A spectacular day of cycling among rice terraces and forests. It was VERY chilly starting out this morning, but eventually things warmed up. But that’s bound to happen when you’re cycling uphill for hours! The road condition was fantastic, the road surface were on couldn’t be more than one year old!

We were cycling through country that is populated mostly by Miao people, you see many women in traditional dress, black clothing with bands of colorful embroidery added to the fabric. I might’ve snuck a few pictures of some Miao women today, but I generally avoid taking pictures of people when they know it because I think it’s somewhat impolite.

If I can get the phone to cooperate, I’ll upload some pictures at the end of my comments here.

Here are some random items from the day…

Item 1: Google translation is fantastic!
So this morning, the hotel was the type where you have an electronic card and the door opens when you tap the card. I accidentally left the card in the room on the way to breakfast because I sat down to breakfast, we were right in the street and it was breezy and extremely cold! I had to run back up to the room to get some more clothes, and that’s when I left the card in the room. As I’ve mentioned before, it is extremely rare to find anybody who speaks any amount of English here, so I used Google translate to ask “I left my key in the room, can you open it for me?” The guy behind the desk read it and understood immediately what my problem was, called somebody on the phone to meet me at the door to open it. So there is a direct purposeful value of the Google translate app!

Item 2: Chinese Prickly Ash
We’ve all noticed here that in the soups or dishes sometimes there’s this little chewy crunchy item that when you chew it it will make your tongue numb. Somewhat like a fresh clove will do but much much stronger. We were all laughing about it because Bill mentioned it first, but the rest of us had the same experience and just hadn’t mentioned it. Turns out it is something called Chinese prickly ash, it’s a small seed pod, looks somewhat like a black peppercorn before it is pulled off of the plant, and if you bite into one directly it is immediately apparent that your mouth will go numb for a little while! An amazing natural topical anesthetic.

Item 3: Miao women are TOUGH!
It is very common in Asia to see women working their asses off, and frequently the men are nowhere to be seen. Or sometimes even worse, they are to be seen standing nearby drinking tea or something like that… Anyway, at one of our rest stops today, we were pulled off on the side of road and there was a trail that went nearly vertical down some hill. We were very surprised to notice that suddenly two Miao women popped up that trail with huge baskets on their backs carrying a huge bundle of an edible root. They were absolutely tough! And I mean tough looking too, the kind of looks that you’ve seen in a rooster that’s very old, tough, hard-faced, grizzled, the kind of person you know has worked for a long time… Maybe a bad metaphor with the rooster, but it’s the one that came to mind for me…

Item 4: Market Day
In the town that we stopped at for lunch, it was market day, which means people from out of town bring their wares, and line them up on the street, so lots of stuff for sale. I’m always amazed at the animals that are available, live pigs, butchered pigs, live chickens, live dog sometimes, but then you see a table where a pig has just been butchered, and the parts are available for sale.

In fact where we ate lunch, not 2 feet behind where I was sitting was a large bucket of pig entrails from a pig that was butchered shortly before our arrival there. It sounds brutal, but in this context it’s completely normal and seems okay somehow, not like if you saw it in the states.

So here at my hotel room, it’s about a 1.5 star hotel, I have to leave the window open because I need to get my laundry to dry, but I’ve already been bitten by a mosquito that I can’t see! They’re extremely small here, you don’t see them, completely unlike Alaska!

It’s getting to dusk here, that’s when the mosquitoes are always the worst. In the background I can hear kids yelling outside, people talking in the streets; large trucks, motorbikes and cars going by, often honking as that is the standard here. I can hear lots of fireworks going off behind the building I’m in, not sure if it’s a new year celebration or just something random.

As usual, I will meet the group for dinner, we will eat somewhere that the guide picked. He has mentioned tonight will be a hot pot, which will be a giant propane fired wok full of soup like broth with meat in it, and then you add vegetables and greens as you wish, cook them up a little bit and grab them out and put them in your bowl. Usually very tasty! I love that the greens here are generally picked the same day, not like a grocery store or especially unlike Alaska where everything green was picked and shipped many days ago…

That’s it for now, I will try to upload a few pictures from today. Having a nice time, it’s days like today that remind me why I love these cycling trips!