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  1. #1 Lost in Guangxi -The broken spoke diaries 
    C-Moto Guru Supersignet's Avatar
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    Thursday, April 10

    We set off at 10am on Thursday morning determined to make it to Guangxi's own monkey mountain. We had been planning the trip for quite sometime but the weather had never seemed to co-operate with our desires and we had been forced to delay repeatedly. Traveling on a motorcycle is always fun, but it always a lot more fun when the weather is good and the sun is shining.

    Earlier in the year during the Chinese New Year break from school we had thought of doing a similar trip on our now old and abused 48cc bike. The weather at that time had been the worst this province had seen in 50 years and the thought of riding two up with all of our gear through mountains and cold weather spured the desire for a new bike and the idea that maybe waiting out the cod weather was the best possible plan at that time.


    The new bike had arrived and had been broken in with little trouble. Confidence was high for the bike's first real trip out into the world. We had be studying the weather reports for sometime trying to pick the most ideal time to ride. The wife had never been out on any type of road trip before and in the interest of future support for wild and crazy adventures the first trip should always be the smoothest. With the notice of a couple of clear days ahead we pack up the soft bags with enough underwear and socks for an over night trip.
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    The morning was warm and nice. This was the type of weather we had been waiting for.

    Our route was planned to take us through Nanning, to the monkey mountain, down to a Daxin, then back through Chongzuo, Shangse, Dazhi and home. All of this was about 600km round trip and seemed like a perfect start to our touring relationship.

    Ever since the new bike had arrived, the wife had been dying to get out on the road. She had also on several occasions hinted at the want for her own two wheels to ride along with me. As a man who loves to ride I thought to myself that this might be the trip that seals the deal and starts a new chapter in our relationship.

    The ride north was comfortable whit the ocasional stop to snap some pics of some plane jane Chinese pesent villages. Most people can only imagine to themselves and try to deduce from what media coverage they have about what life in China must be like for most people. As a foriegner living here I am often awstruck at what people make by with and how much they can enjoy their lives. All talk of govrenment and politics aside I can't help thinking how content so many people are with a simple life.



    While these ideals hold true for some there is always the dream for something better and something lacking in most people's lives. I talked to a few people walking down the steps fom the road into the village and they said life there was nice but they longed for the new big Chinese wants for themselves and their kids. The few I did tak to seemed more interested in my bike than actually talking about their lives in the village. What I did manage to squeeze from one of them is he liked his life close to his family, but wanted to move to a big city like Nanning, buy an apartment and get a nice big T.V.
    Last edited by Supersignet; 04-14-2008 at 04:41 AM.
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  3. #3  
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    We hit Nanning at about noon and quickly made our way through the city. We had no plans or desire to be stuck behind congested city traffic for the weekend and we wanted to hit the mountains as soon as possible.

    About 80km to the west of Nanning we began to start seeing small mountains popping up like mushrooms. Growing larger and larger all the time.



    We were trying to make good time to get to the mountain and feed some monkies, but the secenery was so nice we had to stop and snap some photos. My wife had also been on the look out for some of Guangxi's "Ai Ma" which is kind of like a mini horse, but not really that mini. The horse actually can grow to be about half the size of what we in the west would classify as a normal horse. We noticed a great palce for a picture and the something in the shape of a horse sitting just a little was off the road.



    I guess Chinese horses like Orange Fanta too. Could this have been the Ai ma that LiXiang (mywife) had been dying to see?



    I talked to the guys who owned the horse and found out this wasn't a Guangxi horse and they weren't from Guangxi. They were seasonal workers that come here in the spring and summer to farm their own land and make some extra money for the winter. They said they made their way down to Guangxi every year at the end of March to grow crops and to enjoy the weather and the mountains.
    Last edited by Supersignet; 04-20-2008 at 06:19 AM.
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  4. #4  
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    Anyways that was enough talk about horses, farmland and the like, we had a road to hit and monkies to see. We hopped back on the bike and headed west to find us the monkey mountain park.

    We made it to the park at about 2:00 and were shocked when we found out the entreance fee for one person was 50rmb. This is a large amount of money to enter a park in most places in the world and I was ven more shocked to learn that due to the Olympics in Beijing this year the ticket price would soon be rising to 60rmb a person. That's quite a lot of money for China considering our hotel rooms only cost us 30rmb per night, but I guess even monkies need to make a profit.

    We entered the park and were given the rules by a lovely girl who made it strictly clear about what is and isn't acceptable human/monkey interaction and sent us on our way. To be honest I have to say I was a litte worried. On a past trip to Thailand I had seen a monkey steal a travellers wad of dosh, cimb up onto a ledge, stick it in his mouth and upon realizing it had no real flavour or nutritional value proceed to rip it up in a quick and efficent manner. I had also been told horror stories about a guy who was attacked for making jestures to the monkies at this very mountain and I was carrying quite a bit of expensive camera gear.



    The mountain itslf was pretty cool. Nice dence jungle paths convered in greenery and vines.



    Lots of walking up and down steps and a fair bit of hiking. every 700 or 800m there was a group of monkies waiting for you, watching you, stalking you. Waiting for you to put your hands into your pockets and pull out anything for them to steal.





    We were also lucky enough to see a monkey fight. This is mating season and horny monkies don't f-around.



    And we aso got to see another monkey pic another monkey's butt...




    We were lucky enough not to piss off the monkies enough that they wanted to kill us and were able to leave after some pictures and a couple hours of walking around.

    It was now 4pm and we had a litte bit of road ahead of us. We decided to climb back on the Shineray and make our way to Daxin before dark.
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    We were back on the bike and on the way to Daxin. Just another 75km from the monkey mountain. We didn't stop to do too much on the way. We just enjoyed the ride and sucked in the scenery.

    Daxin was supposed to be our destination for the night, but after riding around the city we were to say the least a little disappointed with the place. Also on the way in we had noticed a sign that said "Jingxi 112km". During the winter break we had wanted to ride through Jingxi on the way to Yunnan, but that trip was cancelled on account of poop weather. We talked about it over a plate of Chinese dumplings and decided to make the push toward Jingxi in search of the Guangxi Ai Ma and some minority villages.

    The problem we could see about making the push to Jingxi was the time. It was about 5:30 when we finally finished our dinner and got back on the bike. We decided at this point the most important part of our trip was to make it through the mountain roads as safely and as quickly as possible. This meant no time for pics and also meant that we would be pushing our luck by riding in China at night. The new HID light would prove to be money well spent.

    Just as the sun was going down was about the time we were about half way to Jingxi we hit a massive cloud of bugs. The constant bug splatter on my helmet was a kind of soothing as we rode into the night. When all of a sudden I got smoked in the face mask by a big back bat. Not the baseball kind of bat, but the flying animal kind of bat. I guess it was either trying to eat some of the bugs or maybe was just depressed and wanted to die because it hit me square in the helmet then deflected off of me onto the wife's big Chinese head. Two for one, pinball style and it almost gave me an asphalt dinner I didn't want, but luckily we manged to keep it on two wheels.


    The rest of the ride was fun twisty mountain roads with nothing between us and death excpt a little white line. The roads have no guard rails and in retrospect I really shouldn't have been riding them at night, but we had a new made up schedule to keep and we managed to make our way through the darkness and eventually pulled into JingXi around 8:15pm.

    We tracked down a local "Bingguan", which is a kind of cheap Chinese motel, paid our 30rmb and took our bags up into the room so we could pass out. It had been a long day of riding. We did close to 500km in one day. Our asses were tired and I had the infamous throttle hand cramp in my shoulder. All and all the bike did great and was really comfortable considering the distance.

    The other reason the Bingguan is a nice place to stay in China is because most of the time they don't want to see any ID. I had left my passport and my wife had left her ID card at home so if they didn't take us we were going to be sleeping on benches in the park. Bingguan to the rescue. A Bingguan is a king of motel, but is also a place where lovers can do their business in an anonymous fashion.

    This is what we got for 30rmb





    The bathrooms are usually standard Chinese affair with only a hole in the floor for poop to escape and a shower mounted on the wall. In these bathrooms you have to be careful about enjoying your shower too much because you don't want to end up breaking an ankle by getting your foot stuck in the crapper.

    After a careful shower and bottle of beer we were out for the night, proud of the distance we had covered and looking forward to the distance ahead.
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  6. #6  
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    Friday November 11th



    We woke up early. There was lots of road ahead. We had talked a little bit during the night and decided that we could press on in the morning to a small city called Napo. During the bad weather of the winter break we had missed a good opportunity to visit these places and we decided that we would probably not be back through this way for quite some time.



    The weather on Thursday had been bearable and according to our weather report we would not get any sun for the rest of the weekend and there was a good chance we might even have some rain on Sunday. We decided that the weather in western Guangxi had sucked all year so we couldn't delay our trips any longer.



    We pulled into the bingguan after dark and had no idea what Jingxi or this area really looked like. At 7:00am I opened my curtains and saw this, not bad for a 30rmb view.







    We decided to go into town, find some quick breakfast and get on our way. Napo was one place we had wanted to see for a long time. The rumors of ethnic minorities and beautiful mountain scenery had been calling to us.



    We got on the bike and rode into town to get some morning grub. Now those are some chopsticks .

    Last edited by Supersignet; 04-20-2008 at 01:18 AM.
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  7. #7  
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    9:00am and we were back on the road again. With only 97km between Jingxi and Napo we thought we could take our time today and make the trip to Napo a full day event and return to Jingxi before dark.







    This year the weather had been terrible. Evey weekend since the new year had been raining and the overcast skies had become the norm for us. While it didn't cause much problem to the bike or to the riding it had been difficult on us as we had only seen about 20 sunny days since the middle of January. Today the weather was much of the same. Gray and depressing. At least the mountains were nice and the ride was relaxing.


    9:00am and we were back on the road again. With only 97km between Jingxi and Napo we thought we could take our time today and make the trip to Napo a full day event and return to Jingxi before dark.


    This year the weather had been terrible. Evey weekend since the new year had been raining and the overcast skies had become the norm for us. While it didn't cause much problem to the bike or to the riding it had been difficult on us as we had only seen about 20 sunny days since the middle of January. Today the weather was much of the same. Gray and depressing. At least the mountains were nice and the ride was relaxing.





    Last edited by Supersignet; 04-20-2008 at 01:21 AM.
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  8. #8  
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    The riding was going well through the morning and the kilometers were passing by in a nice relaxing manner. As a habbit Chinese people don't seem to like to get out on the roads by themselves. If you took the time to talk to most people they would think you were crazy for riding your motorcycle 100km or more in one day. As a habbit Chinese people would stick to the busses or trains. Due to this cutural ideal many of the roads we took were almost completely empty.


    The empty roads an amazing scenery left us in awe for most of the trip.

    Last edited by Supersignet; 04-20-2008 at 01:22 AM.
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  9. #9  
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    Just when I thought creativity and imagination were completely dead we an into this natural cave and geoarch that had been incorporated into the road. It was really amazing to drive though even if it only lasted about 100m.








    About 5km from the cool tunnel we finally managed to find an Ai Ma. The wife was thrilled. She had seen them on T.V. a while ago and as an animal lover she was thrilled to have the chance to see one and feed it some grass. After about 10 min of her playing with the horsey I tapped my watch to indicate that I wanted to press on and that I wasn't as interested in seeing a mini horse as her. She laughed and played for another 5 minutes. No orange fanta for this little guy though.

    Last edited by Supersignet; 04-20-2008 at 01:24 AM.
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  10. #10  
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    We rolled into Napo around 11am. The ride up had been calm and uneventful. I was also really hot and I was sweating like a fat man running up stairs after a hot dog eating competition. I needed some ice cream and some water STAT so we decided to stop the bike in the park and sit for a few minutes. The main draw for us to ride the bike this far was the rumor of a Chinese minority village nestled up in the mountains around the city. We had never seen anyone in China in their traditional dress before and were ready to explore and gawk and any we saw.





    In the middle of Napo there was this cool little park built in a large cave. Guangxi is full of caves and I couldn't wait to get inside some of them. The wife however was against the idea of scoping out Chinese caves with out the proper lighting equipment. I did have a lighter in my pocket, but she said it wasn't bright enough. The caves are everywhere through out this mountain range and are often used as family tombs. We were also worried about disturbing graves and my wife was worried about upsetting ghosts and leaving us with bad luck for the rest of the trip. I hadn't had a chance to climb in any of the caves so the little park acted as my cave fever queller.

    The small temple/ alter itself is supposed to be pretty old. An old man I was talking to said the buildings were about 300 years old and that under the building there were the ruins of some even older buildings. As an archaeology fiend I was quite excited about the idea of exploring deeper into the cave. I looked at the wife to see if she was cool with me venturing into the dark with my little lighter, she tapped her wrist and said we ain't got time to be diggin around in some old dudes cave temple. I sighed and dragged my feet back to the bike. We did have minorities to find and photograph.







    Last edited by Supersignet; 04-20-2008 at 01:26 AM.
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