Nova Bystrice to Vranov nad Dyji

https://ridewithgps.com/trips/380679742

https://ridewithgps.com/trips/380748618

According to the apps, I've crossed the high point of the trip. Mostly down hill from here. 

Another beautiful day through the countryside. I've been enjoying the quiet. Most of the little hamlets seem to be shut up tight. 

everyone needs a castle. 

WWII bunker in the field. The route is very close to the Austrian border. 

late lunch spot. 

end of the day. Made a minor mistake thinking it is Sunday.  It's Saturday, places to stay a little harder to get. Found a place all is well. 

little local dinners place. I haven't been interested in the Czech meat meals. Mostly eating salads. And some beer. 

Tabor to Jindřichův Hradec to Nova Bystrice

https://ridewithgps.com/trips/380486832

https://ridewithgps.com/trips/380516774

Got an early start today and things went pretty well. I decided to go bit further. Tomorrow will be a hard day with a lot of climbing. I wanted to get closer to the climbing to do it early in the day. 

started in Tabor. Now officially on the Prague-Vienna Greenway. 

Beautiful day through the fields and some forest. 

this was a thing in a couple of villages. Not sure what's up. 

 

Went by an airfield where a fly-in was in progress.  

They really like meat in Czech. 

end of the day. 50 miles today. Probably haven't done that for 40 years. 

Olbramovice to Tábor

Took the train to get out of Prague and start the bike trip. 

Crisp Spring day. Very green, spring trees in bloom, tulips. Some country roads, one lane  bicycle paths, one short trek on a dirt road through the fields. Some forest. Rolling hills, although I only rolled on the downhill. 1st half net uphill. 2nd half net downhill. I had some doubts along the way. 

Made it to Tābor. Tired. 

Great dinner of sauerkraut soup, gnocchi with mushrooms. 

Prague

Prague is an amazing city. Lots of history and very active today. Lots of tourists already in the season. 

took a bike ride into the suburbs. Great bike path.

and of course there is a local pub everywhere you look. 

Beginning in Vienna

Start of trip in Vienna. The city has great bike paths. 

Nice train ride to Prague. Beautiful Spring day, lots of green fields and hills.

Singapore

Yours truely in an older section of Singapore.

Singapore has a diverse collection of people. The major groups are Malay, Indian and Chinese. There also seems to be a large dose of Westerners at this point. One person remarked how the neighborhood had changed with all the Americans. You can see where they live because of the basketball goals on the garages. Most people live in apartment buildings or condos.

Our hosts have been making sure that no one goes hungry for more than about 30 seconds. One of the delicacies here is black pepper crab. It is truly wonderful. Yesterday for lunch we had Indian cuisine that was excellent. With all the different people there is a wide variety of choices.

HP is doing a lot of R&D work in Singapore now. I may have more trips here in the future. It is very interesting to see more of Asia. There is a lot more here than Japan. Gary has traveled throughout Asia. He has a sister in Bangkok that he a visisted a couple of times and knows more about interesting places. He has been to Myanmar and found it to be a great place.

China

The first day we hired a guide to whom I was referred and toured some places in Beijing. We went to a famous Buddhist temple, still operating, one of a few in Beijing. It was quite large and very old, I think about 400 years.

Religious practices are now much freer in China. Everything is now allowed, expect for party members. Party members “must choose only one religion”. There was even a monitor at the temple to see if any members were not choosing correctly.

One notable piece was a 25 meter tall Buddha from a single tree. The carving was moved in and the structure erected around it.
Next we visited the Summer Palace a short drive away. The scale of all the emperor’s palaces is quite large. This was a small city complete with a man-made lake to enhance the setting. The lake was frozen and people were taking shortcuts across. I think there is ice skating there also in the winter.
It was a little chilly during the day. We had some sunshine, but the wind was very cold. After a few days the air quality deteriorated quite a bit and was not pleasant. I had trouble with my eyes burning. The air pollution there would be a significant disadvantage.

We then drove out to the Great Wall and saw a very small portion. The scale again was overwhelming. One million people worked on the Wall for 500 years. In some places it was actually not very tall. I am assuming that the major benefit was the monitoring of the frontier and rapid communication with flags and smoke signals.
Beijing is being transformed rapidly. We stayed in a luxury hotel in the heart of the business district. With all my preconceptions of communist China, I was not quite prepared to see the shopping mall below with Prada, Gucci, etc. As in most places outside the US/Europe, there is a huge discrepancy between the have and have-not. We saw a few of the have-nots on the outskirts of town on the way to the Wall.
The next day we went on our own to the Forbidden City. “City” just barely describes it. 9999 rooms, 3000 concubines, 100,000 soldiers. In the plazas, there are typically 3 sets of stairs up to the major buildings. One staircase had a single stone carving ~40 feet long. This was a single stone that was moved by 10,000 men for a year. The bricks of the plazas are 5 meters deep to protect against tunneling. The buildings are fantastic. People say that if you want to see the contents, they you have to go to the National Museum in Taipei.

Lions were not found in China and became mythical symbols of power. The female is always depicted with her paw on a cub, the male with the world. These are from 1200’s so they must have know the world is round.

Commerce and capitalism (Chinese version) are alive & well, however there are also some interesting cultural issues. In Tiananmen Square, a young woman and her uncle approached us to practice their English. They were genuinely interested, quite friendly and had no other agenda. We walked across the square and talked about quite a few things. She is a doctor and has studied both the old Chinese practices as well as the newer Western style medicine.
I was talking to her uncle about his life and youth. I made a comment about the protest on the Square and his reply was: “We should not talk about that here.” It seemed very odd because they had been so open about everything else and we were not near a crowd of other people. Another person talked about the ‘revolt’ in Tibet that had to be dealt with.

Shopping in the tourist shops and street markets is a life altering experience. The vendors are extremely aggressive. After the 5th or 6th time I got a little used to the shop girls pulling on my arm to get me in the shop. There is also an invisible line at the entrance to the shop/stall. If you cross over the line you are now in their space, you become one of their customers, and salesmanship takes on a new level of practice.

They would name an exorbitant price, I would counter with pennies on the dollar. “you’re killing me”, “what’s your best price?” We went back and forth, back and forth typing in offers on the calculator. Once you got used to the game, treated it as a game and had fun with it, everything was fine. A couple of times, the game got so outrageous, even the sales people were laughing. Then you knew you had them.

The general rule seems to be that you should pay no more than 20% of what people suggest. To arrive at 20% you start at 10%. Negotiating for a while and then leaving seems to be a particularly effective tactic.

As you know, everything is made in China now. We bought silk polo shirts for $5, tennis shoes for $10. Some of the party came Sunday night and arrived without their suitcases. We had business meetings on Monday morning, so we went out Monday morning to shop for them.

We caused quite a stir in the Silk Market shopping center (tourist trap) buying suits at 9am. “I’ll give you special morning price.” “I’ll give you special 1st customer price.” Many of the vendors remembered Gary & I because of the hard deals we had driven the day before.

The negotiating was intense. One of the HP people is 6’4” 260lb. black man with size 15 shoes. It was very interesting. Gary claims that the shoe people don’t like me anymore.

We even went back a third time because Gary needed another bag for all collection. One of the vendors asked him how much he paid – 200 ($25). Her response was “Good price. My sister paid 210 yesterday.” My major coup was exchanging a sweatshirt that would have been too small for Axel. It cost me $6 but it came with a silk shirt.

Bus Ride to Morocco - Part 3

At the end of our visit to Fez, a friend arranged a hired taxi (Grand Taxi) to take us to Melilla. This was one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip. Our driver reminded me of an Arab version of my brother Paul. A great gregarious man who saw the humor and joy in every moment of life. We traded brief conversation with our shared basic Spanish.

We had to stop at a police kiosk in town so the driver could get a permit (tax) for the trip. Back in the car the driver said with a laugh “It makes them (the police) think they have an important job to do.”

On the way back we lost the fan belt on this Mercedes sedan. I think it was a 230D with 300K kilometers on the dial. We all thought – here goes another day. It was Sunday, and the small town looked deserted. Our driver said to sit tight for moment and he would be right back.

It turns out that you can get Mercedes parts on any street corner in Morocco. Every taxi is a Mercedes, and most of the cars. He came back in 10 minutes with a young mechanic, probably 13-15 years old. The mechanic changed the fan belt while we drank Cokes. He probably worked for 45 minutes.

At the end the driver paid the mechanic 2 or 3 dollars (I don’t quite remember). I do remember that the shoeshine boy was ecstatic with the 50 cents I paid him.