So, it really is happening. We’re leaving in a few minuets. We’ve got the tricycles packed up, the route planned out and we’re camping beside the great wall tonight, even if it takes us half the night to get there. It’s pretty slow getting 5 guys moving it seems. I woke them up at 8 and it’s half past two. ah well it don’t matter.
Here’s a couple of shots from Tianamen square. I didn’t have time to get the tricycle pics onto cd yet. Cheers,
Steve
Hello,
Still in Beijing. Each day we say we are leaving and each day we’re still here when the sun goes down and we tell people tomorrow… So, we’re leaving tomorrow.
About a week ago we payed a deposite to see what a cheap tricycle fitted with an engine would look like. It took a few days and when we saw it I wondered if it would make it out of Beijing let alone Vietnam, but when we told the guy we didn’t want it he insisted that he made it for us and we had to buy it. I insisted that we payed a deposite to see the bike. I never promised to buy it. He could keep the deposite and the bike so what’s the problem. After hours of arguing I said lets go to the police station, because I was convinced I was in the right. We went to a police office and they seemed to be leaning our way, but they didn’t want to really want to get involved, so the said they are just an office so they sent us to a police station. At the police staion the shop guys got to speak first and just went on and on. We had a shinese friend with us (my Chinese is getting better, but still sucks) and she tried to get them to understand but it seemed they were siding with the others. It was exactly like the sceen in Lost in Translation where the director spoke for 5 minuets and the translator said one sentence and he asked one question and she talked for another 5 minuets. We tried to work another deal where we buy different bikes from them, so they don’t take a loss, but the deal kept changing, so we ended up paying the deposite again to be done with them. The owner still wanted to throw a mouontain bike at me and swing a chair like a WWF wrestler for embarassing him, but his worker pulled him buy the arm away. He was a bit unhinged though. He started yelling at everyone his worker and the cops, so we looked justified in the end even though we payed more. Oh well.
The next day we ordered fancy new bikes from a catalog at a shop with a nice friendly owner who gave us a good deal threw in loads of extra repair gear, gas tank and lock, because we were buying 5. We’ve been testing them the last few days a few things need to get fixed, but they’re running good and the slow bums I’m going with finally have all their gear, so I think we might really leave tomorrow, even though we’ve had great times hanging around the hostel. Nobody around here thinks we’ll make it out before New Year, but we’ll show ’em.
We spray painted fancy new paint jobs. My green turtle, pirate of the open road, is looking pretty stylie. I’ll post a pic from the road.
Cheers,
Steve
My Pictures of China are up!
For those who may want to be bored at work for a while.
Greetings from Beijing. Yes, I’m still in Beijing. Wandering side streets, taking pictures and staying up too late in the courtyard with the other folks around here. I was supposed to leave quite few days ago, but someone helped themselfs to my back pocket and made off with my bank card. Then I was going to leave two days ago, but I met some Icelandians who came up with a great idea for getting across China. Originaly I hoped to buy a motorcycle and sidecar to drive down to Vietnam and I even found a few sweet ones for sale, but you need to live here for about six months to get the special forigneer liscence plate. So, into the courtyard walk the Icelanders with this idea of buying motorized tricycles and driving the whole way down south at 40kms an hour. This sounded rediculous, so we got out the maps and I think we can beat the snow if we drive about 200 km a day. We’re going to a factory today to get the workers to customize a couple of rides for us. We’re getting ones that run on gas with a good sized box to store gear behind the seat and between the back two wheels. I think we can get extra wheels and parts thrown in with the deal. One guy is off buying provincial maps right now and I’m working out where we are actually alowed to go in China (some counties are still forbidden to forigners). I’ve got a tent and were going to buy sleeping bags and other camping gear like stoves, flashlights and rain gear tonight. Here’s an idea of what the local tricycles look like..
There is another model in a brosure I saw with a larger front tire, good shocks and flashier panneling, but it’s twice as expensive. We have to see both to make a decision. I’m getting stoked on the idea – Yea! – but we have to get outa here in the next few days because it’ll start snowing north of here in a few weeks. 🙂
I’ve got some new pictures on disk, but one got cracked so I lost a few of the good pics I got when Dan was here. I’m so lonely now that he’s gone ‘sniff sniff’. Here is a shot of him at the Summer Palace before he left..
And a nice touristy shot of the Summer Palace
I’ve been trying to get a few shots of people around Beijing. These three are from the Summer Palace.
I’ve also been taking loads of bicycle shots in the alley ways around my hostel here. I plan to get out tomorrow morning before the others get up and we go look at the tricycle factory…
Most of the small alleys (hutong) that Beijing is known for are being torn down to make way for new bigger buildings. There’s a few guys hauling away bricks and someone else having a smoke in a block that’s dissapeared. I’m all for people taking up less space, but it’s too bad to see so much of Beijings character brought down.
A parting self portrait from the park. I’ll let ya know how opporation tricycle flight goes.
Cheers!
Greetings all faithful readers…. and those who aren’t faithful as well.
So I have managed to attach a couple of photos from the last couple of stops that we have made.
The first one is a shot looking down some of the stairs, that Steve wrote about, when we were hiking Hua Shan. The picture doesn’t really do it justice.
A shot close to the top of the mountain. And since we were at the top of the mountain we got to eat by candle light (so romantic).
We then made it to Beijing and the first thing that we saw was the Forbidden City. It is where all the old emporers used to hang out. It was full of some pretty cool buildings and such.
Today we got up early, and took a 4 1/2 hour bus ride out to a section of the great wall. We then got to hike about 10km of the wall, which was really cool. Some of it has been restored and a lot of it was still in shambles. It was amazing though. At the end of it we got to do a zip line, which we did tandem… and upside down. 
Just one more day in Beijing and then I head home. It has been a fun trip, and good to see Steve again!
Cheers!
Hey guys,
Dan and I just got down from the mountain. I hurried over to the photo shop, got a cd made, all eager to beat Dan with the pictures onto teeuwsen.com, but the computers won’t work. They act like they will load a photo, working, working, working-blank screen. I can almost hear them laughing at me. arggg…
Oh well, you can take my word for it that it was awesome. One of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Huge mountain with steps carved into the steep cliffs. It’s one of the five mountains that the Daoists mention in their creation stories fo there is Chinese charecters and steps carved in the cliffs. Some of the steps lead up increadable faces to little houses perched on ledges that are about five feet wide. Even the tourist path is crazy. The first four km. are a impressive incline then it leads into the carved steps. You need to hang onto the chains as the path goes strait up. We gained 1000 meters in the last three km.
We watched the sunset from the west peak and then walked up to the south and tallest peak (2160m). Then we walked to the east peak by moonlight and found a place to stay so we wouldn’t have to go anywhere for the sunrise. The next morning my knees were aching so we took the wussie gondala down from the lower north. We’re on a night train to beijing tonight-off to the big ol’ capital to see the emporer in the forbidden city..
Cheers!
Greetings from Xi’an!
This place, the old capital in the day, is pretty cool. Steve and I have had a great time cruising around on bikes and seeing all the touristy sights.
First, a picture from our river trip.
After a 12 hour night train ride from Chongqing, sleeper trains are a great way to travel, we arrived in Xi’an at around 7:30. We checked into our hotel and proceded to rent some bikes for the day. We proceded down the small side streets of Xi’an taking in all the sights and sounds of the city until we arrived at our first destination, the Drum Tower. A pretty interesting place full of, as you can guess, drums. All different sizes of drums, and they had a small 10 minute performance of them being used, which was cool. There were some cool views to be had of the central square and the Bell tower, which we made it too as well.
Next, we proceded through the muslim quarter and checked out the Grand Mosque. Although it didn’t seem really mosque like to me, it was full of some interesting Chinese architecture. From there, through the hordes of tables of people trying to sell you everything under the sun, we made it across the main square to the Bell Tower.
The Bell Tower was cool, offering views across the square to the Drum tower, as well as up and down the four main streets into town. We then got back to our bikes which were in front of the Drum Tower and took off through the streets.
Our next stop was the Shaanxi History Museum. It was full of museumy stuff from way back in the day. From there we headed to a park area that housed the Big Goose Pagoda.
An impressive structure, built to house the Buddhist scriptues brought back from India. I thought is was big and cool.
From the Pagoda we hoped our bikes and raced back through the crowded streets weaving in and out of traffic back to our hotel for the night.
The next day we headed off to see the Terracotta Warriors. The self described “Eighth Wonder of the World”. It was quite interesting too see the amount of work taking to make them and now the amount of work to restore them. An absolutely massive project.
That filled up most of the day, we made it back to town with enough time to run around the city walls that surround a small part of the city, the orignal city.
Taking in the sunset on another exciting day in China. 
Tomorrow it is off to Hua Shan, 2160m peaks, where we will spend the night before heading to Beijing.
Cheers!
Hello from Chongquing!
We are just fresh off the tour of the three gorges. The gorges were pretty spectacular, although the weather was either really hazy or raining. The trip included a trip up to some smaller gorges in a smaller boat, those were quite amazing as well; cliff walls towering hundreds of meters above our heads. We also stopped at this cool little temple/fortress place. You had to climb up about 10 levels of steep stairs of this temple that was built up this rock face. The veiw would have been amazing, except that it was raining and was quite foggy. We were in a room with 4 beds, it was us and an older chinese couple. They were like our chinese parents, making sure that we got off at the right points and that we new when things were happening. The lady, also sewed Steve’s hammock for him.
We are now waiting for night train to Xi-an, where we will be for a couple of days. Then we will hike up a area with 5 mountain peaks you can get to eaisly. Should leave just enough time for a couple of days in Beijing before I have to return home.
Cheers!
Today was pretty exciting. We went for an ultrasound and came back with some pictures.
The ultrasound lady had some troubles getting good pictures, because the baby wouldn’t stop moving. Takes after Kim already. Now although we didn’t find out whether or not it is a boy or a girl my current vote is on boy, but we will see. At first I was sure it was a boy, but what I thought was giving it away was actually his bladder.
Also if you look closely at the pictures you can see things like the heart, diaphragm, spine, facial features and of course arms, legs, fingers, and toes. It currently looks like everything is there.
Here is a quick shot of the family on thanks giving day.
We are missing a couple, but maybe next year it will be everyone.
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