18th June - Middle of Nowhere, China

I had not been feeling 100% yesterday and today really did not feel right either. I was still planning on going and so put on all of my biking things and went down to have breakfast at the same places as last night. The people were really friendly. There is an internet place right under the hotel where I was staying and so I took my laptop and plugged into their network. Often I have found difficulties with doing this because of firewall issues and the way that they have set up their network security however this time I just plugged in and had a really fast connection. It is unusual for me to find a fast connection (even the wireless connections in HK were slow) and so I made the most of it. Having a fast connection means that it is much faster for me to do my blog and gps tracks etc and so I finished of many entries that were still in note form from Nepal and India. It bothered me that I had not finished these and I wanted to do them before I forgot what happened. I got carried away with skyping and emailing friends and family and doing my blog entries and all of a sudden it was 4pm and I gave up on the idea of leaving the town today.



One of the guys also using the computers is a photographer and has several really good professional cameras. He does not speak any English but we managed to communicate some how. He was very interested in seeing my shots and wanted copies of a few of them. He has some amazing photos of China. I was very jealous and it really encouraged me to want to take more photos. I will get a better computer when I get back to the UK that is powerful enough to do some proper editing and also read a few more books on the subject. My photos of China are not very good as often the light has been rubbish. It is muggy and rarely really blue skies and sunny and so there has not been as much oportunity for good photos.

The photographer took me round the village and wanted to take photos of me on my bike and around the village. It was a fun way to pass a few hours.

Through out the day loads of children came over to say "hello" many many times. It was the only word that they knew and they just repeated it many times and giggled. I think that I am the first foreigner to pass through this town in many years. There is no reason to go there unless biking through. It is very rural.



The only thing that people have to do in this town is play computer games and gamble. There were in fact 2 huge rooms full of computers that were full most of the time I was there. The boys were playing shoot and kill games and the girls other dancing type games. They charged me £2 for using the connection for about 14 hours :-)

I think I needed a catch up day and thoroughly enjoyed spending the day with the people in the village and on the internet.