Journey to the West - First Mistake and How We Fixed It

Day 4. Cycling from HK to France. 41 km total distance over 6 hours with four long breaks. 14 km/h average speed. Gongming District to Taiping. Major highlight: first big mistake of our trip of being blocked by an Express Highway that did not allow bikes to enter.

It felt like this.

Literally, this is what we saw on our way today.

This is our map for the cycle tour today.

As you can see, the circle is where we initially wanted to get to and we got stuck at the cross. Initially, we booked a 7 Days Inn hotel in the Nansha island between Dongguan and Zhongshan city. It would add about 10 km to our total distance. But there were only two options of getting to that island. One was via a bridge which was the Express Highway that blocked us, and the other was a ferry that stopped operation at 18:30. When we arrived at the highway, it was already 18:10 and it would take another one hour for us to get to the ferry pier. I mean, we should have known better because on Maps.me, which we use for most of our routing plans, this bridge has Express Way written on it. Next time, I better check before. Have a look at the gate which blocked us.

That would have been the bridge that took us to the island.

We used about 1 hour to ask for help. Hitchhiking and asking the police officers to book a van. Nothing helped really. So, we had to do the plan B. Find WiFi, cancel the initial hotel, pay for the cancellation fee and book another hotel close to the ferry pier.

By the way, the reason why we now book hotels is because on Booking.com there are very often no hostels around the remote areas of China. I might have to check other apps. If you know any, please comment to share. Another thing to note is that sometimes hotels, apartments or guesthouses only accept Mainland Chinese citizens. I still don't know the reason why but they are at least half price as compared to those available to foreigners. That is why lots of former Chinese citizens always try to still maintain their Chinese ID cards.

Back to the highway, this is Mathilde hitchhiking.

Perhaps you already noticed, we hang out wet clothes on our bike to dry them and worked like a charm. Almost everyday, we washed our dirty clothes, mostly by hand, and then we dried them like this.

Turning back the actual cycle trip today, this was where we did our first break due to high heat. My phone gave me a warning that it's overheating. From that point on, I shall always keep them inside the Ortlieb handle bag with a cooled water bottle on top of it while it displays the navigation from Maps.me. Better setup than before.

The roads sometimes looked like this.

And sometimes you could see this.

We took another break inside this park. It was just next to the road.

The people inside the park stared at us, mostly her. In fact, everywhere on the streets people stared at us. Today, Mathilde almost made three people have an accident because they stared at her so long that they bent their heads and did not see a truck driving into them. Maybe the government might pass a law forbidding foreigners from streets just because they would cause traffic accidents. Would be a fun law and completely unpractical.

We thought that we totally deserved an ice cream.

And of course a great lunch.

But we first went to another restaurant chain called Kungfu. It was disgusting. The fried aubergenes tasted like rotten fish and the meat of the noodles were pink and didn't look good. Don't. Go. There.

That's why we chose this one instead.

Arriving at the newly booked hotel, I began the daily routine of washing our clothes.

Well, that's it for today. Now I am off to sleep. Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we cycle more to the West to Zhongshan city.

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