A small trip to Mallorca

In October 2011 I went with my great friend Sergio to Mallorca for a small ride around the island. We arrived with no bikes but managed to scavenge two rather shitty ones to do the ride. We started out by staying at a friends house for a couple of days before setting off on the trip. We had no tent or any other luxury items of the likes but we did have sleeping bags and a Trangia kitchen.
We headed up to the northern mountain range to start hard and as always mountains are both pleasant and unpleasant. But mountains are my favorite place to ride. The scenery and the physical pressure is a great mind blowing experience!
The first night we slept in a kids playground in the outskirts of a small village. Chilly.
Second day we chose to go by a donkey trail. Big mistake. We had to drag the bikes a long way and I especially was completely smashed after. But after a quick break we decided to tackle the puig major. The highest spot on the island. And we found an absolutely great camping spot.
Then I don't really remember what happened the following days but at some point we met up with our friend Carles in a beach where climbing is the big thing. But it was a bit late for climbing so we just cooked and went to sleep. Carles had brought a tent but because of some brain-fart we opted not to put it up. And what do you know. Rain! So frantically setting it up in the darkness ending up soaked to the bone. And then... After finally falling asleep a bloody cow comes along eating our food and stepping on the tent. God damn animals. God damn nature! Horrible night but ok fun during the next day.
We grabbed our climbing shoes and went around the small inlet climbing and swimming. Super idyllic!
Here again my memory disappears and all I can do is to show some pictures and recommend Mallorca as a great cycling destination for a short trip. Very beautiful and not too demanding.

First day out!

 Oooh great pose!

No comment...

 How I looked after.

 First campsite.

Sergio doing his morning gym. Almost touching... Keep working!

The donkey trail.

Sleeping in a bunker.

In the morning outside the bunker.

 After the horrible night.

 The bloody cow!

 Climbing.

Making fire.

 Another campsite. This time with the tent all night. No rain...

Great skill by Carles!!!

Last picture of the trip. Gracias amigos!

Mohan ---> Jinghong

Next up was Mengla. Described as a horrible town best avoided we decided that if it wasn't for a few annoying experiences with the locals we would have liked the town. Which I guess we did but it was obscured by the incidents.
We arrived the same day we left Mohan after a short ride on a great road. With tunnels! A nice change from Thailand were tunnels are non existing. The nice change turned into a nasty change later in the trip as the tunnels got longer, narrower and darker and the traffic heavier.
In town we searched for a place to stay and here we encountered our first problem with China/Chinese. They apparently enjoy writing stuff in Chinese only... So what to do? Where's a bloody hotel? In the end after riding up and down streets Mikele overcame our fear with contacting the locals and we started entering buildings that could potentially be. Some were some were not... And some absolutely outrageously overpriced... But we found one in the end. With a roof terrace and all.
Then out to have a look around. Found a nice market and shopped a bit to cook on the roof. We also found a place with some very nice cookies that tasted a bit like pork. We named them porkies. More on them in a later post.
After eating and napping we went out to find an internet cafe. Which we did. But this was when all our troubles started...
Entering the place with everyone staring. Arriving at the counter. Trying to communicate that we wanted to use a computer. So far so good. Talking price everything went wrong though. Long story short the guy at the counter ended up half shouting half hissing: Money! Money! Money! while he did a funky kinda scary thing with his fingers. And we were outta there!
Back at the hotel we noticed that they had a room with a computer and internet access. So we asked if we could use it and we did. For half an hour or so. The connection was terrible and half the sites we wanted to access was blocked. So I went to the room and Mikele went to pay. When he came back up it was with horror in his eyes. We had been charged with the full price of the room for 24 hours!! First time we encountered Chinese business mentality. And we were a bit bummed out...
In the morning we hurried out of town but only after we found out the toilet in the room wasn't quite prepared for the meeting with Europeans. So we left them a little(BIG) present as a thanks for ripping us off.

We left town on a huge new highway recently build with shit loads of traffic so as soon as we spotted a minor road to the side of it we made it down there and what a change! Really nice scenery and close to no traffic. Up and down a lot but absolutely worth it to avoid the traffic.
We camped in a little shed in a rubber plantation. Amazing!
In the morning pushing on through more beautiful scenery and villages. The original population of this area of Yunnan is called the Dais and they have some great architecture.
I can't really remember how many days it took us to get to Jinghong but it might have just been the two.
But arriving in Jinghong was great! It is the capitol of the XishuanBanna province and they have great food and markets. We spend a few days before riding on...

Loving The Tunnels!!!

Roof terrace lunch in the rip-off hotel.

Big bong in the rip-off hotel!

A little garden next to nasty-the-river. They aren't too obsessive with ecology and such apparently...

Rubber plantation shack! Great spot!

The village roadside dump. When space gets tight somebody will "by accident" drop 10 liters of oil and a match close by. Seen all over.

Hmm. What to do next?

Example of what happens when Chinese companies goes international with the help of Google.

Entering The Middle Kingdom

Entering The Middle Kingdom

After a super rush through Laos we finally made it to the border of big ol' China. We decided to more or less just shoot through Laos to have a bit more time in China. So Laos consisted only of biking, sleeping and eating. Like most of the trip I guess but everything done a fart faster...

Just before arriving at the border there is a freaky ghost-like border town. It seems it's the Chinese that build it along with the highway we followed through Laos. But the Laotians don't really want it it seems. The town is deserted but once you're just on the other side of it a ramshackle town where all the truckers stay appears. Funny. Who gives a crap about fancy hotels and spas when you can have cardboard walls and dirt floors...
We arrived at the Chinese border post at the very last moment before they closed but nonetheless they had plenty of time to do what felt like an interrogation about our passports (especially Mikele's Italian passport that looks prehistoric). But eventually they let us enter that most Chinese country of all countries...
We then made our way into the first town (Mohan) which looked rather like the abandoned town on the other side of the border but clean and inhabited. We went to an ATM to get out money and after trying out a few we found one that was able to serve us in English and give us money at the same time... Then searching for a hotel! One place had a sign outside saying hotel (one of the few times we had that luck...) and we went in there. Zero English communication but after pointing at some signs and a few awkward moments we got a room. And what a room! Two double beds, television and a hole in the floor for dumping human waste. We were amazed about the cheap price and the quality the money got us! And the same goes for the restaurant we went to. Somehow we ended up with 5 different dishes and a bucket of rice and we feared the moment we had to pay the bill. But when it came we were very happy to see that the price of two very very stretched stomachs was only around 8 euros. First feast of MANY in China.
In the morning we went out to experience our first Chinese market and we absolutely loved it! Eating Chinese doughnuts with soy milk and noodle soup. Mmmmm. Great start! And we weren't harassed or anything! Even better... So we went back to the hotel and packed up to venture further inland...

 Crossing into Laos on a boat.

An American guy called Elliott that showed us how to make a pipe out of an apple.

 Abandoned building on the Lao side of the border. 

Oooh. So close...

...so scary!

Lao side of the border. I think the idea was that the road should run through the monument there but in the rush they didn't get to connect the two bits on either side so there's a dirt track running around the side of it...

The Chinese border/interrogation building.

The hotel room!

The first feast!!! (in China that is. We had plenty in Thailand...)

On-One Inbred Mountain Bike

Here's the bike.

The bike is fitted with a crystalyte HS3540 hubmotor that in the present configuration roughly reaches 50km/h with a gentle touch of wind to the bum.
It has 50v15Ah LiPo battery setup and at the moment only a 30A controller. I'll be upgrading that very soon to 80A for those nice accelerations.
Nice wide tyres for good control on the snow and ice that's unfortunately everywhere outside these days. Global warming you let me down!
It has a throttle and pretty much nothing else so in the big eye of the law it's nothing but an illegal moped. But who ever cared about that (at least until they stop you and confiscated it...).
But it's fun fun fun.
I'll post a video before too long. And some xtra pictures.