under direct sunlight this hot, dehydration poses a high risk. Every pedal stroke gets harder and harder as your body tries to keep itself cool and composed.

Perhaps a bit warm for a 200km+ bike tour!

The second problem were the short, steep climbs. On a graph they looked like nothing, but on a fully-loaded tandem touring bike they were everything. My average speed up many of the climbs was well under 10km/h, and in combination with the incredibly hot sun (which made cycling extremely difficult) the air simply wasn’t moving fast enough past my sweat to keep me cool. Not only this, but there seemed like hundreds of these short climbs which weren’t doing wonders for my legs!

The third problem were the road works. Long sections of dusty, dry, bumpy road made cycling far slower than it should’ve been. I had my throat filled with dust over and over, and to throw fuel on the fire, trucks and buses were passing within mere inches bringing visibility to almost nothing. Then with dust in my eyes, they would blare their horns to ‘let you know they’re coming’ – the horns were deafening.

By 1pm, I couldn’t take it anymore. Three hours had passed and I’d only done 28km. I pulled up at a roadside stall which had 20 hammocks set up in the shade for people to relax in with an ice cold drink, while the heat of the day beat down. The sun was still hot two hours after I put my feet up in the hammock, but I’d never make it 250km this day if I didn’t get back out there.

One regret of this challange is that I couldn’t really stop and spend time with people. So many kind Vietnamese gestured that we should have a drink together at the next cafe, or wanted to stop for a chat, but I had to keep my head down and my momemtum going.

By nightfall, the temperature was finally comfortable again. It was SO MUCH easier riding without the sun, which seriously made me consider whether I should go nocturnal. Up one of the climbs in the dark, while I was going approximately 7km/h, a loud BANG came from not more than 5m in front. It sounded like a cannon going off, but was actually a truck tyre exploding on a vehicle coming down the hill! With ringing in my ears, I soldiered on to a restaurant with lots of trucks parked out the front, as this is always an indicator that the food is good (and it was!).

Most people cannot grapple with why I would be on a tandem bike. Villagers would press and twist the carbon belts with intrigue and often try to swing a leg over, before realising the bike weighs a tonne and quickly jump off. People love to look at the Garmin GPS, as well as the maps and notes in the plastic sleeve on my handlebar bag. Upon departing the restaurant, the owner came out and even jumped on the back of the bike. I could sense a trend occurring as the guy behind was laughing and cheering.

By days end, I had covered 220km over nearly 18 hours (including rest), which unfortunately wasn’t quite enough to get me to the quarter way point.

Day Two

Saddle sores! Argh! I hadn’t really noticed saddle discomfort on the first day, but it was certainly noticeable on the second. The long hours in the saddle the day previously, in combination with a few weeks off the bike had really made a mess of my backside. I had only brought along nappy rash cream which unfortunately didn’t do much to help.

I decided to try and get off the roadworks-heavy road, in favour for some quiet country back roads. This was a blessing in terms of less dust, less traffic and less horns, but still had its fair share of rough sections.

A few hours in, in a very remote area, a soldier waved me down. He wanted his photo taken with me and it HAD to be perfect! The soldier then waved down a passing motorbike and got the poor guy to take photos of us together. Every time the photo was taken, the soldier would look super disappointed, some firm words would be said to the motorcyclist and we would be posing again. This went on for 10 minutes until the soldier was satisfied with his picture!

Alee hanging out with a young Vietnamese soldier.

The road was finally becoming nice. Previously, there were dusty fields and houses, but now there were trees on both sides and a bit of shade. This didn’t last long, as the detour ended and it was back to trucks and dust. I chose not to ride between 12-3pm which gave me time to catch up on missing sleep and respite from the extreme heat. While I was cycling, the Garmin showed an almost unbelievable temperature of 51.7 degrees, which although wasn’t the air temperature, was the temperature in the direct sunlight!

The highlight of the day was when someone handed me a mango out of the window of their van – it’s small things like this which, even though you’re doing it pretty tough on the road, still put a big smile on your face.

Late in the evening and after another 220km day on Tan-nay-nay the tandem, I met a girl who not only spoke good English (very rare in rural Vietnam), but who made me two wonderful bowls of Pho (noodle soup). She gave me directions to the nearest hotel, however after cycling in circles for 20 minutes, I simply couldn’t find the place. To my surprise, she later pulled up next to me on her motorbike and asked if I needed help finding the hotel. Yes! As you can imagine, I was really knackered from the ride and needed to get some rest, so unfortunately declined her request to hang out somewhere. It is these time constraints that allow one to miss the best experiences of travel.

Day Three

The saddle sores are WORSE! Argh! How is this possible? Sitting on the bike seat is so painful that nothing else enters my brain for the whole next 220km stretch. That isn’t entirely true, I did think about: how much I didn’t want to be cycling in the heat, how much I missed Kat, how many white/yellow butterflies were getting about (it must’ve been millions), how horrible the roads were, how dusty the roads were, how much I hated filling up the tube that had a slow leak, and how barron the landscape was (the Americans sprayed Agent Orange right across this region to kill the trees and hence expose the Vietnamese forces).

I’m not ashamed at all about saying that my eyes welled up with tears on numerous occasions – the emotions were running so high while I was having such a rough time (literally) without Kat. I somehow made it past 200km, although it was no doubt the toughest day I’d had since we’d left Amsterdam in 2012. The saddle sores had meant I simply couldn’t sit on the seat properly, if at all. I was even beginning to convince myself that it wasn’t possible to get to Hoi An first, with over 340km left to go, some big climbs in between, horrible saddle sores and only 30 hours to get there.

While resting in a hotel I came up with a plan to give it a go. I would need as much time as possible, would swap Kat’s seat for mine (to give my bum a change), would wear two layers of Lycra padded shorts and would put a double dose of nappy rash cream over my raw skin. I asked on Facebook whether people thought I could ride 340km+ over the next 24hrs, however the response was far from enthusiastic compared to just three days prior. Given my average speed of around 15km/h, I would need to ride for 22 hours out of 24 in order to make it to Hoi An in time.

Day Four

With only 24 hours left, Kat was jumping on a bus to cover 1200km from Saigon to Hoi An via the coastal road. I was already two hours into the ride by this time and was feeling suprisingly more comfortable (given the saddle change and double knicks) than the previous two days. My plan was to ride 100km at a minimum and if need be, would find a local bus to take me the rest of the way.

Breakfast was at a little roadside stall in a quiet rural town. The proprietor and her one customer thought it was really funny how tall I am, standing next to me and pointing out our differences in height. They turned out to be such lovely people however, as they split the bill and paid half each! A very kind gesture from people who really didn’t have much.

With a big smile on my face, I was knocking over the kilometres. The first hundred kilometres were the best I’d felt since setting off from Saigon. The roadworks had finally ceased, and the traffic volumes were really low on this road. In this region the sun was much more moderate than the days prior, so everything was actually looking good, however with well over 200km left, it was not going to be easy.

I stocked up on food and had a big feed around midday. It crossed my mind about how lucky I’d been with the street food, feeling a mild stomach ache one afternoon, but nothing that would stop me riding.

Alee hanging out with Tan-nay-nay and a tank.

The undulating road followed a river for the next 60km and there was almost no wind. The children in the villages were all smiling and waving which certainly helps you to not get stuck in your own mind. Traditional housing spread throughout the area and I finally met my first tourists since leaving Saigon. The tourists were on motorbikes and had english speaking guides riding for them. One of the guides asked me where I was riding (Hoi An) but told me it simply wasn’t possible to ride a bike there today. He seemed to think it was 230km away when my GPS was saying just 170km to go. He then started telling me that the mountain range coming would be too steep and too difficult!

Motivated by the fact that a bunch of people wouldn’t believe I could do it, I pushed on. Not long later, thunder started sounding and a big rainstorm closed in. The raindrops felt amazing after the dry heat of the previous days. I pulled into a restaurant to wait out the close-by electrical storm, as I had visions of the fact that my friend Jesse Carlsson had been blown off his bike by a close striking lightning bolt!

Once the rain had reduced, I had to climb 700m in elevation with an average gradient of 10%. This was the most beautiful part of the entire ride, as the mountain road went up through many incredible valleys, however it was pretty tough going given I’d already put 180km into my legs. The odometer was telling me I wasn’t riding more than 6-7km/h!

Numerous offers were made from people in villages to come inside out of the rain, but I knew I couldn’t stop now. Trucks had broken down all over these steep roads, presumedly from overheating. One group had even set up a bonfire behind their semi-trailer truck to make the most of their wait. I really wanted to stop and join.

It got dark just as I was cresting the climb. I could tell that the descent was going to be stunning, but unfortunately my dynamo lights were switched on and I wasn’t going to be seeing much other than a small circle of tarmac the rest of the way.

With 230km down, I stopped for dinner in a small town. I had been on the bike for more than 15 hours! A noodle soup was whipped together while I helped some children to log into a Disney account (for their iPad game) which was all in English.

Cycling out of town, the front tyre lost all of its air! Argh! It was pitch black now and all I wanted to do was get on with the distance. In less than 15 minutes I was back cycling again – it seems there was a fault in my Maxxis tube as the hole was right on the tube’s seam.

The next 110km were hard. I was unsurprisingly exhausted and despite the elevation profile looking like it was going down, there certainly was a lot of up. I was riding down a quiet rural road now, with barely anything or anyone about except a giant owl that swooped towards me, perhaps curious why I was riding a tandem with four panniers along a remote section of road in Vietmam.

I stayed awake with the caffeine and sugar of my trusty friend, Coca-Cola. I had a few lay downs here and there, but knew it was dangerous to stop for too long, or even to shut my eyes. The road seemed to go forever and the kilometres didn’t want to get counted. The time looked to have stopped too. The graveyard shift was getting tough!

Luckily, I was passed by a bunch of logging trucks moving along at a bit over 20km/h. These trucks gave me the motivation to keep going, as I followed behind their bright lights. The trucks set a good speed and gave me something to do, other than stare at the dark pavement. Eventually, the road became good enough for them to drive off on me, but by this time I was super close to the main north-south highway on the Vietnamese coast.

Two drunk men sat next to me 25km from the finish. It was almost 3am. They weren’t all too bad to have around; they probably shared the same intrigue as the swooping owl a few hours prior. I had to stand up for the remaining kilometres as my bottom and legs needed a change – it’s amazing that my backside even made it this far!

I made it! It was 3:37am when I set up our tent to sleep in a field on the outskirts of Hoi An, after cycling 342km over the last 23 hours. Tan-nay-nay had made it 1000km through the mountains with all of her luggage from Saigon to Hoi An!

I was sitting at our hotel by 6am the next morning looking pretty smug when Kat arrived. We shared a big hug and were both surprised by how much we had to catch up on after only 96 hours apart!

Alee was the winner! 1000km in four days!

Together in Touristic Tribulations

Hoi An was the first place we’d encountered (for a good chunk of time) where vegetarian options were on offer from almost every restaurant – we suspected the higher numbers of monks living and practising in the city were the clever culprits. Alee was in need of time to rest after his mammoth effort and so like lazy elephants, we grazed and loafed slowly around the city’s offerings. Other than one morning, two afternoons and an evening spent wandering around the old city, all painted ochre to shine a light their age-old life, Hoi An was a place to eat. We visited a vegan restaurant rated the third best in all of the city but unfortunately our expectations weren’t met by half, or even a quarter! Luckily, the Indian, the other vegan and the variety of modern (partly Westernised) Vietnamese places were perfect.

Stop right now, thank you very much.

The quirks of Hoi An.

A random statue in a Buddhist temple.

We soon tired of the hugely touristic city, feeling eyes on us at all times – a reflection more on us as passing gawkers that Vietnam is now a haven for tourists, mostly happy-high-hippy types who want to feel like they’re on an adventure, while still living with creature comforts such as convenience stores, western food stuffs and hot water service wherever they land. Fair enough to grab an eyeful and combine it with a bit of a belly laugh when digesting the various flavours of tourist, we do vary from free-range hairy brown backpack-lugging thong-slapping bejewelled and bejangled chain-smoking hippies to pasty white, lily-livered, umbrella-glued squinty-blue-eyed slobs. Perhaps this is unfair, and the tourism in Vietnam isn’t all paved with familiar faces, complaints and the all-too-familiar hawking of plastic goods by a traditionally over-dressed (for the weather) Vietnamese vendor under a conical hat. No, the experience one can have off the beaten path may well be literally bumpy as Al found out on his epic ride through the rural countryside, but is equally smoothed by the kind offers and genuine interest in you as a human, not just as a tourist.

Our time in Saigon was contrasted sharply again by the ill-at-ease feeling we got further up the coast in Hue. In Saigon we were obviously well tended to by our worldly family of friends in District Two, but equally, the Vietnamese people we spent time with like Lan and Thao were perfectly comfortable to be treated as friends and equals. The feeling in Hue was a bit opressive, the servitude of the Vietnamese people in their own country felt wrong: it should be something we’re used to now, being called ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ (or sometimes Sir and Sir, depending on how strongly the caller feels about gender stereotyping Kat’s short hair) but the constant offers of rides from rickshaw drivers and then instantaneous deferral to the foreigners as boss was just uncomfortable.

We went walking in Hue, getting amongst the ‘real life’ a bit more thoroughly by taking the tiny winding back streets, than had we taken the tourist route, there was food being prepared on every corner, pale wheat-coloured hats strapped under the chin of five out of six women, jovial, jocular play between kids dressed in starched school uniforms and dirty attire alike. Chinese checkers, or perhaps Vietnamese checkers complete with a bell rung at various stages of the highly-involved game was a common sight, six or seven men crowded around the two imbued with belief that one player was going to win this next move. The old citadel complex was bordered by beautifully bricked city walls, the narrow red slices looked neat and just as strong as they day they were erected. The palaces weren’t as intricate as the ancient houses in Hoi An which had been decorated paintings, lanterns, carved wood delicately imbedded with cowrie shells and often chromatic monks themselves. It was rewarding to explore the palaces from the outside, joining the many vietnamese out for a constitutional and tracing our way around the walls, stopping to marvel at the natural perfection of rain droplets on lilypads.

Crossing the Border Crossly

The fifth of April, our visa’s expiry date crept around quickly and, after a final fruit salad and yoghurt breakfast at Cafe on Thu Wheels (run a lovely family), early in the morning we were picked up to hop on the bus all the way across the border into Laos. At least this was the plan, immediately it became obvious that our beloved TanNayNay wouldn’t fit in the small twelve-seater van so Alee saddled up and braved the thick Saturday morning traffic and arrived a good twenty minutes before the little van had struggled its way to the bus terminal. It was there that it became obvious that there was going to be some trouble getting TanNayNay on board.

The English-speaking guide, who had lead Alee to the station on his motorbike seemed to suddenly realise just how long our tandem bicycle is. He began raving at us, angrily, demanding why we lied to him by telling him we only had a small, regular-sized bike. Now, those of you who know Alleykat will know that (a) we are not liars and (b) we know our baby TanNayNay very well and would never describe her as ‘small’ or ‘regular’. Plus, this sneaky fellow had already been with Alee and TanNayNay for a good half an hour and so why he claimed her size had suddenly come to his attention is a misnomer. It turned out, after another half an hour of arguing until the little man was blue in the face and Alee was looking fairly Amytal himself, that money would be the only thing that could possibly make TanNayNay fit in the hugely over-crowded bus. Ahhhh, right, of course, a few American Dollars worth of ingenuity had to be parted with before TanNayNay was hoisted up to the roof rungs and strapped in, perfectly housed like a snug bug in a rug.

This frayed our tempers further, and what was worse was when it was obviously all a huge act to take money from us as the whole way along the nine hour journey, we picked up more and more people and stuffed their huge bags and belongings unceremoniously into the bus. There were no fewer than six people at one time sitting on tiny red plastic stools and one man perched atop one large polystyrene box taped shut to ensure whatever odorous bits and bobs it was containing securely inside. What a shambles. We held the bus up half an hour to begin with but we stopped so frequently for new and ever more heavily encumbered people to clamber aboard. What a shambles. We got to the border with two new friends from Finland, Jussi and Aino to share insights into the curious landlady who lay behind us named Vietnam.

Don’t forget to catch our film, Alleykat Races Vietnam!

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 5 (Vietnam) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Our iPhone and wallet were stolen on our second day in Phnom Penh. Mere hours earlier we’d been sitting with Dutch expats Elske and Bauke, not really heeding their warnings to be hyper-vigilant about our possessions. Without meaning any disrespect for their experiences, we unfortunately just treated them with gentle disbelief (one of their friends had been dragged from her motorbike by the strap of her shoulder bag and was lucky to have escaped with some skin in tact). In a silly, inexperienced way, we felt immune to this kind of terrible (and surely rare!) behaviour; as though through simply being our Alleykat selves we would not be targeted. How wrong we were.

Phnom Penh is rather beautiful at night, don’t you think?

The event itself was not particularly spectacular; Alee popped his hand into his shoulder bag and retrieved the wallet (containing cash and our iPhone 5 zipped up neatly inside). No sooner than had he procured the nondescript item was it whipped out of his hand by a dastardly, cowardly arsehole on a motorbike. Kat had inadvertently watched the whole thing, aghast, the three seconds it took for this thief’s swift pluck seemed to drag on endlessly while simultaneously being squeezed into an infinitesimal time sequence. There was nothing to do but be stupefied, his deft hand an indicator that he had definitely done this before.

We tore down the street after this jerk, yelling and carrying on like idiots, our noisy Birkenstocks slapping our feet more softly than we’d like to have struck his face. Of course he didn’t know we’d only really just purchased that phone, of course he didn’t realise that we’re strapped for cash and living from day to day on our bike, of course it was merely an unfortunate act of opportunistic thievery. But this doesn’t make it any easier to accept, nor does it relieve any of the constant re-living and what-iffing done in the aftermath.

Once we’d got back to the guesthouse we went and made a police report with another guest who just had her whole bag (with everything that she needed to travel) cut from her shoulders. How pale our experience seems in comparison, a mere blanching of the face. Another guest-houser had been held up at knife point and knew a decent handful of friends who’d also been accosted in this violent manner.

You’ll be glad to know our assailant didn’t use a knife, however, it isn’t uncommon for Cambodian thieves to shoot to kill if the spoils are deemed rewarding enough; a sinister side of the city and one that is insidious for Cambodians and foreign visitors alike. We made a police report and our best attempts to forget the event were employed from the next morning, which we dedicated as our last in the city.

A quick turn around

Riding out of Phnom Penh was stressful; we were convinced anything could happen. Kat was eyeing everyone who was wearing a pale blue shirt and riding a motorbike and Alee was keen to put head-down-bum-up and speed out of there as quick as possible. Once out of the city, it was easy to forget the sickly feeling that had lined our guts on the way out, the relentless chirps of ‘hello!’ and ‘hi’ and ‘what is you name?!’ formed a warm, if slightly irritating background noise. We were forced to react positively, and hence we began to feel much more positive ourselves.

Our first night was spent in a nice cheap place we rolled into along a sandy corridor of a tiny village. With a huge room we expected a rather huge price but no, $5 (or $2.50 each) was the meagre price tag. We had mango trees in the garden and the eclipsing privacy only a backyard can provide. Unfortunately, we were not quite far enough from the town centre and could hear the wedding festivities ALL night. This is a Cambodian tradition, perhaps originally done at a noise level to bring in the whole town, but now the pure distorted high-octane “music” of the wedding soundtrack is nothing more than painful. If we could hear every melody, harmony and bass beat from a kilometre away, what must it be doing to the guests at the wedding?!

Standing in front of one of the THOUSANDS of temples we’d seen on the road from Phnom Penh to Battambong.

A delicious dinner awaited us in metal pots á la Cambodian bain maries – curries, stews and fruity vegetable soups were on offer to go with our overflowing servings of fluffy white rice. This serving style is tradition in every town along the Mekong, perhaps all over Cambodia, where food is homecooked and lovingly prepared in two or three sessions during the day and plonked unceremoniously in shiney stainless steel pots out the front of even the smallest restaurant. The riding was more of the same, most of it into a slight headwind, slightly tiring but easy enough. We met a man named Dara, a doctor in Phnom Penh, whose land we’d rolled onto, unable to ignore the Aussie appeal of a grey-green avenue of eucalyptus trees. Dara told us about his daughters and son, their successful university studies, and how they love this gum-spotted chunk of land as much as he does.

Australia or Cambodia? We can’t really tell!

The noisy town of Pasat, where the rubbish billowed inside with the red dust, was our home for an evening, lullabyed to sleep by the talk-back TV babbling, and a screaching, glass-tinkling car crash out the front. It was here that we first ate delicious Cambodian desserts – beans, candied fruits and tapioca pearls spilled over sticky rice and doused in a healthy glob of sweetened condensed milk, yum.

Drafting, for those of you who aren’t either mad or cyclists in general, is coasting behind another vehicle, usually larger than your own, for a wonderfully free ride. We enjoy smashing along behind hulking vehicles such as trucks or tractors because it’s fun, TanNayNay is heavy, and sometimes avoiding a headwind is all you want to do. A slight headwind which had already plagued us each day had continued to niggle us, so along the way we were drafting a truck, smashing out 45kms/h and feeling pretty clever about it, really.

Drafting behind a slow moving truck; sometimes a good idea.

Bang BANG (he shot me down…oh, no, that was a pothole!)

A clever, well-guided swerve to a stop and the realisation that our truck-drafting antics had got us a double pinch flat after riding straight over a half metre pothole. We were surrounded by locals, their children, and their chickens while Alee turned TanNayNay on her back and she wiggled her wheel-less pegs in the air while he did two tube changes in record time. Just out of Battambang was an inviting little town, where the street food – of which we bought four serves in one afternoon – was perfect the first day but strangely impossible to find the next! The side-of-the-road shop had simply shut and we couldn’t be sure where it had gone, or if it was real! The sleepy town was nice and quiet, and had internet, so we stayed two nights and enjoyed our peace and net. On our final 50km into Battambang, we were back up to our old antics, and made 20 of those kilometres disappear in two separate stints behind a tractor, which got us to the outskirts fast…

However, on those dusty outskirts of Battambang our third puncture in two days happened – and Al almost cried about it. From two point seven kilometres out, we pushed the bike to the conveniently located hostel ‘Here Be Dragons’ and got ourselves the first installation of what would prove to be a continuous supply of delectable food.

All’s fair in love and reservations

The show at Phare Ponleu Selpak Circus School was due to start at 7pm, the crowd around us buzzing in anticipation and knowledge that we were all in on something just a bit special. There was some dishonest seat stealing as the numbers of audience members far outstuffed the rather small pillow of the circus tent, clearly repeat visitors knew where the best seats in the house were. The Phare Ponleu Selpak school – educative and artistic in equal measures – provides an entire support system for kids who are ‘at risk’. Despite challenges in their early years, the resilient kids are acrobats, musicians and artisits who not only dazzle audiences every few evenings but gather vocational training, using their muscle-bound appendages and colourful tutus to make the world a better place. The students who performed the show aptly named ‘Stolen Bicycle’ were wonderful acrobats, despite the obvious grating effect that the topic of thievery had on us, we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Some serious talent shown at the Phare Ponleu Selpak Circus.

Jon and Mike

‘Bike tourer!’ Alee indicated loudly and we proceed to chase down a fellow riding a well-loved steel frame with a pannier on its rack – clearly identifiable as a cycle touring comrade. We were feeling the love from the circus and upon cycling a few kilometres together, wanted to share it around a bit so all three invited one another to dinner. Jon, cycling from London to London via the world, invited us to his new ‘local haunt’ Ambrosia Cafe for dinner – from there a special love affair ensued. We three stuck together like creeper and vines on a sturdy tree named world bike travel.

The next day was Valentine’s Day which we naturally spent together in a platonic ménage à trois. Our three grew to four with the addition of Peace Corps member Mike, with whom we rode our bikes to the Killing Caves at Phnom Sampeau. Before setting out to climb this small steep hill, equally as steeped in history as slope, we visited Mike’s incredibly kind host family.

Alleykat with Mike’s host-father and Jon.

The Peace Corps is a rather revolutionary deployment of Americans all around the globe – the “corps” (who are strictly non-army personelle, but instead are non-battle minded people, often people-loving in fact) help out in whatever way they can, wherever they end up. The members we’ve met, dotted around the globe, have informed us that there isn’t much of a choice where you’ll end up, but there’s certainly the choice to join and indeed what to do once you’re out there. We half-jokingly think of the Peace Corps as a vacuum cleaner, where American politics make situations worse around the world, and then the Peace Corps come in, moving the bad dirt away and replacing it with their clean kindness.

Mike teaches English to Cambodian primary school teachers – a worthy cause indeed – and perhaps just as valuably, spends most, if not all of his mornings baking amazing sweet and savoury treats for Ambrosia Cafe, free of charge. The members of the Peace Corps we’ve met thus far are all of this same cookie-cutter mould; a hugely big-hearted, interested in people and in making a positive difference somehow.

The Killing Caves

At Phnom Sampeau, the Killing Caves are as morbid as they sound. Nowadays, they echo with atrocities past; a cage filled with human bones sits as a deathly marker of what dispair these caves have known. During the period of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, people were imprisoned in these caves as well as killed – the bloodshed ran rivers from the steep heights of the top of the hill, where people were bludgeoned close to death and tossed, falling like so many bags of bones and memories from the sky.

It may look rather morbid, but this picture shows exactly why the Killing Caves are named what they are.

The regime murdered both indiscriminately and descriminantly, average citizens, intellectuals and people who opposed the oppressive rule of Pol Pot. After wandering around in the falling light, we found a place filled with complete silence by wandering down some stairs Mike had never noticed before in his five previous visits. On our way out we greeted monks incorrectly and watched monkeys frolic and demonstrate their humanness, and could indeed have watched on indefinitely. However, the caves are also home to millions of bats and given we’re all animal enthusiasts and Jon has in fact completed studies on bats (or Microciroptera), we spent time with locals and tourists alike staring up, mouths agape at the horizontal waterfall of black wings tracing a rippling shadow, a wave across the sky.

Suitably awed, vegetarian dumplings at Mike’s favourite Chinese restaurant seemed the only way to continue the entertainment. That evening, on wings of our own, Jon and Alleykat talked the evening away in the sky loft of Here Be Dragons, best Valentines Day ever.

As happens in a cycle tourer’s life, the time had come to move; it wasn’t us who needed to push on but our new best friend Jon, who posed for a good number of photographs with his fans before rolling out towards the Thai border.

Norry: The Little Simple Train Who Could…

On one of the lazy mornings that ensued, we met and proceeded to hang our with Maren from Germany and some of her newly-met friends from Austria and banded together to ride the bamboo train. Our timing was fortuitous, we rode TanNayNay beside the Germanic crew in a tuktuk and almost literally bumped into two French world bike tourers Sylvie and Hubert. These wonderful two we’d already been in internet contact with, but hadn’t physically connected with; there is as always something special about connecting with fellow bike tourers.

To our right sat a stange collection of bogie Louvres, flat bamboo stips and wheel bases, what could this junk be and where was our train? The bits and bobs of course were the train! The bamboo train, or ‘Norry’ the name they’re known as by the locals, is a bit of a touristic turn on a historical reality; they have been used on and off by Cambodians (and nations variously residing inside her borders) for the last forty years. They’ve been used to carry food and water, ammunition and of course to catapult people from on place to another using nothing more than a truly rudimentary collection of parts – a collection which does not include brakes of any kind!

It’s a rather simple system, whereby the timber groove sits directly on bearings attached to the axles.

The tracks must have been laid by a blind person, or at the very least, someone rather in a hurry (apparently French Colonial settlers!). We click-clacked along, getting thrown off balance every now and again by the two inch gap heights between the lengths of track beneath our wheels.

The tracks aren’t known for being straight!

Rather bothersomly, at the other end awaiting our arrival were the vendors, hawking their goods. We didn’t expect it and in rather first-world-problem fashion were a little irritated by the constant pressing of little hand-made goods or calls of attraction and compliment from very young Cambodian children who really should have been at school. It’s one of those problems you face as a tourist; becoming part of the problem and not the solution when you give money to beggars (read more here) but is it ok to give little children money in exchange for good they’re selling on behalf of their families? It’s hardly better but difficult to know what to do. Alleykat’s solution has thus far to say ‘no thank you’ in the native tongue and try not to interact wherever possible. The better thing to do would perhaps be, in the case of beggars, to offer to buy them a meal or some raw foodstuff like rice instead of simply popping that cash in their hand, but it’s an ongoing mental and emotional tussle.

Before our scheduled departure for Sisophon the next morning, Alee drilled a larger hole for the rim, as tubes with a French valve are in short supply in Cambodia. After dinner together with Sylvie and Hubert, where our foursome got to know eachother a little better, we made some more new friends in the form of Canadians Kieve and her girlfriend Kayla.

Two Tandems on the Road

All too soon 6am rolled around and our wheels revolved towards Sylvie and Hubert’s hostel! Instead of cooking our standard porridge, breakfast on the road was agreed upon as the quicker option – the bakery around the corner was staffed by a lovely young woman who spoke very good English, citing her English-school running sister as the only reason, however, us monolinguists know very well just how tough it is to learn a new language without tenacity and serious brains!

Sylvie and Hubert riding their Hase Pino semi-recumbent tandem.

We again suffered a case of the flats… with no spare tubes on two separate occasions! After the second flat-on-a-newly-installed tube happened three kilometres from the first, we waved the very kind French couple onwards and spent a good amount of time changing rim tape and tubes. Luckily, only forty minutes down the road we caught up with Sylvie and Hubert and ride the rest of the 70 kilometres together, sharing four ways the semi-gentle burden of the sunshine.

Inspiring the Inspiring Youth

Sylvie and Hubert are humanitarians, deeply interested and invested in the people of the world around them. While riding the bamboo train with them, they’d mentioned an orphanage-come-school they’d organised to visit just up the road in Sisophon, and this was a reason we decided to ride with them; they’d done all the leg work organising the visit, all we had to do was turn up, meet the kids and give a short talk about riding, about meeting amazing people and about following your dreams.

Alee talking to the children at Enfants D’Mekong orphanage.

The children at Enfants D’Mekong were vibrant, resilient and gorgeous. The majority came from difficult backgrounds; some had been beaten so badly they’d been forcibly removed from their families, others’ parents abused substances like drugs or alcohol, others were orphaned in further terrible circumstances. You wouldn’t know their horrific histories from talking with them however, and the school wasn’t morbid or depressing, instead it was set amongst gum trees and native forest land, beautiful big grounds and large buildings to accommodate the hundreds of blossoming students and their blooming futures.

Our First Tailwind in Months

We were on our way, nice and early, or at least those were our intentions; the 6:30am start somehow turned into a 7:45am start plus a whole host of unusual bakery breakfast foods under our belts (including sweet garlic sponge cake – not as bad as it sounds – and some kind of fruity chocolatey rocky-road – far worse than it sounds!) we finally left Sisophon behind us. Our new French friends had plans to catch the famed ferry from Battambang to Siem Riep and so had retraced their tyre tracks, it seemed the 120km ahead of us would be completed alone… or would it?

Blazing along the highway, with our first tailwind in months jollily buffeting our progress, Alee spied what looked like a couple of bike tourers ahead. It soon conspired to be just one also rather speedy tourer (overtaking a motorcycle, the pretend second tourer), named Tim Davies. Hailing from Manchester, you couldn’t recognise any of the pale, English rose about him – Tim was leathery brown and devilishly quick, his accent thicker than his sinewy thighs and a heart of bike-touring gold beating a wild pattern of freedom beneath his protruding ribs. Instantly our world biking antics and trifecta love of deep conversations on the state of the world, a dispair about current politics and the discovery we’d three all made about the nature of bike touring life brought us together in a triangulated pedal-pushing bond. The kilometres slipped by, the mercury steadily rose, and our conversations ran rivers around our salty bodies. The first 55 or 60 kilometres was bliss; buffeting tailwind and early enough to keep away some of the oppressive heat, but soon, the wind turned on us, blowing fierce raspberries in our faces and forcing a renewed effort against its might. We were crystallised with salt and felt ever more excited about our imminent arrival in Siem Reap. Once reached, exceptional Indian food, cold showers and a good lie down was what most of the rest of the day consisted of, it felt well deserved.

Angkor Wat?

We spoke to the owner of our hotel about the bike plan of action for visiting the temples; he had had many cycle tourists stay with him and knew the self-mobile routes would be our preference. We brought a rather European packed lunch of raw veggies, pesto and crusty bread rolls and set off to see some of the wats (temples). We spent a lot of time people watching, roaming the ruins and breathing in the peace around us.

The first two days at the temples we wandered with eyes unblinking, drinking in the beauty, the detail, the symbiotic relationship between the arms, legs and trunks of the trees and the crumbling stone kingdom of Angkor. The love and the connexions built so firmly before our eyes is one that must be seen. In one eyeful, it is possible to watch the story of the building and its loving embrace with the towering pale tree around it. Hundreds of years ago a bird planted a seed, significance unbeknownst to it, with a simple emptying of the day’s foraging. From there, a succession of tendrils extended carefully, tracing tender lines along structural ridges, working its way into and smoothing the cracks appearing in the building’s face. From there, the tree child became raucous teenager, busting its rock-hearted parent open and playing among the ruins. Soon, the two developed a deep love and reliance on one another, indeed in its current state one shouldn’t survive without the other.

The twelve million tourists who visit each year are privvy to this deeply ingrained relationship between plant and palace, but slowly their infamous bonds are literally being broken – cut away – and the temples are being propped up by man-made steel branches and rebuilt with the same careful eye for detail but without the unconditional love needed. Alleykat were definitely in two minds about it; of course on the one hand this action is going to save the temples, allow generations of people to come and visit Angkor, however, there’s magic lost without those destructively loving embraces of the trees around their mother temples. Indeed, once humans are gone from the planet, Mother Nature will have her way once more.

Conversely, we had a few comical moments inside the walls of Angkor. An American woman curiously asked us whether we spoke English, not to talk with us, but to check whether we had understood their vented frustration with us being in the corner of their photograph. Al replied with all seriousness, ‘well, our first language is Australian, but we do understand some English’. The woman nodded politely, taking Al’s reply at face value, a given that Australians speak Australian, and simply went on her nosey way. In this same vein, one of the guards of the temples asked us what language we spoke and we replied ‘Australian’. He made us pause a moment to teach him our language, including ‘hello’ (g’day) ‘thank you’ (taa) and ‘goodbye’ (seeya). He practised them over a few times and smiled us into the temple’s lush gardens beyond the gate!

Occasionally we felt plunged into disparity – were we in Cambodia or Australia? The very Melbourne mix of Asian, Eurasian and tall Europeans, with English being thrown around casually by every face and age, and perhaps more strikingly, the strange feeling of being home in the Australian bush, given the sheer number of eucalypts around us, the bird calls and occasional bird who had the appearance of Frank or Charlie, our friends’ pet parrots.

We can’t decide what’s more impressive, the huge crowds or the sunrise itself!

Our third day begun with a 5:30AM departure and the sunrise at Angkor Wat, so too did 3000 other people’s day! For a while we were waiting around in the dark, perched on the outside of the lake in front of Angkor Wat with 99% of the other tourists, but made an executive decision to up-root and instead wander inside the massive stony blue Wat in front of us. Our almost private wander was cut short rather, when we found that this was the one day in seven that the 3rd tier, the highest point and only point where any view of the Angkor grounds is possible, was closed. Understandably it needs to be cleaned, but we felt a bit miffed; there isn’t a huge amount to explore on the first level. Inside, we wandered around in the semi-darkness and popped out to the rear entrance – after pausing here at the back of the wat with the stuffing let out of us somewhat.

Through the thicket of the surrounding trees we spied the sun rising as a blood red globe, it was going to be a sunrise to remember! Others clearly shared our delight and we collectively dashed back around the front side to get the “proper” view. The obligatory photo was shot, hundreds of thousands of times. The sun was sauntering saucily around Angkor Wat’s turrets, glancing out at the flock of photographic worshippers every few minutes, blushing deeply before stridently taking to the sky. Alleykat were perhaps a little underwhelmed, our advice would be to visit Angkor Wat on your second of a three-day pass and continue to be blown away by the surrounding, more intricate, more time-ravaged temples on the days either side.

Our final evening in Siem Reap was with Sylvie and Hubert, who we adored so much we couldn’t stop asking out to dinner with us! The second dinner date was held at the Friends restaurant where clever Sylvie had reserved us a table, despite the restaurant being fully booked, through her hearty determination and belief in the cause. Friends is a slowly growing group which, rather like Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurants, supports at-risk kids to find their vocation in the hospitality industry, where they learn to cook, to clean, to serve, to maitre’d and to have a solid foundation for future employment. The food was wonderful and filling, our plates and tummies were full and so were our hearts. Hubert and Sylvie continued to wow us with their relationship, their journey and their kindness.

On the (windy) Road Again

We rode off from Siem Reap in the morning to the usual chorus of children calling out their hellos and well wishes and admittedly, laughing at the extremely odd sight of two people on one bike. Kat’s back was a pain in the… back, so only 65km down the road, and after the best iced coffees we’d drunk, we met police car full of friendly policemen and decided the sign above their car for the Meybo Guesthouse was the place for us. And luckily, later that evening, despite the loud music emanating and throbbing at us from down the street, we couldn’t hear a thing from our room! The Meybo family were, as usual, extremely kind and interested in these strange two travellers.

A further 100km down the road was a strange, condensed line of a town where we decided to stay at a hotel. This one turned out to be a noisy hotel, the cars rumbling past may as well have been driving through our room, not to mention the booming blasts of truck horns! This love affair with the horn is common for most Cambodian drivers, especially those in Toyota Camrys and luxury Lexus 4x4s, who must believe that they own the roads and therefore can drive as selfishly as possible, using their horn to indicate just how far everyone should get out of their way as they zoom through.

It’s a strange culture, this ownership of the road – a simplistic one too, just blasting the horn means everyone will move out of my way, just blasting the horn means I have the right of way, just blasting the horn, as I tear through small town centres at 120km/h ensures children, parents, animals and other vehicles will not stray into my way. It’s dangerous and selfish and bothered us every day, not just the ignorance of the horny act, but the noise!

Old Temples and Bugs!

Our next day was most industrious and successful, we visited some temples close by in the morning – leaving at 7am to arrive before anyone else. The temples were magic, a few hundred years older than Angkor, in fact they’re the oldest in Asia. We had the place to ourselves and being the strange fellows we are, were equally fascinated by the magnitude of insects around! There were caterpillars pooing on us from high in their tree-houses, huge swarms of tiny bees and various collectives of ants eating bugs who’d fallen from their trees – a truly terrible death. There were spiders who looked like grasshoppers and jumped like them too! We were privy to an army of termites, hundreds of millions of troops in their ranks, working as they walked, what a society! Here, the trees had well and truly developed an affinity for the temples, in some cases, mimicking the shape of the temples so well, the ages-old bricks weren’t needed for structural rigidity.

Right at the end of our guide-free tour (although we were told by the guide and our tuktuk driver that it was ‘impossible’ to navigate without their help) a fairy gate appeared before us, a vision of such giddy beauty it was as though mother nature had designed it with tiny fictional winged humanoids in mind.

A Rough Deal on Dusty Roads

Keeping with the industrious theme of the day, we proceeded to ride another hundred kilometres, including 30 through very dusty, very potholed, in-the-process-of-becoming-a-road foundations. The first town we rolled into with ‘rest’ on our brains, was limited for places to stay, Kat inspected the one and only homestay and returned with a distasteful quiver of her nose, the place was filthier than most filthy bathrooms we’d used and with a giant spider to boot. The proprioter told us we were 30km or more from the next big town, and that dusk would encroach on us too quickly. His friend concurred, suggesting we might be in danger riding in the dark. We pushed on into the sunset and with good reason too! 22km later we arrived in Skon (we liked to put on a very British accent and say ‘scone’ because it amused our simple bike rider minds) and joined a large family in their small hotel/restaurant business for dinner. A fruit smoothie later and we were in bed and ready to have a mere 80km left of our journey back to Phnom Penh.

With baked goods as a terrible substitution for porridge, we saddled up only to run into some French bike tourers just on the other side of the way. In their wonderfully loquacious French manner, they told us ‘the road, it is somehow rotten’, an apt warning for the messy, rough-as-guts ride we had ahead of us. It wasn’t just rough on our bums, but on the poor people living either side of the monstrous mounds of road-rubbish and living within huge plumes of rusty dust.

The whole 320 kilometre route from Siem Reap, Route 6, is under construction and instead of approaching it sensibly in small chunks, the whole ruddy surface has been churned and smashed away to some extent, leaving the people in every semi-interwoven sporadically placed town along the way in rather dire circumstances for a good amount of time to come.

Hide Your Bags, (Hide Your Wife)

Rolling into Phnom Penh we suddenly tightened our pannier straps and our awareness, we narrowed our eyes once more; our shoulder bags were strewn safely inside the front panniers and Kat watched with a hawk’s eye every passing motorcyclist… just in case. This time we noticed that every cyclist and motorbike rider had their bags held close in front of their chests because they knew who was lurking these streets. Everyone, even the drivers who behaved strangely and rode behind us or beside us ended up smiling and waving. We did well to remember that people in every other country ride close to us and roll along with us, we should learn to trust again!

Back to School

We’d been lucky enough to make contact with Denzil Sprague, the cousin of a friend of Kat’s family. He’d moved to Cambodia 13 years prior and had, among many other things, built and opened a school in an impoverished neighbourhood. During the day, we drove with Denzil and Sevan, his driver and friend, into the school. The kids suffered from a few nerves initially, new faces and crazy faces at that, but the act of getting the kids to do silly things with their faces, hands and legs got then to loosen up a bit. We were delighted by their singing, a song by the Seekers called Morningtown Ride. A truly rewarding experience!

We got the children to do ‘crazy faces’; it’s a great way to break the ice with them!

Alee somehow fitting into the pint-sized desks.

Spending time on Denzil’s boat moored on the Mekong.

At Denzil’s home, where we stayed in happy luxury for two wonderful nights, we hung out with his adopted Khmer daughter Corinne. A bright spark of a girl, mostly fluent in English and hugely excited by life and living it. She entertained us as much as we did for her we think! We learned from Denzil about a number of humanitarian efforts happening in Cambodia and Phnom Penh, namely Scott Neeson’s Cambodian Children’s Foundation (CCF) and a law aid program run by a former Australian police officer Jim McAbe.

CCF helps kids get out of slums and dumps, away from an impoverished life scarred by the all too common practise of child-snatching and instead, into community support systems and the work force. The other provides deep police investigation into the darker side of Phnom Penh life: the violent murders, the acid attacks, the rapes and the insidious drug scene. There is a sense that Cambodia and Cambodians too are still at war, as there is a distinct lack of peace below the surface – nothing is as it seems; the smiles in the faces are real, but they are almost learned. Cambodians smile through the sadness and unrest.

Cambodia is still at war in many minor ways, and many countries are currently preying on this – claiming land for themselves or building unbelievably massive sweatshops. These frustrations and changes aren’t obvious to a mere passer through, but do come oozing out of the cracks before too long.

The Road to Saigon

By this stage, we were just champing at the bit to get to Matt and Diana’s home in Saigon, and perhaps we didn’t make enough of the 170km to the border. Our trip took two easy but head-windy days, nothing particularly eventful beyond a very good durian-heavy fruit shake and chatting to some very cool locals just near the border. Mani and her husband own and operate a rather eclectic hotel/restaurant made up of randomly placed thatched shacks and with an entrance marked with concrete kangaroos (which were what drew us inside in the first place).

Making some new friends near the Vietnamese border.

We crossed the border after spending a final noisy night at a busy hotel. Apparently the Cambodian side of the border town is known for gambling and prostitution, of which the gambling bit was undoubtedly noticeable (with lavish Vegas-style casinos littered about the place) but thankfully the latter wasn’t. After a month in Cambodia, our brains had garnered a strange appreciation for these kinds of colourful complexities.

Don’t forget to watch our film, ‘Alleykat Roams Cambodia’!

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 4 (Cambodia) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Alleykat arrived in one piece, still a little shaken by the debacle at the Japanese airport and proceeded to build TanNayNay with a crowd of interested onlookers. (Al loved that the twenty-five-plus airport workers didn't have anything better to do than to stand around for an hour and a half and watch a couple of crazy people build a bike!).

We rode into the cloying heat, so hot we wore it like a coat. Somehow, via the express way, various epic roundabouts and with Alee trying his best to re-route us due to blocked roads, we managed to get to our pre-booked hotel. TanNayNay rolled through slums, shantys and busy streets alive with people to get to the address, where immediately we were kindly greeted and wowed by the cleanliness and awesomeness of the room. Tess and her family took good care of us and our stuff! That night we slept long and well with the air conditioner blasting away the stickiness of the oppressive heat.

In Makati, what we would later learn was the 'dodgy end' of the suburb, we wandered around the streets, bought the fast kind of food and had a very quiet day. In the late evening we spoke to Tess and one of her sons for a good while and learned a few bits and bobs about The Philippines, namely: always find a tricycle driver if you're lost or need a good bit of gossip to get into and don't drink the water offered by villagers (it's usually a prank played and will be gathered from the local well with water to make you very sick – not just on Westerners but on wealthier city-dwelling Filipinos who dare to venture into the provinces…hahaha?). She said absolutely do talk to people and that we must sleep under the stars.

By our third evening in Makati it was all systems go: Movie! Blog! Boom! Doom! Done! In the small, air-con-icy office we spoke some more with Tess and learned about the banana republic situation in the Philippines, we learned that corruption is the biggest problem here and that the Philippines didn't have anything else to export so they exported people! It seems strange but perhaps sensical, in a way? Tess offered us a free place to stay – her family is in the process of building another hotel and she said we could board there free of charge for however long we wanted it. Nice. Filipina hospitality!

Our good friend Kirsten (who works at the British School Tokyo) put us in contact with some of the crew at the British School of Manila – or more colloquially, BSM – and we'd lucked into another hook up, this time with Liza and Dave. We moved to Liza and Dave's place but they were at school during the day so, after navigating our way round in terrible traffic, we met them at lunch and after meeting a number of the staff (including Simon who does BSM's charity work, among many-a-thing at the school). With Dave we headed back to their amazing abode, following the scooter on our tandem. We had to pass through not one, not two, but three security gates to enter their home compound, that's a good number of guards we waved at and confused with our heavily laden bicycle!

Later that evening we borrowed Liza and Dave's scooter to head back into school for the Christmas concert. The mucic concert was performed by kids from bubs to graduates, with lots of nice Christmas-y jingles and occasional tingles when some super talented musicians played for us. Dinner was on us and we stayed up a bit late for a school night (albeit the last day of school) and afterwards enjoyed their supremely comfortable spare bed. For five enjoyably relaxing days we stayed with Liza and Dave, during which time we met Pinky their house elf (cleverly disguised as an industrious, sweet-hearted Filipina woman) and learned a bit about her family and life. Liza and Dave took us exploring in Makati a bit, together we watched some good movies, enjoyed their incredible hospitality, got burned at the pool with South African Paul and his bubbly British-accented daughters and finally left on the morning of our sixth day with them.

A first look at real poverty

During our stay in Makati, along with a whole hoard of ex-pat parents and their BSM kids, Simon took us to Tondo and were blown away by the project and the sheer power it had in combatting poverty. There we met Ann, Paul, Sacha and Manuel (and the lovely admin staff and the Fair Jewelery crew). Here, right in the middle of the slums we learned about the plight of the poorest people in Manila (the majority of the city live in some kind of slums) – seeing the children and adults alike sorting garbage, eating garbage, living in garbage. On Smokey Mountain, if you're not up to your ankles in other people's rubbish, you're inhaling noxious fumes every minutes of every day – making charcoal to earn your living. From Paul, Alleykat got a job offer but sadly felt we had to turn it down. We did however, decide that this was the place we wanted to dedicate our time, blood, sweat and tears to.

Trying to camp amongst the roosters

We biked out of Manila with great lengths of time tangled like long ribbons in our hair, and reached a camping ground run by Ma Ate and his lovely group of deeply Christian people. There we camped under a shelter because of the pitter-pattering of rain drops donating themsleves to the earth around us and much later had a welcome cold shower. A din of church music and caterwauling animals serenaded us through the night including a rather eerie 3am church service which is a traditional part of the Filipina celebrations in the nine days leading up to Christmas.

The next day we slowly but surely rode up the gently relentless hill to Tagaytay and bought a selection of fine looking fruit from a street stand. To our open-mouthed disgust as we cut into them a kilometre up the road, we saw the fruit was spoiled, with maggots wriggling and writhing in its sugary flesh. Luckily our food lust (and trust) was healed when we found German pretzels in a delicatessen, drank a young coconut out of a tenderly selected coconut shell, and whizzed down the switch-back hill to Laurel, trying to find the camping ground marked on Google maps.

The little tent symbol we were following (we all know how following a little tent marker can turn out, read HERE) turned out to be a resort, but, buoyed on by the clueless and powerless guards, we rode up a hill to just check whether we could pop out tent surreptitiously on the grounds somewhere. Unfortunately, instead of weary travellers, we appeared to the proprietors as giant money bags – they wanted to charge us a princely sum for the pleasure of camping without any facilities. Oh, and we couldn't cook our own food there!

We mused 'hmm, best not be taken advantage of' and simply aboutfaced to ride back down the hill and out the gates where instead we asked the first person on the street whether we could camp on their property.

That first person happened to be a bloke who worked for Charlie, who's house we were inside within minutes! We were asked to treat the house as our own, given the deluxe suite (Charlie's bedroom), used the bucket shower and Alee went with Charlie for a walk to see his workplace and gaze at the ferris wheel lit up and perched gaudily on the hill. Charlie lived with his mother and extended family and friends. His son, Charles David was the first of his generation we'd met who's name followed the double-barrel trend (and we'd meet many more aged between zero and forty who also suffered this particular fate – some chose to be called their first name, but more commonly people are known by their second half or 'middle' name. As far as we know this particular practise is limited to the Philippines, but different versions of it exist world wide: my grandfather Alan Donald was known as Don.

From Charlie's place after a night peppered with so many roosters' crows it was fiery, the road along the coast of Lake Taal was SUPER hilly and steep punctuated by short sharp inclines. Accidentally we found a school (simply by following the sound of youthful singing!) which was in celebration mode: the last day of school and physical fitness day (which meant dancing for all). The principal, Emma Rodriguez invited us in to her office – and to come back some day and work for the school! We ate and drank, made movies and had movies made of us! We left with invitations to come and teach with them still ringing in our ears (a couple of head teachers also extended the offer).

Underwater worlds

Later we made it up to Batangas and over the hilly coast to Anilao. As is our usual fashion, we checked with a few places for cost – all were wildly expensive! We found Anilao Backpackers and met Tim and Jo the owner and the manager respectively who seemed very nice but Alee still really wanted to camp so we kept on around the hilly road, asking to camp at various resorts – all their camping spots however were more expensive than having a room at the backpackers! Sensibly and luckily, we went back to Anilao Backpackers and stayed three nights. We watched Intouchables, a French film, with the gang – Brite and Tao, Bebot, Reggie, Sol and of course the movie-supplier Tim, all sat and watched and were enchanted. During our time at the hostel we managed to meet a whole host of famous underwater photographers and guides and finders – the merpeople with an outrageous talent for spying tiny, amazing sea life and helping others take incredible photos of it. Very cool crowd to be rubbing shoulders with, despite being total noobs.

Because we were without diving licences, we snorkelled instead, taking the opportunity after Tim casually suggested that we just jumped on a boat with a bunch of awesome American-Filipino fellows. We went for it. Oh, the silence. The colour. The secret underwater world! The feeding frenzy with the pan de sal rolls.

…We be devoting, full time to floating under da sea!!…

We left with difficulty, after many goodbyes (and a photo shoot with TanNayNay). Next, our first interaction with the infamous Batangas ferry terminal. We were in the presence of a holiday-frenzied storm; we felt the throng of a sweaty swarm of people trying to get home for Christmas. The terminal stank, was packed and the only way to discern any information about boats was to line up in the thick of it. Alee was the champion of the hour. As we were severly limited for choice, we decided to camp instead and hold off on our decision making for a less busy time.

Merryland

Merryland Campsite became our new temporary home. Matriarch Lola Vecita (Lola means grandmother in Tagalog) and her daughter Evelyn took us under their golden wings. Later in the evening, on the prowl for some dinner ingredients we happened across an amazing restaurant called El Torro run by a German man of 13 year ex-pat history. Here we ate extravagantly (pifferlinger anyone? Sure, I'll imbibe some velvety German mushrooms foraged from the floor of the Black Forest, why not?!) BUT were almost turned off our food – we felt physically sick – after witnessing two 65+ old filth-bags who had taken for themselves a couple of beautiful 20-something Filipino wives, those poor women. The men oozed self-satisfaction and the girls were visibly uncomfortable, putting on a good show by eating the ice cream proffered to them from the unsavoury cups set before the two men. Luckily they left before our dinner came, and the avocado shake was just perfect, thanks for asking.

Our days in the sub-tropical paradise of the camoing ground were backdropped by a constant supply of videoke. The simplistic, noisy backing-track singing device is a an essential piece of equipment for every Filipino household, there were tens or even hundreds in our immediate vicinity; some of the homes didn't have floors but they certainly had a videoke machine! The Filipinos claim to have invented videoke, a precursor to the more well-known brother, karaoke. They remain firm that the Japanese stole the idea from them during the occupation. All we know is that you're never far from being serenaded; whether it's musical or not is a different matter entirely!

On Christmas Eve evening we were invited for an 11:30pm meeting at Evelyn's place, Alee fell fast asleep well before, and lonesome Kat thought it was going to be midnight mass but it was just an amazing spread of food! Midnight snacks and then some! With sticky rice parcels, buko jelly and a number of savoury dishes spread before us, Evelyn and Kat spoke at length about life and family and travel, what a phenomenally gifted and generous woman she was, not just personally but professionally – she essentially is a planner like Alee but has a good extra forty years of experience under her belt! Christmas Day was spent with Evelyn's family, we were well looked after by Charlotte Anne and we met another inspirational member of the Filipino workforce, Evelyn's brother Joselito who is a total champion – like the rest of the family!

On Boxing Day we had our last swim and then planned to have a last nice El Torro dinner which was ruined: Kat was bitten by a dog! Luckily the dog was owned by the proprietor who assured us she was regularly and just recently vaccinated and gave us chocolates in lieu of having any 'real way' to pay us back (we thought a full refund of the dinner would be ok but…). Kat was glad she'd spent the extra whack of money on her rabies vaccines back in Melbourne!

Puerto Galera: Where the scuba is sweet and the Westerners are Schwinehund

The weather was favourable, warm and lemony when we left in the early afternoon and caught a small boat to Puerto Galera. The second meeting with the Port of Batangas gave us a good kick in the pants in the form of silly additional charges for TanNayNay, but we loaded everything on and felt the salty sea wind in our locks for two hours across a small body of water. We headed immediately into the short sharp little hills of Mindoro and after a sweaty ride, arrived in Sabang. To get to our targeted place of residence, a not-quite-cheapest-of-the-cheap dive called Paddy's Bar, we had to climb a monster hill (and after walking up and down it for the next week we were shocked we were actually able to ride up it successfully while fully loaded!)

We arrived at Paddy's to the absence of Paddy, and instead a number to call plastered to the front wall along with three American-Filipino boys on holiday. They'd also only just managed to contact the bloke, John, who was supposed to be taking care of the place without Paddy – but apparently he'd been AWOL since the afternoon of Paddy's departure and mere moments after reassuring Paddy he'd be around. Later we found out he was “living” with three Filipina girls who essentially did everything for him, so he had no excuse to be too “busy” to be managing his friend's place!

A few hours later we'd met Adrian (also staying in the not-so-welcoming 'Bar' hostel) and Brett who was staying with friends locally and was 'just out on a walk'. That evening after cooking dinner as a threesome, we met Elli, a governmental security dude (who smoked weed when he wasn't securing Governmental things) and later adopted a tiny chestnut kitten who we named Nuss (she curled up and slept with Kat all night).

In the morning, we rode into town to check out what the scuba diving deal was. There were literally hundreds of diving shops and centres lining the shorefront, and we surfed a few options, however, most of the people we spoke to were either half-arsed about the whole thing or had enough drugs shoved up their noses and gluing up their brains for our questions to just seem plain silly. We arrived at Blue Ribbon and it was different immediately; more professional, a warm enthusiastic atmosphere and a comforting number of people were actually diving (or who had just come back from doing so). Not only had it come with a high recommendation from Brett, but anyone could tell they were the best on the beach. We signed up for an open water diving course and rode back up that monster hill again!

By now we'd realised that Paddy's Bar was probably great when the owners were there, but, without them the place was a shell – and we didn't even have access to a common area, a kitchen, a balcony; nothing. So, with Adrian, we moved down another hill out the back of Paddy's, through a series of houses, back streets and palm groves to Tuna Joe's. Now, this place too had not much to offer even the most hardened of backpacker-travellers – the bloke who'd run it (and apparently run it well) had died not two years before our arrival and although his wife, Elsie, did a stellar job just remaining there and keeping the place running, it had unfortunately gone plunging into despair. But, we had more common-room space, we had a pool upstairs and we had Adrian – it seemed right. Elsie has two of her six kids living with her, who are part Aussie by nationality and thoroughly Filipino by nature; they played endless games in the dirty street out the front of the Tuna building, didn't fear the innumerate mangey, literally mange-ridden dogs who ran the place and were the same as the young Filipinas; with an air of total freedom about them.

A couple of days before New Years we began our diving course. Baz, an ex-army diver was our teacher. We were joined on the course by two French dudes, Arthur and Xavier (please say those names out loud with as thick a French accent you can produce) and a Norweigan fellow named Siva. We began our journey by getting wet, all six of us in the pool. There was a lot to learn but Baz was patient and clear with us, obviously he knew his stuff and then some. By the end of the day we'd graduated to the ocean in front of the Blue Ribbon centre – who knew that just five metres out there was crystal blue water, technicolor coral and fish as far as the eye could see?! Baz had us doing somersaults and checking out small specimens of sealife, it was another world and we could see why it is just so addictive to the hundreds and thousands of divers dabbling in the waters of the Philippines.

Our days swam by in a sea of loose routine (waking, walking and wading into the water) eating delicious foods at the Sabang Cafe, whose prices were somehow reasonably reasonable and about half that of any other food place in the rather tourist-driven town. We cooked and ate together with Adrian each day and got to know each other quickly. Gradually we got better at diving and learned about how to deal with every potentially chanllenging situation under the water… although, we felt our itchy excitement to get out into the ocean was likely to kill us quicker than any of the possible problems we'd encounter there!

Oafishly Responsible for Sex Trafficking

Thoughout any expereince and with pursed lips and puckered sphincters we noted the deluge of dopey, dastardly old creepers (western men from countries such as Germany, the UK, the US and of course, Australia) who proudly carried their beautiful Filipina arm candy around the town. We learned too late that there are human trafficking and prostitution rings all around the Philippines and that we were smack-bang in the centre of a fairly virulent one.

It was so depressing to see the situation that these poor young women (and too often young girls) found themselves in, we coped with it by making light of the situation and loudly commentating on how filthy these old sickos were, discussing well within earshot how these perverts were kidding themselves and how disgusting their behaviour was. We ended up talking in such proximity of the majority of them, but they couldn't say anything. They should be so ashamed of their role in this.

Let us give you a mental challenge: just suppose it was the other way around and there were thousands of rich, portly, OLD men travelling to your home town and procuring, through direct and deliberate flaunting of their wealth (and the law), the beautiful young women you know. Imagine it. How wrong and utterly unacceptable should it be? Then why do these men think it's ok to do?!

Alee heard one perv loudly remonstrating his “wife” with: “Hey, I said 'yes, Peter', this is how you should respond to me, say it, say 'yes, Peter'”. He was in the middle of complaining that he had been sitting on his ocean-view balcony for half an hour and his “wife” hadn't yet thought to bring him his coffee and water. We felt sick to our stomachs and resolved to find out more and see what we could do to help.

NYE, Examinations and Exit

Soon it was New Years Eve. Unfortunately for Kat, who's ears, heart and sanity don't cope we'll with sudden loud noises, every idiot with a few pesos can get his or her hands on fireworks. They were going off all day, willy-nilly. It doesn't really make sense, does it? To have fireworks during the bright sunshine-y day?! By nightfall there was finally a reason to let them off, and more and more people took this opportunity. Alleykat and Adrian wandered beachwards and arrived at Blue Ribbon in time to meet up with our French/Norweigan diving gang and more new friends – Captain America made an appearance (cleverly disguised as our new friend Scott who could also sing like a champion), Marthe (another Norweigan, who'd been helping us learn about diving and was looking rather different out of her wetsuit and in a little black dress) and a whole collection of Brits who were part of a rather confusingly-related family.

The evening was relaxed, if a little subdued, until the clock chimed midnight and hundreds of fireworks cracked open the sky. We watched with smiles on our faces, although we were sometimes a little doubtful due to the dubious manner (and direction!) the fireworks were being let off at! Some daggered dangerously into the crowd on the pier close by and exploded in a rain of screams and laughter. Some hit trees, others exploded beneath the waves. It was beautiful to watch, but a little nerve wracking for some.

Soon we were at a venue called… Venue… and there was loud music and limbs collectively pulsing and waving. There were a couple of demonstrations of rather raunchy dancing, and a lot of tut-tutting on our behalf at the sheer number of oldies getting too close to the youngies. The night ended for us at around 3, although for those who, unlike us, didn't have to sit a diving exam on the first day of the new year, the night raged on and on and on.

Our exams went smoothly, we scored in the high 90s a piece and felt at ease and excitement for our final two dives, before getting qualified to be done the next day. Later that day however, Kat managed to catch a sinus sickness and so after a day of painful rest, on the third day of the year, we were finally qualified open water divers!

Our other coach Chris, who also happened to be a long haul bike tourer, told us about his adventures – he's travelled some of the globe for three years before coming to stay in the small heaven called Sabang. After taking great care of us during our last two dives, Chris signed our papers and smiled at us newly qualified scuba-dudes.

It was time to start heading back to Manila to begin our volunteership with Young Focus, so we packed up, bade Adrian a fond farewell and with much greater ease than the journey to Puerto Galera, heading back was simple: we swanned onto the boat and left the port in our wake.

Little white butterflies made the two hour journey with us, why they'd decided to tackle the thirty kilometre trip across the ocean we couldn't tell you, but great numbers of their group flittered and fluttered alongside our long vessel the whole way to Batangas. From there we paused for Phô on the roadside and rode into the night. After nightfall we hadn't managed to find a place to camp – the rains had been through the hills and most of the fields around us were doused in a pond-worthy amount of water. We hoped that a very empty but very open hotel venue would let us pop a tent in their extensive gardens somewhere but unfortunately it was either rent an expensive cabin or nothing. We rode on and landed in San Fransisco. No, we hadn't jumped countries, it's just a town on the outskirts of San Pablo in the south of Luzon.

The by-the-hour hotel was very basic but did us well for the evening, I think we might have confused the owners; we aren't exactly their usual clientele! After a brief breakfast and a ride around the lovely lake of San Pablo (where thousands of people live quite happily bordering its green banks) we were back on the road. We had to climb back up to Das Mariñas, and after what seemed like an endless hill, we crested and coasted back to the first campsite we'd stayed at on our way out of Manila – Jabez Compound. They of course remembered us, and us them – after another relaxing evening we invited them to come and camp in Australia with us anytime!

Young Focus

Tuesday morning we rolled along Roxas Avenue and into Tondo, through heavy traffic and a lot of happy faces. Alee managed to navigate all the way to just around the corner from Young Focus where we fatefully bumped into Ann, one of the senior staff at the charity.

Young Focus is a foundation which holistically supports the children and their families who live on and around Smokey Mountain. Smokey Mountain is essentially a slum built on a garbage dump. Through the aide of hard working staff, volunteers and international donations, these kids (and their families) are supported educationally, emotionally, physically, nutritionally and environmentally. Helping here felt amazing and life-changing.

After settling into a room in a house (owned by the lovely Lola Mely, who is 'The Godmother' of Tondo) just across the street from the main building of Young Focus, we met Amelia (aka Meely or Mia who's name people in many countries have great difficulty pronouncing, thus the alternatives!) who, at 19 is putting us to shame with her already worldly ways, international orphanage volunteerships, membership of the UN and general generous awesomeness.

We learned that our challenge, should the three of us accept it, was to properly decorate the Child Care Plus building which had burned down not a month after being finished the first time. The idea behind this – coming from Ivan and his colleagues – was to transport the children from their world to another entirely; to provide a beautiful, safe respite from the harsh reality of Smokey Mountian. We took it in stages – Kat the arty-shmarty one lead the way. After discussing our ideas with Ivan, the head teacher and carer, we did a general outline and went on a colourful rampage. Within five days of full-time painting we managed to turn a completely blank three walls into a mural with a sealife-rich underwater scene, a richly forested section and a farm set amongst the rolling hills. It felt good to have left something visibly changed in our wake. During our time painting we had help from Karen and her artist friend Maud, who both live in Manila and do a great amount to support Young Focus and specifically the Child Care Plus centre.

Part of the smelly Tondo furniture

The days became a nice routine, filled with smiles and positivity from the always-hard-at-it employees in the office and in the feild at Young Focus – we interacted with our new friends the 'ates' and 'khuyas' (sisters and brothers) – and 'the Angels' – the women and mums who staffed the child care centre and lived at Smokey Mountain everyday. We spent our days travelling to and from the dumpsite either via tricycle or by foot and before long, we became part of the furniture to the people in Tondo.

We made fast and firm friends with Canadian Tareina, bonding initially over the rescue of a small kitten with very broken eyes. We named her Nussy the Second (in order not to get too attached) and took her to a number of veterinary hospitals before settling her with the PSPCA who adopted her and put her straight on a regimen of antibiotics and love. It was around then that another feline needed medical attention; Kat's ears and congested chest continued to plague her, and a visit to the skilled ear doctor at the Chinese Hospital brought to light an eardrum a day away from perforation. Thank science for drugs, eh?

Life wasn't just work and volunteering though, our evenings were warmed by friendship and food. We cooked and ate together with Meely every night – and when Tareina took her friends to visit her favourite part of the Philippines, Palawan, we moved into her apartment. We left the rumble of trucks, wafting of humans and garbage, and crowing of roosters that is Tondo a couple of times, freshening up for a night in Greenbelt (a HUGE multi-facited shopping mall, not green in the slightest!) with Meely's family friend, British Hugh and his friend Hugo for very sophisticated evening of drinks and people watching. We met up with another ex-pat in the Philippines, the father of our duo best friend, Michelle. He treated us at TGI Fridays in another part of the city, Eastwood which isn't a country-and-western themed section of the city but is a heavily westerner-dominated area. The food was delicious and the company friendly. It was a heart-throbbing reminder of our friends in Melbourne!

The Unique Public Transport of The Philippines

The public transport in The Philippines – and Manila – is unique. Giant tin cans on wheels with rusted, chromed or painted outsides are virulent. The jeepney is a mini-bus hop on, hop off style of movement, and at 5 to 12 pesos per ride (the equivalent of no more than 20 cents!) it's worth the noisy, horn-honking, open-air experience. They're everywhere and if you're not riding in (or on top of) one of those, chances are you're stuffed inside of clung on the outside of a tricycle. Motorbikes with sidecarts run in the congested, plaque-like traffic like water through pipes – going with the flow, slipping through cracks and driving where they shouldn't.

We took a variety of this kind of transport in lieu of wanting to brave the twenty kilometres as a threesome on TanNayNay (again, we regret our decision against getting a third seat on or tandem and just riding with a triplet instead!). We also rode around on the rail system, squashed together with hundreds and thousands of Filipinos much like hundreds and thousands sprinkled liberally on a birthday cake.

Meely had once before braved the questionmark that is the jeepney but one afternoon all three of us took the omnibus travel option (jeepney, train) on our way into Makati, the residential zone this time and to hang out with another Meely's friend of the family, Lainey and her extremely well-grounded and worldly kids Alice, Eliot, Ruth and Max. Here, surrounded by the opulent wealth of the neighbourhood we walked their dog Merlin after a deliciously extravagant lunch. The taxis we'd been taking back to Tondo in the evenings had varied wildly in cost: depending on the honesty of the driver! But we paid because there are only some drivers who will drive into the belly of the beast that is Tondo because of its literally murderous reputation and streets equally as difficult to navigate in a car as in a B-double truck.

Having painted the floor in a puddley pond of green rubberised paint and done the final touches to the walls, it was time to spend a bit of time out of metroploitan Manila. By this time we'd pretty much just become part of the dirt on the streets, people were pretty used to us and had various 'cat-calls' like “Hey Miley Cirus! I came here with the wrecking ball!” (to Kat with her short hair), asking our names, asking if Al plays basketball (and challenging him to perform slam dunks) and constantly serenading Meely with wolf whistles, and shouted declarations of love for her beauty and sexiness. She responded admirably just smiling and waving passively, it must've got old pretty quickly!

Travellers Three!

The Mee-alleykat threesome left early morning to get to the ferry terminal, although it turned out that despite the tickets telling passengers to arrive four hours early, we probably didn't even need to arrive with the two hours to spare that we did: we could've rolled up five minutes before departure and no one would've batted an eyelid.

We were sharing our foursome cabin with a young Filipina but didn't realised until after she'd won the videoke competition (and offered one of us the dinner-for-two she'd received as a prize) that she was actually rather lovely! Joanne took us for dinner in the fancier section of the boat (where there was more than just fried chicken and rice to eat) and after eating our fill we all left the deck for bed rather early after a little more Videoke (in which Kat was the only one participating!). 4am rolled around as sure as the waves beneath our hull and it was time to rise unwillingly into the darkness of the harbour below. We found a place to drink a couple of disgustingly sweet 5am coffees and burn a bit of time before we contacted our contact in Iloilo at a slightly more reasonable time. Tisay gave us directions and the ok to arrive 'whenever we liked' and short of being able to follow the loose instructions for two jeepneys and a tricycle she'd described, we decided to taxi our way there.

Although we'd arrived with our eyes rather hooded with sleepiness at Tisay's lovely little home there was just a small amount of time spent nourishing ourselves with a bit of lie down and some breakfast. Then it was into Iloilo city on the tricycle / jeepney service where we were dumped unceremoniously at the edge of the city and simply followed the crowds of excited Filipinas into the centre.

The Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo

Our three days were spent mostly at the festival. Sometimes watching street parades and something called the solemn march and other times wandering and watching and eating delicious Indian cuisine at a little restaurant tucked behind a car wash. One morning, in search of particular drumming event we wanted to see, we accidentally perched in an arena and instead of the tribal drums, out came a series of school groups for a kind of school spectacular. Somehow we managed to be invited to sit next to the Mayor and the Congressmen and got blown away for a couple of hours by the most talented groups of kids we'd ever seen. EVER. We were taken around the streets by volunteer tour guide trainees and Kat/Meely got awful henna on our hands. We ate mango waffles and enjoyed buko-mango shakes, bubble tea and the occasional Starbucks (a chain impossibly popular all over the Philippines). As some of the only obviously foreign people in the throngs of people attending the festival, we had lots of stares and questions and more than a few sneaky photos and not-so-sneaky photos taken of us every day. Through sheer accidental birth-event of being non-Filipinos, we met whole hoards of kids and adults who wanted to learn more (and more!) and were intereviewed twice on camera.

The very close-by island of Gimoras was a worthy alternative to the festival on the Sunday after three frustrating hours spent wandering and trying to see the Ati (tribespeople) performances – unfortunately we just couldn't find anywhere to view the performances from – Alee almost blew a fuse! We just left the thrumming, thundering performers and their accompanying crowds and spent a little time on a beach in Gimoras and took a crazy fast motorbike back to the ferry terminal.

Boracay: 'The Best Beach In The World'

We waited for what seemed like an age for a taxi to the bus terminal – we were heading up to the officially voted Best Beach In The World: Boracay. Once in this rumoured paradise we downed numerous daily avocado and banana shakes, lounged on the beach, watched Harry Potter in the evenings and generally tried NOT to fit in with the disgusting crowd. On our second last afternoon, Meely and Kat wandered a little further afield in search of the perfect (and perfectly priced) smoothie and stumbled upon a sliver of real life on Boracay; streets cramped with fruit vendors and men in semi-reclined positions fixing every kind of vehicle available on the island. It was there we felt suddenly less like we were dirtying up the place and instead as though it wasn't just some mirage created out of very convincing plastic made just for the western tourists. And, of course the best smoothies were hidden in these streets, not for tourists but for locals!

Our last morning was a slow one, but that wasn't any different from every morning for the majority of the island; the roosters and the Filipinas were busy around the clock but the slovenly tourists didn't make much of an appearance before 9am, and even that seemed to be a little too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for most. We pancaked and smoothied on this, our last morning together, and parted with lots of hugs and knowledge that it'll only be time until we see each other again. Meely, the lucky duck was off to Palawan, a mostly untouched jungle island, and was to meet up with her cousin before heading back to Manila for some more volunteering.

Alleykat scrambled to catch the 12pm ferry to Roxas on Mindoro Island (lest waiting another four hours to escape the opressive human-driven heat in the terminal) and just made it. The ferry ride was made easier through the deft magical hand of Harry Potter and his friends and before we knew it, we were unloading and reloading into a 'private van' headed for Calipan. Of course, The Philippines being the rather lax sort of place that it is, we waited half an hour cooking inside this first van before realising the van was only going to move when a full load of passengers had been procured, if not a full load and a half! We were poked and prodded onto another van and were soon zooming our way along the very wet roads like a bat out of hell. Along the way we braced ourselves a number of times, clenching all there was to be clenched as passengers were spied out of the dark corner of the driver's eye – brakes were slammed on and every passenger who could be sardined in with us was fish-tailed in. Over the course of a few hours we picked up and dropped off more people than could fit on a train in India, and managed to make it to Calipan by late evening.

Sitting in JolliBee that evening, waiting for Alee's peach and mango pie, we reflected on how different it is to travel without TanNayNay, how much we enjoy relying on ourselves and reading our own schedule, rather than guessing at others' loose time-reading.

The Fast Cat ferry was indeed fast, we nimbly swept through the water and alighted once more onto the docks at Batangas Port. From there we were thoroughly ripped off by a tricycle driver (we parted with more than three times what we should've paid) and were laughed at good-humouredly by the Jeepney driver on our busy beeping way into Anilao. We wandered up the costal road and were suitably impressed by our friend Tim's newest venture, his second and third places of hospitality. That evening just so happened to be his birthday, and we were lucky enough to celebrate with cake (six during the party, Tim tells us there were two more delivered the next day!) and a lavish spread put on by his lovely business partners-come-friends Jo and Jess. When there were only a few of us left, including new Malaysian friends Dani and Shaz and Japanese super-kawaii-lady, Kana, Tim sung us into the new day, his dulcet tones vastly preferential to any recorded music we had.

We were lucky, as is so often the way, to catch a properly private van ride back to Manila with Dani and Shaz, with plans to meet these good men again in a few months in Kuala Lumpur. We squeezed ourselves onto the train and what was probably our last jeepney, backpacks and all, and arrived at Young Focus to say a proper goodbye. We have a wonderful fridge magnet to remember our time there!

Back in Tondo, it felt like home

Across the road, at Lola Mely's place, it just so happened to be the magnificent matriarch's 71st birthday and we attended, making firmer friends with her tribe, Jeff, Boom and his partner Sean. The party was lush, so much food, lots of decorations and fair enough for such a decorated lady!

We bought some beautiful jewellery from the Fair Jewellery section of Young Focus, a part of the charity that allows many students who've graduated from the countless YF programs to learn a craft and make a good living – thereby not needing to return to scavanging through rubbish or making charcoal to survive. A worthy cause and, under the guidance of resident artist RikJem, the pieces are amazing!

After saying goodbye to Young Focus (and receiving presents including a huge mash-up photo magnet!) and a couple of evenings together with Boom and Sean, we spent our last day in Manila (which was meant to be dedicated to movie making and blog blathering) fetching the box we'd brought TanNayNay over with us – we managed somehow to squeeze onto the train where people were supporting our weight rather than our feet and legs. Boom, Sean, Lola Mely and another of her daughters, Pinky, drove us and everything we own through two hours of traffic thicker than Rapunzel's hair to the airport – thanks team and thanks Philippines! Cambodia here we come!

Don’t forget to catch our film, Alleykat Admires the Philippines!

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 3 (The Philippines) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Yep, there we were on the last day of October, admittedly kind of expecting an upgrade after our previous boating experience in Korea (read about it HERE) and we were right! There were to be upgrades, just sadly not for us. Alexandria and Miguel, the Spaniards we’d met in line at the Busan Port had scored a private cabin no extra charge. We faced the next ten hours together with twenty other plebs in the group floor sleeping rooms. This was of course not a problem at all, as we are more than capable of sharing a bit of space, and thankfully the hours of the night passed quickly.

There she was, the beautiful seaside Fukuoka greeted us warmly and, warmer still were the coffees we bought from the heated section of the fridge in our first convenience store. Strange but true, ‘we could get used to this kind of convenience!’ we thought together. Breakfast was cooked in a park full of crazies and homeless: so we fitted right in. As it was early morning, we watched superbly uniformed boys and girls riding Dutch bikes to schools, their bags slung over their shoulders and their handlebar baskets full of books.

The day was mostly people-watching the hours away, noting the surprising amount of infrastructure for the blind throughout the city streets – and then we sat and saw the blind people using it! Foot-watching is a more apt way to describe what we did, hunched over on the stoop of 7Eleven we watched super ‘kawaii’ (cute) chicks in ‘sugoi’ (incredible) kicks (shoes) shaloop their way by. We heard great gaggles of girls clip-clop past: their heels towering but their heights still rather limited. Stranger still we watched men, women and children join the teenagers in their strange fashion: wearing shoes four sizes too big!

After almost missing our rendezvous with our couchsurfing host, we got to know some information about teaching English in Japan. The JET program employs native English speakers to be teaching assistants and although this is an excellent idea in principle, in practise it sometimes seems to be little more than a novelty: the westerner in the corner is the elephant in the room – Japanese culture doesn’t really want any other influence other than its own.

That first night we joined Ryan for a JET program horror movie night in the ongoing celebration of Halloween. We and some other westerners enjoyed a very strange, and creepy Japanese flick called Hausu. At Olivia’s house there was home made food, gyoza, red wind and just a little craziness imbibed that night.

We stayed three nights with Ryan and had a rather quiet, relaxing time. We did visit the red light district of Fukuoka and ate some scrumptious authentic Indian food. And then it was unfortunately time to go, only unfortunate because it was raining in sheets and buckets and other household items.

Wild camping in parks has many perks

After it rained all day on us, darkness crept in and brought some fair weather and a breath of dry relief. We pedalled out towards an island and disturbed a whole family of wild boars in a field! The Mumma Pig was bounding through the rice fields, masquerading as a gleeful dog – ears flapping, until we got close enough to watch her loopy tail and pointy ears retreating with seven piglets in tow. All that night in our side-of-the-road camp spot we heard them rustling, snorting and rooting around.

Our days riding in most countries have been dappled with large patches of kindness, Japan wasn’t about to be a shady exception. We paused at a conventience store (let’s face it, we were happy to make them our home) where a woman named Yoshiko approached us and we conversed in English before she dashed away momentarily to fetch us onigiri (compressed rice triangles filled with seaweed). As is typical and magical, we were happened upon by another English speaking person (for a very small town in Japan it is a rarity to have two in one spot!) a junior high English teacher who had lived in Australia, of course!

That night we camped in a childrens’ playground (well, a small park with a slide in it) and the next morning accidentally met Lee, a Japanese man who brought us fruit from his home, who’s friends bought us coffee, and who’s wife made us coffee and walnut bread after he invited us into his home. What a legend, it made our day.

Cycling further into the mountainous region of Honshu, we arrived at thd Akiyoshido caves but were disappointed to find we only had half an hour to visit them, so being the resourceful Alleykats we are, we instead camped next to museum and visited the limestone caves the next morning.

Kat busted something in her sit bones and we swapped seats which provided some sweet relief, despite looking a bit odd. Our target of the small historical hown Hagi was reached by sun down and after discovering the 4000 yen ($40) per person per night pricetag at the hostel, of course slept in the park next to the ocean for the sum total of zero yen.

Partial nudity and rice cakes

The mountains surrounding us held a dark secret: huge section of the countryside had been devastated by the heaviest rains in 100 years (freak flash flood) – the river ran as a writhing demon snake, tearing into the hills and valleys, causing damage to nature and structure alike, leaving only destruction in its wake.

The small town of Tsuwano sat mostly undisturbed at the end of the path, our official couchsurfing host Saki was absent but our second host Mitsuya luckily lived in the same vast house along with, yep you guessed it, our third host Ken. Soon we were integrated into the huge house of boys and stayed four nights instead of one…this was to become a theme in Japan! We cooked dinner for the lads, their friends Kanta and Wataru and the very gorgeous and talented Noriko (the only other girl in the house at the time!) a couple of nights in a row and then the wonderous, worldly Saki returned home and our stay continued to continue!

Our last full day was decorated by the event of a matsuri (festival) to celebrate the new rice harvest, and was full of townsfolk giving generously. We ate red-bean-paste pancakes, drank hot red-bean soup with moji (chewy rice cakes) and followed an incredible group of mostly-naked men jubilating around a platform in a demonstration that has to be seen (and heard!) to be believed. The photos don’t do it justice, watch our movie about Japan HERE to get the full picture!

We ate the little rice cakes we collected from the matsuri festivities – roasted in the microwave and toaster oven (in the typically Japanese absence of a proper convection oven). Eaten saltily with a small dousing of soya sauce or sweetly with a dusting of kinkili (ground beans) and powdered sugar they are a real treat.

The reason Saki and the crew were living together is a very worthy one: they’re employed to promote tourism in the region, supporting the declining population of young people in villages and towns. They’re helping Japan deal with its ageing population problem.

After days and days of being well looked after by Saki and her clever gang of tourism officers we rambled along smooth and sweet roads towards the coast. Alee grabbed a handful of brake suddenly and shouted ‘monkey!’, this isn’t hugely abnormal behaviour, but soon all – a rather abnormal sight – was revealed by the simple act of looking up: yep, there were moneys alright, gorging themselves on the delicious persimmons blooming richly on branches clad to the cliffs at our side. After filming their apish antics for a while the city of Ikawani thrust itself upon us.

Darkness arrives early in winter and yet again we were caught out without a proper park to park in, cycling up into some hills proved to be a fruitless exercise and so like true homeless travellers, we absconded in the darkness at a sport complex and stayed long after the soccer players went home. In the morning our clever, dark hiding spot was revealed as starkly obvious; we’d camped slap bang next to the car park, but no matter, we weren’t deterred from dithering over our breakfast in the slightest.

Lady Luck and some confused (alley)cats

Luckily, all this wild camping had Lady Luck feeling sorry for us – we’d successfully hooked up a couchsurf for a night in Hiroshima. Mari, who had generously accepted us smelly bike riders, let us know that there was a slight change of plans: we’d be staying in a hotel instead of her home. We read her message as though her family we staying altogether in a big hotel room (something about a sick grandmother) – heck, so long as they were happy to have us, we didn’t mind where we stayed!

We rolled up to the biblically big Sheraton Hotel and were immediately told off for leaning TanNayNay’s bulk on the glossy marble wall out the front. Upon attempting to check in, we realised we didn’t have Mari’s last name and so attempted to describe her family and that they might possibly be staying there with a grandma… we were lost!

We stopped by 7Eleven to use the internet and soon got Mari’s last name – she was emailing us from work and we could only get access to the internet using the free wifi service at aforementioned convenience stores – where was Lady Luck when we needed her?!

Keeping up? We weren’t at all sure what the deal was yet but kept on keeping on. We wandered in and up to the concierge, thoroughly out of place in dirty clothes and bike sandals, and were taken to our room. Here we thought we’d find Mari’s family but instead, a massive king-sized bed suite opened grandly in front of our quietly bulging eyes. What was going on?!

We realised that there was some misunderstandings somewhere along the way but weren’t at all sure where. Here we were in our own private room, still confused as to where Mari’s family were and whether we were going to have to pay the $500 price for the privelaged of living the high life in this hotel.

After two hours of not touching anything, not unpacking, not going to the toilet, we ascertained that the very lovely and outrageously generous Mari had in fact paid for our night in the Sheraton and that her family were at home twenty kilometres away taking care of Mari’s sick grandma – who wasn’t keen to have two clumping foreigners cramping her recovery space (fair enough!).

Mari finished work at 9pm and took us out for second dinner at a varied traditional restaurant. We quickly fell in love with Mari and forgot that she’d just bought us an entire hotel room – instead she was just a normal (super special) Japanese girl who was our latest and greatest new friend. Staying out all together until 2am meant missing out on most of our time in the expensive hotel room – worth it!

The next night was again spent as a threesome and Mari introduced us to our very first okimomiyaki – a kind of Japanese vegetable pancake set on noodles and cooked on a huge hot plate in front of the customer, delicious! Alleykat, as a true gentlecat must, walked Mari to her tramstop but instead of heading back over to ‘richoshima’ and to a night of super luxury, we simply parked out tent beside the Ota River, and slept in the cold – what a couple of contrasting nights.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

Our visit to The Children’s Peace Museum was moving and educational. Kat had read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes in grade five, weeping thoroughout, and was amazed at the reality of the place: Sadako really is the face of the story, the sadness, and the rejuvenation of Hiroshima. We learned more about the evil surrounding the dropping of the atom bomb and understood more about the importance of world peace.

The next day as we were riding out of the city, a woman who’d seen us riding through the streets of Hiroshima City was so surprised to see us again that she bought us lunch at the supermarket. Our day was frustratingly marred by city riding: the roads were narrow and the traffic heavy, we’d expect to see the countryside open up at every bend but we remained closed in by houses, shops and road traffic.

By evening there hadn’t been a convenient little pozzie to pop ourselves so we looked out across the water. An enormous bridge lead to a dwarf of an island; the bridge was almost longer than the landmass was wide! Following the lights we circumnavigated this tiny territory and ended up at the end of a pier and despite only being just wide enough for us to set up the tent, there we balanced ourselves and slept soundly with the salty tide lapping a metre below us.

Park camping and not-showering comrades

The leaves were really beginning to turn, glancing at us over their big bushy shoulders, blushing and smouldering with autumnal colours; riding the coast was suddenly made far more enchanting. Our goal was to ride across to the island of Shikoku, using the famous six bridges for six islands network (much like seven brides for seven brothers but with a bit less singing and dancing). After an overnight stay on the first of the set of small isles, (next to some docks again and where we were discovered in the early morning and given fruit, coffee and onigiri for our trouble of sleeping outside in the cold!) we set off.

The first bridge lept out at us, massively dominating the skyline – how on earth would we reach such a monster? It was sitting easily a hundred metres in the air – were we going to have to carry TanNayNay up?

No, no, of course we didn’t: a gently ascending path looped ringlets around the mountainside leading up to the bridge’s wide mouth. Instead of riding ontop of the tarmac with the cars and trucks, an entirely separate path was hanging just below, ferrying us across the flying-fish-filled waters. This was the theme throughout the next 70 kilometres: we bike riders were given preference, huge sections of road or path dedicated entirely to us!

Once in Imabari we set ourselves up in a city Central Park, as was now common behaviour for Alleykat. Not long after we’d eaten and cleaned up (thank you super clean bathrooms) we realised we were in the crazy park – yep, there were a number of crazy cat men, feeding the cats with what should definitely have been their own dinner. There was a gang of dudes at 2am whizzing around a remote control car, Tokyo Drifting past our tent for a good half an hour. But most indicatively, we woke to find the men’s bathroom in complete revolting disarray: some poor sod (or sods) had not enjoyed himself – the walls were smeared and splattered and let’s just say Alee used the girls toilets after such an “interesting” morning find.

Shikoku was quite lovely, lots of little rolling hills and roads to follow up and down them, however there were two drawbacks: firstly, a plague of industry had spread on the shoreline for a good 50 kilometres, marring some of the island’s beauty – in fact as we rolled into Shikocucho, we couldn’t see the city for the smog.

The second negative won’t seem particularly dramatic, but, for those of us relying on the internet, it was very nearly a disaster! There were zero 7Elevens on the island (outside Takamatsu). This meant that our couchsurfing hopes for the few hundred kilometre journey were dashed – we couldn’t apply to any hosts, nor see if any of the hosts we’d applied to stay with previously had answered us.

Aside from these small blips on the radar, it was good fun riding along the island’s coast. We were stopped by a woman on a scooter who insisted in good English that we take her lunch, telling us that she’d have something else to eat with her friends later. The walnut fruit rye sourdough went down a treat along with the traditional persimmon and red bean moji. That evening we discovered an excellent supermarket and dessert before camping on the beach nestled in some pine trees.

Somehow we’d managed to apply for a couchsurfing host in Takematsu (thanks to Alee’s persistence: when pressed, there are always ways of finding the internet – even if it involves riding around in circles for hours) and that evening we met Saad at the train station with his friend Kelsey. Saad is part of the JET program and luckily for us is totally utterly gorgeous and wonderful. We stayed four nights after planning just the one (yes, Japan definitely had a pattern!).

We ate Jamaican food, Japanese food and Alleykat food, witnessed a stundents-in-training tea ceremony, helped reinforce Saad’s windows against the cold with bubble wrap, had fun in the city checking out fixie hipster niche shops and Kat got her hair cut short by Takeshi, and there met the lovely Kristen (a kindergarten teacher also from the US).

Kelsey and Alleykat shared a short history of not washing for sometimes weeks at a time: Kelsey had just finished a multi-year stint working with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. She shared some incredible stories with us and blew our socks off with the prospect of helping the world in such a far-from-home setting. Saad was the cleanest of the four, but still had a wealth of amazement to share with us partially in the form of photos from his cousin’s technicolor wedding in Pakistan (his family hails from there) and, you know, living in Japan!

First time Thanksgiving

It was time to head off, backtracking along the island this time to have our first Thanksgiving with another ex-pat English teacher, Katie. As it turned out, as it so often does in this small world of ours, Saad would also be coming to Katie’s place for Thanksgiving!

We arrived in the afternoon and were greeted by Katie’s generous absence: she was at work but she’d still managed to lay out six different drink choices for us and have an entire room dedicated to our stay. She arrived home late with her also-teaching-in-the-same-program friend, Olivia (who’s twin sister just happens to be one of Katie’s best friends back home…) and then the preparations began.

By 2:37AM, multiple dishes had been cooked and baked and prepared with tender loving care and just a sprinkling of madness than only early morning kitchen time can lend. We rolled ourselves into bed after having talked the night away, feeling like we’d already known each other a lifetime. The Thanksgiving celebration wasn’t until the next afternoon and so the morning was dedicated to cleaning and moving around furniture and making sure people knew how to navigate their way to Olivia’s second-storey apartment. The festivities were raucous only in noise level and happiness – we mingled for a few hours before everyone paused to gather and say what they were thankful for (a rather excellent tradition). There were many present who, like us Aussie Alleykats, had never celebrated the very Ameican tradition of Thanksgiving, but that certainly didn’t detract from the evening.

Over the next few days, again having stayed on-theme and remained in Katie’s warm hospitality far longer than proposed, we enjoyed the company of new friends over Mexican food, walked up a mountain to a beautiful temple in the rain and generally enjoyed ourselves in the presence of these two gorgeous girls.

Warm Polish hospitality in the cold Japanese countryside

To escape Shikoku, we caught a ferry across to Shodoshima Island and camped on yet another pier and just after setting up the tent, we were almost blown away but the gusty costal winds. After circumnavigating this beautiful mountainous little island, Himeji was our next stop to sleep right next to a bridge carrying the very sexy, extraordinarily speedy Shinkansen train past us all night (bliss for Kat!).

The roads into Kobe were rather treacherous; not dangerous, but definitely not designed with long-distance bike trips in mind. Not even one hundred kilometres saw us dismounting and carrying, hauling or pushing TanNayNay up and around and over a series of mammoth bridges – steps are our enemy! Although we rewarded ourselves with a comfortable sleep in an enormous park and mint choc-chip ice creams later than evening, we’d still rather do without the hundreds and hundreds of steps.

The temperatures over night were brisk, we donned most of our clothing inside our zip-together sleeping bag every evening. Getting started was a bit of a task unless the sun was shining supremely strongly.

However, suffering in a tent in the cold was soon to become a thing of the past. We once again dragged ourselves through the complicated and confusing streets of Osaka (it took us more than five hours to get from one side to the other!) and we popped out of the spaghetti in Izumi-chuo. The station master didn’t like us having the bike inside, however it wasn’t a problem for too long as we were soon met by Jakub (known as Kuba), a kind-as-they-come Polish exchange student who, despite having extremely limited space, shared it with us.

That evening we had yummy okimomiaki with Kuba’s also Polish, also exchange student friend Klaudia and enjoyed the mix it yourself approach to cooking – so yummy! We were soon due up in Tokyo but not before we’d slept a couple of times in the approximately sixteen centimetres of available floor space and thoroughly enjoyed Kuba’s laid-back friendship.

As it happens, Kat’s cousin Ben lives in Osaka with his Japanese wife Chie and their new baby son Sena. After sharing some cousinly love and a delicious pizza dinner, Ben and Chie helped (rather, did all the work) to get us a bus ticket to Tokyo for the next day. The bus was a spacious double decker and it took us ten hours to travel the six-hundred kilometres between the two massive cities.

Through some bike-tourer good luck we’d managed to get ourselves a hook up with the Tokyo-dwelling best friend of Totally Tandem’s Emma and Brendon. Despite not having met either of the bike-hauling-pair, we arrived late at their friend Kirsten’s place and awesomeness ensued. Kirsten was not only an incredible and generous host and British School maths teacher extraordinaire, but a totally easy-going, awesomely-accented (South African – you know what I’m saying) vastly-interesting and YouTube-all-knowing babe: we were great friends in minutes.

Shibuya Street Dreams

Early one December morning two more Aussies alighted onto Japanese soil: the magical Paul van der Ploeg and his fashionista girlfriend Juliette! We’d been lucky enough to have a projected path crossing in the months leading up to their snow holiday (thanks mostly to Juliette’s university-course-based fascination with Shibuya’s fashion – check it out HERE) and *shazzam* Alleykat, Mr World Champion PVDP and Booth Life were soon loved-up in Tokyo’s super suburbs Shibuya and Harajuku – wandering, shopping, and eating as a foursome.

Sloshy Mexican shenanigans on the first evening saw us loose and lining up with the masses at Eggs and Things – a common passtime for the über chic Tokyoians, and our five days of adventures went from there. We climbed (elevatored) a tower in Shinjuku and watched the sunset over the city, we took adventage of Kirsten’s amazeballs kitchen and cooked dinner for us all, we visited the British School to give an awesome foursome inspiration-packed talk, we went out for another set of okimomiyaki, enjoyed the street life and the late night crepes and finally after five wonderul relaxing nights in Kirsten’s paradise apartment, Alleykat hauled our junk out of her place and into Paul and Juliette’s Air B’n’B place.

Cat cafes and karaoke craziness

After an awesome coffee at Lattest, Kat and Juliette got pussied up to the eyeballs at that quindecennially Japanese experience: a Cat Cafe. That evening was to be a massive night out: we began at a sayonara shindig with Kirsten’s British School crew and extended the boozy reach of the evening’s events to Karaoke. For those of you who haven’t been before (like Alleykat, the total noobs) do it and be prepared for the time you purchase to never be enough – there’s always more singing to be done! We six (including Carmel and Kirsten as seasoned singers) smashed the tunes and the tab: that’s right, part of the deal in Japan is the expensive room comes complete with free all-you-can-drink drinks.

As a direct result there was so much awesomeness and bad singing, and new freindships – we met Japanese/Korean dudes and decided to get a expensive taxi altogether to the centre of the dubious dance scene: a club called Womb.

At 1:30AM, the $40-a-head club was totally dead, so instead we went wandering. Soon we’d met Mike and Christian (a couple of young and later heroic navy dudes) and bumped into whole host of drunk Japanese youths. From then until 5:00AM or later we wisely decided to go clubbing at their apartment instead of being stuck inside ready-to-be-born-as-dancers. Way too sozzled, pickled by the end I’m sure, but ’twas a genuinely amazing night out. We got safely home at 5:30AM thanks entirely to the stone-cold-sober Navy seals (who had warm hearts), and fell heavily into bed…only having to drag our sorry arses out and into the world to catch a bus back to Osaka!

With great effort, we rolled ourselves up with our panniers and belongings barely intact and ambled our way quickly to the train station. If we’d woken five minutes later we wouldn’t have made it to the bus station! Luck was on our side and so, there we were, stuck in a bus pausing only to puke in the bathrooms while the other passengers ate, drank and were merry.

Paul and Juliette were set to arrive in Osaka some time that day – we felt so lucky to have them there with us again. We wandered around central Osaka for a while after some local Japanese fare, our four faces lit by billboards alive with neon colour, our eardrums beaten from every side by the thrum of voices, music and sheer existence in Japan. We sneakily snuck past the unmanned hotel reception at Paul and Juliet’s hotel, and slept cosily in one of their two single beds (thanks guys!).

Our last day together with two of our favourite people in the world – we ate pancakes for breakfast (digesting relief as their fluffy goodness effectively combatted the very last of our epic multi-day hangover), we drank organic coffee, we walked until the soles of our feet were calloused and shopped until (some of) our cards could shop no more. We parted ways with a four-way hug and two separate train rides. Alleykat headed back into the burbs and back to our space-limited but hospitality-rich host, Polish Kuba and ate dinner at a small cafe and talked away the hours.

Fly Away Home

We needed to fly, fly away home, to a new home: The Philippines. We travelled with an enormous bike box folded up and tucked under and wobbily tabled over Kat’s personage for 20 kilometres to reach the last train stop before the airport. Unfortunately the airport is five kilometres off the mainland and thus can only be approached via a bridge. That bridge has a list (of rules) and bikes aren’t on the list, so after dismantling TanNayNay and reshuffling our stuff for flight mode in the train station, we scuffed the bike box and lugged the unfriendly panniers one station along to the airport.

After lining up for what seemed like dayss, and despite being two and a half hours early for our flight, we reached the front only to discover we needed either a Philippino visa or an ongoing plane ticket to board the now boarding flight. Now, you’re well aware dear reader, that Alleykat aren’t planners, ok, Alee is a planner, but we don’t make plans and we certainly don’t book flights out of countries we haven’t even reached yet!

Hastily (with 30 minutes to take off!) we booked some tickets to Cambodia and made it through customs and immigration in, we kid you not, three minutes. Now all that remained to do was fly, fly away!

Don’t forget to catch our film on Japan!

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 2 (Japan) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

We utilised something not many Aussies use in everyday life: a pay phone(!) to notify our host SungJong of our lateness due to flying, and an attempt to ride to his home. He strongly advised against riding from the airport but Alleykat was, as usual, rather pig-headed and decided we’d just do what we had planned.

So, we got on the bike and within the first one hundred and twenty three metres were stopped. Argh! This wasn’t in the plan! We explained to the barrier guards that we needed to catch the last ferry which was leaving in twenty minutes and we still had ten kilometres to reach the port! They held on to us, glued to the rules and regulations, time a ticking by. They wouldn’t let us ride on the freeway for a mere tongue’s length, to satisfy our thirst to get across it and on to the lesser road towards the ferry. Thwarted, we headed down many narrow escalators into the belly of the metro beast, purchased in Korean the first tickets that came up on the automaton’s screen and hopped on an express train to Seoul Station.

A shoe-shiner on the corner of Seoul Station was most helpful as we’d come up, around and through the intestine spaghetti of stairs and escalators. We were rather confused as to where exactly we’d been excreted.

The ride ahead was to be in neon-lit semi-darkness, twenty-five kilometres through the moist streets of inner-city Seoul and out towards the ‘green belt’, hoping to happen across a station whose name we could remember because it sounded like the Korean brand Samsung. Once there, we scanned the quiet streets hoping a Korean somebody would pop out and say ‘hi Alleykat’… but as we were already two hours behind schedule and had organised only a loose ‘we’ll call you when we get there plan’, we weren’t actually expecting anyone to be there.

We borrowed a third phone for the evening (owning a phone ourselves would be useful, perhaps?) and were soon collected by SungJong and his wife Ji Hyun. TanNayNay followed them on-scooter, over some hills and far away to their delightful little faux-greenhouse home. Delicious dinner was already cooked for us by the lovely bubbly Ji Hyun, presented on their kitchen table along with about 47 little condiment-filled ceramic bowls (kimchi, pickled radish, chilli garlic shoots and pickled potato were among the best). Our bedroom for the next little while was shown to us (it also happened to be the bike room, which suited us down to a cleat) and we gladly fell into bed and slept soundly after our dedicated practise of airport-based sleep deprivation over the past twenty-four hours.

Recharging the Seoul

We did a profound amount of nothing for the first day but then the next warm, attractive morning changed our slothful ways, and we went hiking with SungJong and Ji Hyun up Gangdeng Mountain. Kimbap was ordered for us by Ji Hyun – a food much like a sushi hand-roll with sticky rice and veggies rolled into a dark algae-black sheet of nori. The mountain was awash with colour, not robed in the autumnal red as one would assume in the fall season, but instead with brightly decorated Koreans wearing the loud colours of heavily branded outdoor equipment stores. The summit was beautiful, cloudy for a moment and then as if father sky knew we’d passed through his wreath of opaque water vapour, the mist swept to the side and Seoul unfolded in front of us. Our way down was punctuated by strangely raunchy noises of Korean hikers using their voices to navigate the steep, perhaps orgasmic, paths. The road back to the base of the mountain was plastered with outdoor shops and we decided to investigate in search of rain ponchos – the name of which the shop assistants didn’t understand until we anunciated it in the right way: “pancho!”

While staying in Seoul, we’d heard that world-famous bike tourers Amaya and Eric of World Biking were in the same place as us in the world; finally! We introduced SungJong and Ji Hyun to them as well as ourselves and enjoyed a night in chatting about world bike riding (of the six we were the newbies of the group even at a year and a half of travel!).

SungJong was on a week’s holiday, which worked in Alleykat’s supreme favour as he generously donated his time to helping us explore the city, purchase an iPhone (our first phone this trip!), find outdoor shop -central and order and eat exceptional street food. We thoroughly enjoyed our first taste of dogk böki, and many other Korean firsts: cold noodles, dumplings, red bean-filled pancakes, cinnamon sugar-packed doughnuts and almost every Korean delight we imbibed.

As is the way when exploring a city, we did some normal things and some not-so-normal things: we ate out at restaurants (Korean and Chinese), Kat got a haircut, we visited the Westerner epicentre of Seoul, Itaiwan, where we were thoroughly put off being ‘normal’ westerners after we hunted for some western food – we found a $10.50 jar of Vegemite – and felt haunted by the non-Korean-ness of this little pocket. We used the public transport system like pros, we even bought metro cards! After we had become firm friends with our hosts, had made an overdue movie (you can view the Kyrgyzstan video HERE) and had written an overdue Kyrgyz blog (read it HERE).

Now it was high time to get back on the bike! After house sitting while everyone (SungJong, Ji Hyun and their family, along with pretty much the whole population of Korea) was out celebrating for two days Korean Luna New Year, we left late in the afternoon for the famous Seoul to Busan bike path.

The Seoul to Busan Bike Path (650km)

Day Zero: An unofficial beginning on late late Saturday afternoon, we rode from the Green Belt of Seoul to outskirts of… Seoul, it’s a big city ok?! We continued into the darkness, the surrounding chiaroscuro lit by a blood moon and settled to camp on a dock next to an unused bridge.

Day One: A sunny day and also a Sunday; the bike path was heavily populated, we tingled with enthusiasm. We met Lee who was decked out in light blue and pink Lycra and didn’t believe we could haul our bike up hills – being as heavily laden as she is – without a motor!! He was so impressed, he took us out to lunch and rode with us to the next town where we bought food at the supermarket he found for us. He was casually riding 80+km to his special lunch spot next to the bridge he helped build (as one of his three jobs). He took lots of photos of us and lamented that we didn’t spend the night before at his home in the outskirts of Seoul. Despite the small fact we’d not met yet.

We rode further along the bike path, along the river, noodling about and easily avoiding main roads, delighting in the little villages and friendly people we met. As is normal, we rode up some hills; however, most of the other bike riders pushed, a very strange practice as it didn’t seem to matter whether the hill was 3% or 15% hopping off the bike was apparently necessary!

Along with a whole host of camp-happy Koreans, the night was spent at a free camping ground complete with a hammock, showers and hundreds upon hundreds of web-bound arachnids watching us do the dishes.

Day Two: Lots of flat, wide river riding, straight into a head wind most of the day. Luckily there was not much climbing so the hours trundled past without too much sweat being broken. There was boardwalk riding, smooth-pavement enjoyment and crossing dam-crowning bridges with a gloriously out-of-place 7Elevens at either side. We reached the large-ish city of Chungdu and aimed to camp by the river. On the ride beside the water Alex suddenly slammed on the brakes; we skidded to a stop – ‘a kangaroo, I’m sure saw a kangaroo!’ Sadly but not surprisingly, our “kangaroo” turned out to be a little deer who looked confusingly like our native fauna, but we were still pretty chuffed to have watched its little white bottom bound into the scrub! A little further afield our “perfect spot” was complicated with a resident family picnic – we thought we’d better ask to stay so ventured, ‘tentu cho du teoh?’ and received a nod, ‘tentu cho du teoh’. Later that evening as our picnicking friends were leaving, a flask of orange juice and sausages (which probably cost about $24 altogether) were thrust upon us with gestures of ‘take it! take it!’. Such generosity!

Day three: An absolute pearler. We’d organised a Couchsurf for this night with Jonno, a man who had an incredibly inviting ‘electronic’ personality and seemed as excited about life as we were. We were pumped to meet him later that evening after his school day (and night) finished. The riding was beautiful and truly ‘nature galore’: we stopped about fifty times in the first fifty minutes to film and photograph spiders, cats and pumpkins growing through fences. The smooth bike path lead us on ups and downs, on mostly quiet roads with huge bike-designated lanes and beauty fit to be painted around us at all times.

Half way through our day we stopped to put our feet in a shallow hot spring – perfect. We wanted to get in entirely but decided lunch time in the middle of a densely populated rural town was probably not the best place to get naked. Sigh.

The path lead us to climb the biggest peak of the bike path – 550m of up, along a spectacle of a road. At the top we paused to get watered, caffeinated and beanified on ice coffees and bean milk, and of course to use the Internet, as is custom in even the highest hard-to-reach cupboards of Korea.

Popped down the hill towards Mungyeong, rode more and cooked dinner in a rotunda that looked like a temple which meant our dinnertime was complete with an old book smell emainating from the seat beneath our bike-worn bums and green speckled frogs jumping about. We’d seemingly placed ourselves in the epicentre of the evening’s activity: hundreds of Koreans getting out for their evening constitutionals with the customary blaring of music bumping up and down from a bumbag at groin level. Jonno’s school greeted us with a classy-looking outer wall and upon contacting the friendly teacher, were given directions to his house (gosh having a phone is useful, thanks SungJong!). Moments later we met the delightful and even-more-electric-in-real-life Jonno himself and got clean after a full three nights without showers, yum. The evening was filled fuller as we went out to meet Jonno’s friends Lucas and Marize for a musical interlude, occasional lewdness and much loving, learning and invigorating of the soul. We felt somehow at home. Marize, Lucas and Jonno are all made from musical bones and made Kat feel inspired to pull a skeleton out of her misplaced musical closet. We made a brunch date with Lucas and settled in for the night with Jonno where the rest of the night was talked away, no topic left unexplored and within mere hours of meeting, we were firm friends, doing as friends do.

It was suddenly early morning and Jonno had school in the morning, so we bade oneanother goodnight and slept deeply on his unbelievably comfortable floor mattress (it’s the way of the future!). The morning was filled with bowls of breakfast and mouthfuls of chatter, it was sad to part ways! We packed up and left, noting his note on the door – “whether or not you can never become great at something, you can always become better at it”. I’m not sure if it was for us, or himself, or for his students; but anyone who is lucky enough to be connected to Jonno is extremely lucky indeed. We met up with the excellent and devilishly-quick-witted Lucas (he knows the author means outrageously handsome!) who went on to buy us brunch and coffee and we managed somehow to fit four hours into one (or so it seemed). It was then time for a quick stop at Home Plus, the mammoth department store, and out on the open road.

Day four: With a second English teacher-as-couchsurfing host in a row organised for the evening, the rain which doused us all day wasn’t such a downer.

Crunchy Speccaloos for an under-rotunda lunch was accompanied on all six sides by enormous beautiful spiders, luminous in their neon viridity, including one who pooed right in front of us onto a surprisingly bountiful poo-pile below her. Who knew spiders defecate?! Her monotone male suitors were infantestimal, hanging around in her home, most likely headed for an early, post-coitus grave.

We somehow got lost and after attempting to retrace our distinctive wheel tracks and rejoin the true path, we gave up and took roads instead. We had been riding along as we do when we realised we hadn’t seen the usually well-signed four rivers symbol on any of the signposts for a good long while which is always a bad sign! However, the roads were not only an adequate option but were quiet and perhaps, a more direct, if mountainous route.

Devastatingly, we had to push TanNayNay at one stage up the path – OUR FIRST PUSH OF THE TRIP! The road was a 30% gradient at least for a good half a kilometre. Pffft, an utterly ridiculous piece of bike path.

We arrived on the freeway-frilled outskirts of Gumi and organised to meet our host Pete at the main train station. We discovered that Korean drivers are much more cautious in the rain than those drivers who must not be named *cough, the multiple Lord Voldemort vehicle operators of Kyrgyzstan, cough* and thus enjoyed smacking it along the highways for the last 20 kilometres without fearing for our lives.

Pete had not wanted to bother us with the further 10 kilometre journey to his house (in a very small offshoot town of Gumi) and so instead had PAID FOR A HOTEL ROOM FOR US!! Wow, talk about above and beyond, I’m sure we wouldn’t have minded staying anywhere, but we were quite frankly chuffed (and a bit puffed) and so took his incredibly kind gift and enjoyed all the “Love Motel” had to offer: an enormous bathroom and free soap and toothbrushes. Pete’s generosity didn’t end there though, he took us out to Lemon Tree, the latest and greatest Western Style restaurant in Gumi where we enjoyed the culinary delights and came away with a brand new tshirt each courtesy of the owner. At Pete’s local watering hole we had a drink, stuck our names on the ‘world wall’ and watched the two waitresses beat the absolute pants off everybody at darts (try three bulls-eyes in a row, multiple times).

Unfortunately, the only downside of having a hotel room rented for us was not being able to spend longer with Pete as we weren’t in his space in his home and he needed to get to bed because it was a school night, fair enough (Kat knows about school nights!)

Day five: Despite the dire weather forecast, there was no rain to dilute the enjoyment of our day. Almost forever getting out of the industrial area to get to the path where we used toilets shaped like a bike (that had the cleanest insides known to bathroomdom). Along the route we were given a $5 pear by a kind truck driver and listend to the mournful three-note wailing of a saxophonist playing to himself in privacy under a bridge. We lost the bike path momentarily, it was running parallel to us about 100 metres from our accidentally-on-road route, there were saturated rice fields and carefully planted farms and paths suddenly ending in muddy meters deep scrub hindering our access to it! We met a douchbag American walker who was totally uninterested in anything but his ‘epic’ walking journey from South to North Korea.

Close to the end of the day we finally met up a mountain bike riding couple who we’d spent the last twenty kilometres overtaking and riding with after sharing some head nodding and bowing we spoke through a wonderful app which translated Korean into English and back again (with varying and humorous rates of success) and enjoyed the dogk (bean-filled glutinous rice cake) they donated to our hungry world cyclist cause. The sun was setting and we intended to spend the night camped below a bridge, however our plans were foiled twice: by a law against bridge burrowing and by a missing camping ground marked on the map a kilometre or so up the road. We did see our second deer though, a big tawny spotted fellow who dashed up behind us without realising we weren’t part of the scenery before thundering off into the dense undergrowth like a overgrown hoofed squirrel). Instead we ended up riding for another twenty kilometres into the dark and camping atop a pointy hill in a rotunda.

Day Six: After being awoken by the 5am mountain joggers, we whisked down the hill and out into the day. We encountered two steep nasty climbs: the first was short and sharp: a 15 percenter that came from nowhere (and was not marked on the route profile) like BANG! Our route parted the mountains and we happened upon Daegu a suddenly enormous city, walls of white, high-rise apartments like teeth in the otherwise green mouth of the valley we were riding. The rain rode up on us, drenching us for a short time and daring us to leave the less direct bike path in favour for hillier potentially drier roads. We discovered that our panchos, although magical, were less exciting to ride in when wind was also a player; poor Kat has Alex’s blue winged material flapping in her face, moistening even the best protected patch of skin.

We tried to avoid what looked to be the mountain bike trail by taking the seemingly innocuous paved road only for it to lead us straight up a hiking track that had simply been concreted over and labelled ‘bike path’ . The gradient meant for the second time on our entire trip we had to get off and push TanNayNay and all her tandem bulk up the 35% plus gradient for a few hundred metres! There were a few unlikely turns and slightly difficult bridge crossings before we landed artfully in Miryang in a free camping ground with free showers, free water and free wifi! Perfect for technology-addicted-Alleykats…

Day Seven: It was to be our last day on the bike path and as it turned out, we spent the vast majority of the one hundred and forty kilometres off the path than on it. The road was kind to us, as were the drivers; both in typical form for Korea. We took two tunnels, the second of which was four and a half kilometres long, down hill, and super fun! We may have set off a set of tunnel alarms accidentally, but all was well out the other side and no police cars were chasing us down. Inner city Ulsan was in peak hour traffic after we finished riding next to the river, replete with flying fish. Our route to Alex’s fourth cousin Neil’s home was a little around-about but we made it in time for a delicious home-cooked meal thanks to Michelle and a door-load’s worth of excitement thanks to Eileen, Neil and Michelle’s eight-year-old-chicken… no, just kidding, she’s magic, but definitely a human child through and through! Our next week was spent in Ulsan: relaxing (and doing loads of washing!) walking all around the place including being ordained into the Hash Harriers’ hamlet, a less-beery-than-was-rumoured walking club, and generally being taken exceptional care of thanks to Neil et al.

Back to School

We spoke at two schools in one day: first at Eileen’s school Hyundai International School where the kids were pretty jazzed about bikes and riding and are seasoned travellers themselves! Afterwards at Mrs Ann’s language school where we met two poms Diana and her partner Chris who seemed to have a real bond with the smart-phone-entrenched bunch of kids. The students did really well to concentrate without much English – us chatting away in our mother tongue and they listening to the translation may not have been the most easy-to-understand afternoon, but Mrs Ann told us afterwards that a number of the kids told her how excited they were by the prospect of bike travel and world adventures. Job done! Mrs Ann was a character, having been disallowed to travel by her husband when they were younger, she instead set up a language school and employed foreigners by way of her own international adventure. She has travelled since starting the school (accompanied by her husband who obviously took a liking for the teaching/learning life too!) and has friends all over the world who she’s excited to put us in contact with. She also donated $100 to Oxfam on our behalf. What a champion.

We spoke at Eileen’s school again later in the week, meeting the year sevens, eights and nines who were pretty rad and extremely engaged considering they’re teenagers attending a school and being toted about by their ex-pat families. They seemed really well adjusted and as though the travel-heavy lifestyle was doing them favours (it seems life-altering world travel is not just for bike-riders, who knew?!)

Back to Seoul

As is tradition, Alleykat had broken our back wheel at a rather opportune moment and so headed back to Seoul to get it sorted. We of course stayed with the ever excellent SungJong and Ji Hyun who were awesome to see again! Our wheel was expertly fixed by Jin Bong Kim of ‘Bike Spoke’ who had Alex happier than he had been in bike terms for a long time.

While in Seoul this second time, we were lucky enough to catch up with Kat’s uni teschery friends, Anthony and Megan who were on professional development away from their new home in Beijing – living the lucky life of ex-pat teachers. We cracked some beers and then headed to a market where the food was said to be delicious and the prices just so; however, after enjoying a good meal, the bill of $63 dollars didn’t really fit the food and we all felt thoroughly ripped off by this street vender who charged us four lots of everything even though the serves were for one! We left $50 and walked away, glad to be done with the incredibly awkward situation she’d put us in. We four said goodbye after too short a time and returned to our respective homes away from homes.

KTO sponsored guided bike tour

Back in Ulsan, thanks to a speedy, well-priced bus trip we got ready for our imminent departure at 8am the following day. Max from MaxAdventure burst into our story like he’d been waiting to do it all his life; full of energy and excitement. Max (whose Korean name is Minook) took us away for three action-packed days of bike adventure. Thanks to the Korean Tourism Organisation and Max we got to know a lot more about Korea’s slightly-hidden rider-friendly places.

Please click HERE to read what happened… did we all make it through in one piece?

Cruising to Jeju

We spent two more nights with “Team Anderchen” – and witnessed the spectacular pool-closing ceremony that is Pirate’s Day. Eileen was clearly the best pirate of them all, although some of the mums and kids gave her a run for her money! Kat received a much-needed massage from a Thai women who was stronger than she looked! We left Neil, Michelle and Eileen in Ulsan (refusing to take the banana bread we’d made them) and rode out of the city.

Met up again with Chris and Diana just by chance, we rode into an industrial zone saturated with pipes and pipes and pipes, oozing smells and hissing sounds until we popped out the other side and were suddenly on the beach! The perfect camping spot sprung itself on us.

The family camping on one side offered us some ‘Korean pizza’ (like a veggie pancake) which we nibbled on as we cooked dinner and enjoyed listening to the drunken antics of the group of Koreans next door.

After a sleep curated by the ocean’s beauty, we rode into Busan which was by far the worst city to ride in – lots of spaghetti to navigate around but we made it to the ferry terminal in good time. As we were boarding the Jeju-bound craft we complimented two other bike tourers on their remarkably rectangular panniers (they must have serious Tetris skills) and were pretty much joined at the hip with Germans Nadine and Philipp from there.

We four set our stuff down in the group room, realising after boarding late due to loading our bikes on down below, we had only the space in the middle of the room to set up our mattresses (all the wall space was taken) but, before we could get settled the captain beckoned me outside. Upgraded! All four of us “friends” got a bed in the bunks section and felt a bit bad about the preferential treatment but incredibly thankful for the sleep-enhancing location. We spoke in the restaurant until late and felt like old friends.

Next morning breakfast was prepared in the most anti-peaceful spot on the island where in order to sit, we’d disturbed teens necking alcoholic shots before school… worrying.

The group couldn’t decide which direction to take as neither seemed advantageous because the wind was a northerly and therefore it seemed wouldn’t be ridden into until the last day either way we rode. To solve our indecision, we mentioned our hearsay that the west side was better so we headed off and greatly appreciated the direction choice while we watched people getting buffeted by the wind heading the other direction.

Although we rode and rode, we didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere until quite suddenly we decided we’d ridden far enough and momentously we were more than eighty kilometres around the coast! Our group tried to find a place to sleep: a nearby church with people clearly in it (car out the front, doors and windows open) but no one was obviously around perhaps they were hiding from us? Then a Buddhist temple a few kilometres away offered us the same empty story. We decide to camp with the monk’s cows in a little paddock around the corner.

That night the wind tried to blow down our tents and unfortunately hadn’t blown itself out by morning. Regardless, we rode around to the island’s half way point where we stopped at a tourist photograph destination whee we met Hong Kong woman with two Phillipino nannies. Further afield we looked at the dastardly US navy base as best we could, felt sad, felt angry and rode on. That night it was agreed upon to stay in a hostel and have a shower. We went to a restaurant and ate cold noodles that were delicious and fresh and amazing, drank hot beany drinks and retired for a good sleep in a comfy bed.

As was our goal for the third day, we made it to the island off the island – a little rocky bump called Udo via the car ferry across the water. It was a little fresh so we went to a cafe and drank amazing hot drinks and then made it only a little way around the coast before settling in for the night. Kat woke up after garish, confusing dreams not remembering Philipp’s identity – late night red wine does to you, right?

It seemed only proper to make a round of the lop-sided island, quickly completed pausing only for photos and wondering how the island people feel about having so many tourists coming to their homes, wondering why we were born to be world bike riders and they to be farmers and mermaids… wonder, wonder, wonder.

We took the ferry back and climbed many steps to the top of a dormant volcano. We had our plan for steamed buns for lunch thwarted by a man who came in and bought the shop completely dry of these delicious moist red bean filled buns so we found an awesome place to imbibe bibimbap instead… perfect. We rode back to the Jeju Si port, struggling as was accurately predicted: a bloody fierce wind blustering in our faces and by five o’clock and getting lost only once, we made it just in time for Nadine and Philipp to make it onto the ferry up to Incheon overnight.

Back to just Alleykat

That evening Alleykat got a phone call from Jini – the friends of Gangwan middle-of-nowhere dwellers, Jungsun and Seonhwa. We’d been invited to come and stay with them the next day. Perfect!

It was cold and getting late by the minute, we tried to find a place to camp – but realised the inappropriateness of the only place where there was a camping ground – it was under the flight path of the strangely busy airport (where a plane came in or took off every two to three minutes, from sun up to about eleven PM, who the heck was coming in and out?!) So we abandoned that idea and instead camped in a park next to some exercise equipment (which was in use until about 10:30pm!) and little cabbage farms. The music stopped at 11 at around the same time the planes stopped zooming over our heads (despite moving a few kilometres it seemed as though there was nowhere far enough to escape the noise!)

The next day Kat was feeling very much like a rest but we needed to get over the hill to our new hosts Jini and Young’s place in Buseong-ri (which was over other side of the island!) so Alex rode the hilly 40kms and Kat hopped on a $2.50 bus and saw Alex on the way over for one fleeting moment.

Jini and Young

We ended up finding Jini and Young and met their cats Jjinyangi and Gonyangi, drank their delicious homemade mandarin juice and ate their amazing mother-made kimchi. We knew immediately that these world cyclists were our close relatives, we loved them unconditionally from minute one – after which they truly sealed the deal by taking us to a specialty coffee cafe. That night we celebrated one of their friend’s birthdays with shabu-shabu (Korean hotpot) with loads of magkeolli (Korean milky rice wine), beer and festive merriment. Alex got close with Tae Min (an art teacher at the local Jeju highschool) and the night was a great success. We planned to stay just one night – and ride up the very large mountain in the centre of the island – however, our close new-but-old friendship with Jini and Young kept us together for four nights and there was only one and a half smaller mountains climbed as a result (which mattered not!). We ate and drank and talked, and spent time with the cats and the sunshine in equal measures.

We had to leave (although we feel we could’ve stayed forever) and on the way back to the ferry port we met up with Tae Min, who took us out for lunch and coffee and showed us a little glimpse of the magic he worked with his high school students.

Seoul v3

The overnight ferry took us straight up to Incheon and our foreigner good luck allowed us another upgrade – this time an entire room to ourselves. The boat rolled us gently up the west coast and the ferry terminal became the site for breakfast and Internet surfing before riding through 40km of nigh-on-impenetrable industry. But, with steamed buns (and free steamed sweet bread from the delightful shop owner who appeared to us like a vision from the mists of his steamers) to bolster us, we made it to Gimpo where the KTO had put us up for the night in a love hotel – plush as.

The evening was spent with our old friends SungJong and Ji Hyun who by now were totally used to us breezing into Seoul whenever we damned well please! We ate shabu shabu to our heart’s content and then supped on sweet potato bubble tea before bidding them farewell… until tomorrow! We met our favourite Seoul sister and brother at Ji Hyun’s cafe for a final Korean farewell – we’ll see them in the world again we’re sure of it.

Meeting the Chief of Tourism in Korea

That evening we met Charm Lee, the Chief of Tourism and received lovely (if heavy) gifts including the full set of Seoul to Busan bike path books if only we’d had the meeting before our ride! We were then taken out to Mexican dinner with Tim (Han River Riders head honcho and general dogsbody – all round champion), the ever suffering Winston (who rose to the occasion dealing with organising six crazy cycle tourers to appear at a bike festival like a boss) and his young 2.I.C who was really cool spite being extremely busy!

It was nice to meet up again with World Biking’s Amaya and Eric and to meet the very wonderful Iranian Mohammed Tajeran who’s program ‘We Need Trees’ is a global phenomenon and is only getting bigger. Mohammad made us homesick for Iran and its beautiful people and their cacophony of kindness.

Guest Speakers at the Ara Lock Bike Festival

There was a lot of milling around and wondering where to succinctly secret five heavily-laden bikes belonging to us, Eric and Amaya, Mohammed and Victor – a Swede bike tourer who’d just completed a lap or three of Korea on his own world bike journey. We set off with the six- or seven-hundred other bike riders for the commemorative bike ride. A yearly event, its objective is to raise funds for sex traffic victims in Korea and to support orphans making their own way in the world. We rode the 40km course with the largest group, preferring to leave the heavy-lifting 80km circuit to riders Jared Mitchell and Steve Sessions. We met some super-dooper cool people while riding and after, Cara and Grace and their performer friends who gave the hundreds-strong crowd a wonderful Disney-themed show during dinner. And then it was time…

First up was Amaya who is quite the orator, inspiring the chilly crowds to ride and adventure and explore all Korea (and the world) has to offer using two wheels. Then Mohammed wowed the audience with moving videos, pictures and words – changing the lives of the people watching and the people featuring as he did so. Then it was our turn, Kat was much more nervous than she’d anticipated but with tall, calm Alex beside her, it was all goal kicking in our short presentation.

After we bike tourers had collectively talked away what seemed like hours, there were two performances by the Joshua March Band (the very talented dudes) and a K-Pop star named (wait for it) Brian. Despite his rather innocuous, unassuming name, Brian made a splash with his three songs and the young crowd went equally as wild for both acts.

We camped the night at the Ara Lock with a few other audience members who’d survived the cold – it was cold enough for the organisers to hand out hand warming packs and unfortunately for about three quarters of the original six- or seven-hundred festival-goers to leave prematurely. Later Alleykat were lucky to speak with the amazing Mohammed, who challenged us and intrigued us and with his warm heart and made the cold seem like mere small fish nibbling at our toes and fingers.

One more night in Seoul

In the morning we three breakfasted together before parting ways – we headed to Jared’s house along the opposite side of the Han for about seventy kilometres. We “knew” Jared and Katie through our online ponderings, where they as our first South Korean contacts were serendipitously thrust upon us in the form of cyclingabout subscribers. Jared is our fellow intrepid bike tourer and Australasian; a New Zealander who was already suggesting routes we’d enjoy; way back when, before we’d even crossed the border! The delightful Katie, who has kept an eye on us since D-Day almost a year and a half ago, is a ultra-eventer (just casually running marathons and doing iron mans) so they’re a pretty phenomenal pair. Incidentally they’re just months away from beginning their own world tour (read about them HERE). We immediately set upon their apartment, eating all their bread and world famous hummus (no, really) and accidentally using up as much of their hot water as was humanly possible. They took us out for a drool-worthy shabu-shabu experience in a third-floor-need-to-know-where-it-is-to-find-it restaurant and later we three trilled with hearty Aussie/Kiwi/Yank laughter when watching Chris Lilley’s latest series, ‘Ja’mie, Private School Girl’.

Busan

We lamented being due back in Busan the next day, but needed to hurry things along, lest Japan be completely snowed over by the time we’d birthed forth onto her shores. Once in Busan, we navigated our way to Tae Min’s family home, a gorgeous 14th floor apartment in the centre of the city, where we quickly discovered the kindness of Ji Young (Tae Min’s sister) and his parents: upon our arrival their father went out and bought patisserie goods, yoghurt and milk because that’s what Westerners eat, right? It was so cute and we felt so thankful to be there with them. Kat surprised the family by also eating leftover rice we’d brought with us…who knew Westerners eat rice?!

We found out the ferry wasn’t leaving until the next evening and so booked one of the last places. On our way back ‘home’ (TaeMin’s family’s place) we stopped for a bibimbap lunch at a market where a street festival was in full swing. Middle-aged pop stars were thrilling the middle-aged crowd into a tizz and the performances were loud and lovely. There was so much ecstatic dancing and unbridled passion in the air! We enjoyed cinnamon-spiced pancakes (made only in winter) whose molten insides burn blisters on the roof of one’s mouth but are totally worth the pain for their unbelievable taste. That evening we met one of Tae Min’s good friends, YuJin (said Eugene) who took us out for an amazing bean sprout-based dinner and an evening constitutional where we wandered around inner Busan and along the very nice riverside pedestrian/bicycle path network. A perfect last evening.

Our last day was spent before we knew it and after receiving a whole four kilograms worth of persimmons from Tae Min’s mother and her friend, we were lining up for the ferry to Fukuoka. In line, as happens, we were happened upon by Alexandra and Miguel, two backpacking adventurers from Spain who had somehow done the lucky westerner ferry ride ‘thing’ and had been upgraded to a first class private room without paying a cent more, they clearly had the best negotiation skills! We were meant to sleep in separate rooms (we had two of the last available tickets!) but there was space in Kat’s room so Alleykat weren’t separated. Early morning brought a fruit swap with Mr.Yoo and a hasty breakfast of extremely expensive persimmons with our Spanish friends (it’s not allowed to bring fresh fruit into Japan, a fact we discovered almost too late!).

And there was Japan.

Don’t forget to catch our film, Alleykat

More of our Asia LP

⇒ Track 1: South Korea

⇒ Track 2: Japan

⇒ Track 3: The Philippines

⇒ Track 4: Cambodia

⇒ Track 5: Vietnam

⇒ Track 6: Laos

⇒ Track 7: Thailand

⇒ Track 8: Malaysia and Singapore

⇒ Check out our Central Asian series HERE

⇒ Try out our European series HERE

The post Asia LP: Track 1 (South Korea) appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.

Read Part One HERE
Read Part Two HERE
Read Part Three HERE
Read Part Four HERE

A Man Who Was More Than Shakespeare

Campbell and I were sitting on the side of the road at 6AM eating breakfast; an amazing noodle soup combined with lots of tender chicken pieces. The soup was jam-packed with noodles which we were planning to use to power us the next 50km of 4×4 roads from Mektila to a distant town before needing to fill up the tank again. We saw a very old man walking with a cane to aid his steps on the rough ‘pavement’ that made up the side of the road. He was wandering towards us, looking up every now and then to check he hadn’t overshot his target. He stood by the side of our table for one moment before deciding to take a seat. His face moves closer to ours, squinting towards us as to make eye contact and get our attention. We had his full attention. We were just as interested in him, as he was of us. He opens his mouth and whispers, “You can read English?” We nodded, acknowledging that we both could. “Do you know poetry?” he whispered again. Our response was again, nodding.

“Wait here” he said, and he stumbled along on his walk, this time moving quicker than his approach. Campbell and I looked at each other. We were full of intrigue, and didn’t really ask anything to each other, we simply looked into each other’s eyes and made odd faces. He had walked into a shop, and was now stumbling back. He had in his hands two pieces of paper, which were flapping around in the wind. He sits down again in the same rickety chair. He puts his papers on the table and stares into our eyes with his own very pale and aged eyes. “Do you know Shakespeare?” he said. We both looked at each other, trying to decipher the complicated English word that he had said to us. “Oh, Shakespeare” I said. “Yes, Yes, I know it. He paused for a second and proclaimed, “My poetry, it is more. I am more than Shakespeare!” and he lifted his hands up in the air to show how much greater he was than possibly the most famous poet in English literature.

We looked at his poetry, all hand written in very legible writing, using quite complicated words and was pushing the limits of my English language. The poems were basic, but clever. We stuffed them into our bags for a read later on, and shook his hand. “Jez-u-timba-de” (Thank-you-very-much) we told him. It was time for us to depart, as we didn’t know how long or hard we would have to ride this day, in fact we didn’t even know where we would be by days close.

It baffles me. How can a random old person in a town in the middle of no-where speak English, however nobody else for the past week has been able to?

Burmese Tailor in Thailand: More Myanmar Insight

Campbell and I got a few bits and pieces made in Thailand by a tailor. Our tailor was a bit out of the main touristy area, meaning it was a very quiet little shop. A young man helped us out with our custom clothing; all fine and dandy. We got talking to him a bit deeper than the standard greetings, and it turns out that he was originally from Myanmar. And boy, did he have some amazing stories to tell us…

The way that he had fled Myanmar was by lying to the government and telling them that he was going to Thailand for a short holiday. He was able to leave on a bus, unlike tourists who have to enter and leave via a plane at Yangon. With him, he had all the bits and pieces he needed to set up residency in Thailand. He seemed to think it would be ok for him to move back to Myanmar one day, however he had no reason to be back there as all of his family and friends had now moved across to Thailand. He enjoyed living a freer life here. The Thai government does not force the Myanmar people to leave (which is an exceptionally nice thing to do), however they do charge a $200 foreigner tax per year. The foreigner tax wasn’t any problem for our tailor as he makes about $300us per month. His living costs included renting an apartment with his family which costs him about $1us per day (very tight living quarters!), but he said he is living reasonably comfortably.

He also informed us about Myanmars’s allies, which are Russia, China and North Korea. He said they were giving Myanmar ridiculous amounts of money for their projects, such as the new capital Naypyidaw’s infrastructure, in return for access to their resources. Our tailor seemed to believe that Myanmar didn’t want to spend money repairing roads, as they believed that their allies would eventually fix them for them at no cost. Apparently the Chinese people love living in Myanmar because they tend to be quite wealthy and they are able to have more than one child, unlike in China with their strict one-child policy.

The post Myanmar Stories: Part Five appeared first on CYCLINGABOUT.