ArchivesCategory: China

The more we cycled West, the rougher it became. Roads, people, landscape, food. We had a lot to cycle to the border to Laos, so we pushed really hard, trying to make at least 90km every day. As always we used our smartphone for navigation, but it quickly turned out that Google did not catch Continue Reading

After almost one month of not riding our bikes while staying in Hong Kong and Macau, we decided to get fit again and to cycle as much as we can during our second 30 days stay in China. This time we wanted to explore the provinces Guangdong and Guangxi before going further West to Yunnan. Continue Reading

From Macau we went straight to Kaiping. The surrounding villages are famous for their very unusual buildings called Diaolou. They look like towers and are a strange mix of different European architecture styles with a Chinese influence. Most of them were built at the beginning of the 20th century by Chinese emigrants that got wealthy Continue Reading

Our days in Hong Kong had passed much quicker than we thought, but instead of going back to China we decided to check one more Special Administration Region – Macau. Much smaller than Hong Kong, this former Portuguese colony welcomed us with fabulous narrow streets just like in Porto or Lisbon, great coffee shops and Continue Reading

We have got a double entry visa for China with 30 days for each stay, which means that we had to leave the country after one month and re-enter it once again. Hong Kong seemed like a nice option for this short break. Especially because it is visa free for most of the European countries Continue Reading

One of the cities we wanted to visit in China during our first month was Guilin. We have read quite a lot about this city and decided to change our plan a bit and instead of going straight to Hong Kong, take a little detour and give it a try. It turned out to be Continue Reading

From Chengdu we cycled to Leshan, a city famous of its gigantic Buddha carved in a rocky cliff. It is the highest sculpture ever made by people – 71 meters! Very impressive! The site is rather a tourist destination than a holy place – you can hear more shutter sounds than holy mantras there. Anyway Continue Reading

Sichuan, a province in the West from Tibet, turned out to be a remedy for the coldness of Xinjiang. After 5 days of resting in Urumqi (Ania had a problem with her knee and could not cycle too much) we made a decision to take a bus somewhere South. It was not easy – almost Continue Reading

We have been waiting for this day for a very long time. Getting to China was a kind of our goal, since this sounds really big: “I cycled to China”, and it is the last country on the former Silk Road that we roughly followed (but not our last country). Crossing the border between Kazakhstan Continue Reading