1. Banned again…

When I really annoyed my mum, she used to say, “Sometimes you can get right up my back and knock me hat off” but to have pissed off to the two super powers in the world takes some doing.

When we first started touring, all lazy like in our first Motorhome Frankie, we wanted to go to the States for 6 months so applied for a US 10 year visa.

They refused us as they said we wanted to live there…. Linda had to kick me repeatedly under the table to stop me Going off on one, (JOOO) but this year we thought hey ho, let’s cycle in China. Not the up and down mountainous china of the Great Wall images, but the lovely and flat and tropical islands of Hainan, just off the south west coast.

It’s actually got a cycle route all around it, so we filled in the Visa applications, booked our flights and first few hotels (as you have to do to get the visa) and went down to the Embassy for our interview.

“You’re what?” Asked the lady when we said we were cycling. She quickly told the lady in the next cubicle who lent round the barrier and said “You’re what!”

Obviously the next question was “Why?” Followed quickly by “There are cars and buses you know”

We were getting the impression that they didn’t approve of the idea….

But then she looked at our application. “You’ve not booked hotels all the way to Vietnam!”

“We can’t do that as we don’t know how far we will get each day”

“You can’t have a visa without doing that”

“Oh bother” said poo

We gave her our best sad and helpless look and it had no effect, but she did soften a touch…

“Once you’ve got the visa you cancel them all and do what you like”

“You what” we replied.

“We don’t monitor them, it’s just a paper exercise. Go away and book 60 hotels and come back and we’ll consider the application”

So we went home and started looking for hotels.

That’s when we realised many if not nearly all the hotels were smoking rooms and the comments on some of the non smoking rooms were that no one took any notice of the non smoking anyway so the rooms often were unpleasantly scented!

We thought again…

We’d had to book a flight into Haikou and the airline Hainan Airlines had said our bikes dimensions were fine, but it was entirely up to the duty manager if he wanted to fly our bike box.

“You mean it may have to get the next flight if there’s no room?”

“No, he may decide he won’t fly it”

Ok.

Then there was the getting out of China over the pedestrian border along the coast – nice and flat, easy ride, no mention of cycles being allowed, though we were aware of some getting through, but if they sent us north that would be into the proper mountains, and you know what we think about mountains!

So after a brief discussion we decided it was far better to go somewhere else. Somewhere where they wanted us, so Russia here we come… Kidding!