John & Mick's BIG AdventureYining
Day 35 – 45kms. (9952 kms total)
Our hotel in Yining is much better, much cheaper and still only two star, for 110 RMB.
Once the phone calls stopped from the girls offering “massages”, we slept quite well and were up to enjoy a buffet breakfast of cold chilli noodles, fried egg & spring onion, cold potato-noodles with bean sprouts and warm chilli bamboo shoots. Weird!
Our guide, May, met us at ten and we followed her taxi to the insurance office, where we had to fork out a further 180 yuan for more insurance. We think this was Personal Accident or Travel Insurance.
Then, to what we believe is their equivalent of DVLA, where we were supposed to get the bikes licensed (plated), but due to our lack of MOT certificates, (Johns has none, as the French bikes don’t get them and I forgot to pack mine), so we are sent off elsewhere to acquire a “Certificate of Safety”.
Big panic as we worry that Mick’s bike will fail this with its lack of front brake. To make things more entertaining, John sustains a puncture en route, which we have to fix by the roadside, ‘assisted’ by about 20 curious onlookers. Took 5 minutes to ream the hole, push the plug into the hole and re-inflate the tyre. Very impressed… including me.
With hole duly plugged, we reach the “Test Centre”, where a chap comes out, walks round the bikes, sits on John’s, gets off and then goes away to issue our “Certificates of Safety”. How safe we feel!!
Back to the “DVLA” where we sit in near 40 degree sunshine for an hour, while the documents are processed.
Finally our agent man comes out beaming, he has all the documents. However, he must now go back to the border, to sort out yesterdays “bodge” and make it proper. Thereafter, (tomorrow) we will have to go to Urumqi with him to get matters finalised.
We have lunch with May and she tells us that she is just helping her fiend, the agent thats doing all the legwork, and does not know if she will get any pay for her efforts!
The traffic in China is crazy. It seems very much survival of the fittest and the horn is a favorite accessory, its used to say, “I am here” assuming that anybody looks. Overtaking is done at will, American style, regardless of which side its on or what might be coming the other way. Cyclists seem to have a 6th sense as they turn across roads and junctions without looking at all, yet seem to survive.
It’s not quite as bad as it seemed in Romania, or we’ve just become accustomed to it.
An afternoon to spend eating and surfing the net and the evening much the same. 
What a life! 24 hour Chinese food and sunshine as well! We have rain!!! Mum
Monica Hindle | 22 June 07 | #Enjoying you news – Rest assured that as we settle into our stateroom on the
QM2 on Tuesday and prepare for our first 6 course gourmet dinner , Eileen and I will be thinking of you ! Mind you the road between here and Southampton can be rough – all those roadworks!
Still , envy you – enjoy ! Bob
Hi John & Mick, enjoying reading your adventures, hope all is well in China, it sounds hot. Jayne has asked us to wish Mick a Happy Birthday.
Heidi Rogers | 25 June 07 | #Birthday Boy
This is the tale of Mick the “I” who rang one day to say “Goodbye! Today I leave for distant lands o’er grass and tarmac, hills and sands. I’m going with me old mate John”. “And what will you both ride upon?” “Oh, mother, please don’t make a fuss. We thought of going on the bus, but then me thought t’would be quite hip to take a camel on the trip.” And so he did (they got one each)
though Michael had a job to reach the ground and sometimes had to jump
to save himself a bigger bump. They set a website up so we could follow their itinerary, and see how far they went each day so we could cheer them on their way. They put their photos on as well and when they could their tale did tell of potholes, sand and wooden floors and coping with the border laws. They’ve had some sun and also rain, but on the whole they don’t complain. The food has sometimes been quite poor, like Oliver, they’d wished for more!
But now they’re into China and sometime very soon they both will be attempting to ride up to the moon. There are some great big mountains, but we know they’ll do their best to get to do a wheelie on the top of Everest!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Monica Hindle | 26 June 07 | #happy birthday biker boy, hope you enjoyed your day! love your website, its great to see what you’re up to, we are enjoying your adventures. TAKE CARE xxxxxx
louise gaz madge n regan | 26 June 07 | #Commenting is closed for this article.