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Andy

Andy

Visit Andy's website here for more photos and additional information: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Bikepacker/

Cheap and nasty Beer - and a mouth like Gandhi's sandals!

Day 173, 20th November
Dou Yu - Gaoyi - Neiqiu

After sunrise the villagers appeared again, this time to see us de-camp. We were on the road for ten, a less busy and new road. Now for a little observation about the traffic - small motor vehicles, especially the motor rickshaws and the three-wheeler trucks kick out an amazing amount of fumes, most of the times very nauseating. Trucks give you plenty of room but they are beyond idiotic with their constant honking of their mega-loud horns! Bikes are everywhere and they carry the most amazingly large loads. But the pollution - well, it’s disgusting. I’m ready to leave this 107 road and head into the countryside, all of us have coughs because of the fumes.

It was an uneventful day, except for Stephane coming off his bike again; twice! We stopped in the town of Neiqui and found a great little hotel which was Y70 for the lot of us. The big mistake was buying cheap Chinese beer - thirty 640ml bottles of the stuff consumed by five of us, Stephane stayed teetotal.

Total Miles: 8464.22 Todays Miles: 45.45 Average speed: 13.0 Time on bike: 3:28

Day 174, 21st November
Neiqui - Xingtai - Dalian - Handan

When will we ever learn - we woke up with headaches from hell again and tongues like Gandhi’s sandals! Had breakfast at a café around the corner from the hotel and set off for Xingtai, which ended up being a surprising little town with great little back alleys and a traditional Chinese centre. It wasn’t long before we were being crowded by people again. Scott’s getting a tad pissed-off at people constantly gawping at us.

The rest of the day was spent cycling through lots of industrial landscape and many small towns before we arrived in the large city of Handan where we were stared at again when we sat down to eat dinner. I discovered a trick, though - if you take out your camera and point it at people, they disperse. Just south of the city we passed under the railway and found a place to camp for the night amongst bamboo fronds.

Total Miles: 8523.85 Todays Miles: 59.63 Average speed: 12.7 Time on bike: 4:40

Chinese Groopees!
With a bunch of Chinese onlookers at our campground in the mud.

Early one morning
The locals gather to witness the departure of the 'Pointy-faced-people' from a distant land.

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Continued here...

Visit Andy's website here for more photos and additional information:http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Bikepacker/

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