D40: Thất Kê to Thạch An

March 15, 2018

I was supposed to be in China today.
I am not in China today.
I am not amused.

Really seriously not the slightest bit fucking amused.

To be honest, I kind of knew what I was getting into when I aimed for a smaller border crossing. I know that some border crossings for some countries are not open to people who are not citizens of one of the countries whose border it is. I don't know if this is the case for China and Vietnam but I don't know that it isn't either and I figured it might be.

This border crossing, the border crossing I picked, it's a border crossing that's at the end of a national road. It's a border crossing which shows up on my paper tourist map. It's a border crossing where I can look at satellite imagery and not only see big buildings but clearly make out a line of cars waiting to cross. It's a perfectly reasonable border crossing to assume I can use.

There were a bunch of very big trucks with Vietnamese license plates coming from the border direction. There was never, not even once, a truck going to the border. So I can't say I was totally surprised when the uniformed guy on a motorcycle came from that direction, clearly looking for me, and told me to turn around just under 9km from the crossing. His English was terrible and his Chinese was nonexistent but he made his point.

"China Vietnam you no no no. Passport no. No go. No go China."

When I first arrived in China in 2002, the blue glass windows and white tile walls were everywhere

Also phone booths. I think the street I was on had something crazy like one phone booth every 50 meters. IC Card operated. People didn't necessarily have home phones yet and using a phone booth meant you could avoid having the a-yi at the Public Phone Bar listen in on your conversation. I never found out if people could receive calls at phone booths.

There's another smaller border crossing 6km north of the border crossing I was heading for and then a big one 8km north of that. I spent a bunch of time mostly using GoogleMaps and sign language trying to convince him that I could take the really obviously visible on satellite view and non-satellite view road along the border but he was insistent I had to turn around and had to head back the way I came. Even when I showed him that Google's car routing told me that the absolute shortest route to the big border crossing was to keep going down this road, he kept telling me to go back to the main road.

Fine. I'll go.

So, the former owner of this pile of dirty diapers and used feminine hygiene products apparently was sufficiently modern and sanitary minded that she a) uses diapers and feminine hygiene products and b) collects them in a plastic bag, however, she also c) dumps this bag by the side of the road and d) is one of a multiplicity of Vietnamese women who does so. At least, on this occasion, the bag has merely been torn open and scattered by the local wildlife rather than being set on fire. Cause trust me, burning diapers smell like shit.

The side road certainly started off in a promising manner

I don't think I've ever seen under tension wire supports on an aqueduct before

I'll go back to the main road but I'll be damned if I head all the way south all the way back to Thất Kê when the secondary suggestion made by Google shows a farm road—obviously paved or it wouldn't be on car routing—that will cut straight across and save me something like 17km of unnecessary distance on this fool's errand.

It started out paved.

Each of the little cul-de-sac valleys is encircled by interconnected karst that you need to go up and over to get to the next valley. Here I am looking back down at the aqueduct from earlier

If only I could go straight along top that spindly bit of concrete, without all this bothersome up and down, things would be much easier

A bit steep in places but really pretty and the lack of width meant that nothing heavy had ever come down this road so the paving was in great condition. At least, until the paving stopped. And the road narrowed. And became a trail. Which narrowed. And got steeper. And steeper still.

That was a bit of a surprise.

Seriously, I should've turned around at this point

It's not even that many days after the Dirt Road Incident. You'd think I would learn from experience.

At this point, you wonder why the concrete isn't stairs.

Car routing. I very definitely picked car routing. There was no way a car was going down this route. Even a 4wd offroad vehicle would not have been able to take some of the trails which were sort of hanging on to the sides of hills and going up at angles that required me to lean my full body weight in order to get the bike to roll forward. I've had that before but that was with full front and back panniers and a rack pack. I'm not only carrying less than half the total weight I had with me on that trip, I've since been going to the gym to work on my upper body strength.

I'd say something about it being pretty and car free but, honestly, even the paved road was pretty car free.

I had to take my shoes off. Otherwise my feet slid out the back.

The GPS thinks it was a 17% grade!

After a while, I eventually got paving again. But it stopped. And started. And stopped. It was never very good paving. More like the sort of paving you get when your drunk uncle buys a bunch of bags of concrete for some reason. For someone on a motorcycle or someone who had to traverse this trail in the rain, it was probably better than what was there before but it wasn't exactly what you could call good. Just solid underfoot.

Where the pavement starts. Also where the pavement ends.

I just want to take a moment to be grateful for how fortunate I am

This would not be pleasant to ride on. Luckily(?), it's uphill and I'm walking

I cannot begin to describe how happy I was when I got to asphalt and how sad I was when it turned out that the asphalt did the same stop start stop thing. I think it stopped when the underlying surface was rocks but I'm not really sure. At that point I was just putting one foot in front of another and wondering how long it would be before I found somewhere I could refill my water bottles.

When the truck came, of course I waved them down. They were already sitting three people in a two person cab but they stopped anyways. I thought maybe they were going to let me get in the back with the bike until I saw (and smelled) the pigs in the back. Instead, we put four people in the front. I was sort of curved around the gear shift and the third guy sat on the second guy's lap.

They took me out to the main road and up to the next town where the hotel they stopped at was nice enough to give me an atrociously bad rate on CNY to VND because of course I was expecting to be in China by 2pm and had carefully spent all of my money before leaving the last town.

Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 1,970 km (1,223 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	3
Comment on this entry	Comment	0