Robert, 29 september 2008
Hong Kong Hong Kong

The return of the cyclist!

Hooray, I made it to Hong Kong! The end of a cycle trip of about 4.500 km (a bit more if you add all the km I made by taking a wrong way because I thought I discovered a short cut, but never did......). China was not that easy, the signposting was challenging, it went a bit like this. So the next town is...... hmmm...... “looks like dancing figure with spear next to a table” or I have to find “looks like house with half of a roof next to a figure with a big hat”. Sometimes there was no signposting at all, just one (very big) town was already signposted about 850 km in advance, this helped me in the general direction, and then I had to kind of find my way by asking people (not that easy because no one spoke English) and looking at the sun (the last one did not help me with directions, but I do have a nice tan).

I had a map made by Stani and Richard but they advised me to get a local map. But how do you get a local map? In other countries I could buy it at a gas station (a logical place) but not in China. So where then? I had no idea and I could not ask anybody because nobody spoke English. My technique of just walking around town until suddenly I see a map did not work (strange....). When I kind of gave up and was trying to print some maps from the internet (kind of crappy but it could maybe help) I got some help from a guy who did not speak English but was very handy with the computer, he typed in Chinese to a translate machine and I could type it in English, so we could communicate, very clever! I explained I was looking for a map of the province, no problem, just follow me. So I did and that is how I found my detailed map of the province of Guangdong.

With the help of my new map and some luck I was able to find the way. I had to make some big cycling days in able to make it in time. Luckily I always had some time to relax a bit in the evening, eating and drinking with the locals. It was a bit weird because everybody stared at me like I was some kind of space alien (funny because they should be used to aliens.....). But at least I do not use an umbrella when the sun is shining! Yeah, that is something really funny, a lot of Chinese (and other Asians) use an umbrella when the sun is shining. Huh? Why? So that they get whiter! Weird but true. I thought it maybe could be a conspiracy of the umbrella producers, so they could make money everywhere (rain of sunny), but I did not have time to investigate, I had some cycling to do.

The last day of cycling was the most difficult. I thought that it was going to be easy but mother nature made things difficult. A storm has caused a lot of flooding. At a certain point I had to get through more then half a meter of water, that was something I did not expect to be doing! After getting past the flooding there was a storm, rain and a lot of wind. Just when I was wondering where my luck has gone to I got offered a lift. So out of the rain and some 20 km further I got off, it was sunny again! After a while it started raining again.... but the 20 km really helped me out that day, I just made it before dark to my destination.

I was at Zhuhai, the town next to Macau. In order to get into Macau I had to cross a border because Macau is a former Portuguese colony and is kind of separated from mainland China (just like Hong Kong, a former English colony). Suddenly I had to cycle on the left side again and the street signs where in Portuguese (and in Chinese), that was a lot easier! From Macau to Hong Kong it was just a short ferry ride and so now I am in Hong Kong! I am staying with a fellow cyclist through a website for hospitality for touring cyclists (great idea!) did some cycling around Hong Kong, very nice. So now all I have to do is try to get to the airport, a mission that is not that easy. So to be continued. Oh, and I still can't upload the pictures, will do this as soon as I get home. To be continued!

Met HalloBuitenland.nl kun je Robert in Hong Kong echt goedkoop bellen!