8 day Dongbei extravaganza!

[HarbinSteve]

After the maintenance I ran around looking for an extra bungie chord, with no luck. A guy said he could help me find one but just ended up following me around blabbing and actually turned out to be pretty annoying. When I gave up and went back to the hotel to grab my bike, I was feeling lazy and decided to take a cab. The blabbing guy told me his friend would take us in his 3 wheeled motorcycle on the curb. I was stupid, hot and tired, and forgot to ask how much before I hopped on. After driving less than 1km, we arrived. I asked how much and the guy held up 3 fingers. I gave him 3 rmb and he said, "no, 30" I said "are you kidding me, that was less than a kilometer, I'm not giving you that much" He looked angry and a little confused that the foreigner wasn't surrendering to being cheated and took a bit of an aggressive stance. I told him I'd give him 5 and he could shove off. Then he stepped closer to me, and his friend was looking nervous. I would have like to have grabbed the tire iron out of my backpack and pounded him into the ground and tell him to stop cheating people, but I didn't want to get chased down by all of his other 3wheeled motorcycle friends, so we settled on 15 rmb and I shrugged it off. It was partially my fault anyways for forgetting to ask how much before we left. He was the only black sheep out of all of the people I met on the whole trip. Everyone was was extremely hospitable, and great to be around.

After that ordeal, I figured it was time to move on. I grabbed gas, and headed out with the intention of making it to mohe. The weather was sunny and the road was beautiful and empty. Perfect riding conditions.


IMG_3680-1 by HamSandwichChina, on Flickr

It paralleled the Heilongjiang river for almost the whole time. I stopped in a small town (I forgot the name) for some noodles, and randomly saw the biggest church I've seen so far in China


IMG_1106 by HamSandwichChina, on Flickr

I have no idea why it was in such a small town.

I ate lunch and the owner of the noodle shop was really exited there was an American there. He called his wife and made me talk to her on the phone, then called a bunch of his friends over to see. We had a good chat while I ate, and he gave me some useful information about the roads.

After lunch I continued on. It was mostly uneventful, but I did see the remnants of a few days past


IMG_3786-14 by HamSandwichChina, on Flickr

Probably a safe bet to say there was some alcohol involved in that. I stopped to take a photo. I thought I was in the middle of nowhere, and hadn't seen a person or car for a long time. Suddenly a head pokes out from the bushes on the hill above.
"Don't take a picture, you can't take a picture of that"

"Why" I asked.

"Its ugly, you don't want to take pictures of ugly things"

"Its interesting. I've ridden over 2000km, and haven't seen anything like it"

"Interesting?"

"I'm going to take a picture anyways"

"Where are you going"

"Mohe"

"add some more gas, there aren't many gas stations on the way"

And then I took a picture and rode off. After awhile I was getting tired, and the sun was going down, so I decided I wouldn't make it to Mohe that day. I stopped at the next town that had an inn. I ended up in a town called the eighteenth station. I ate some dumplings and had a good chat with the owner, then went off to bed.