Birthday

China is a great place to have a birthday. I'm now the owner of brandnew bicycle innertube, mp3 player and a guitar pick-up! In the morning there was a proper birthday breakfast- stewed bread with honey, watermelon, fruitshakes, coffee and 20 candles. Then we played music in bars and had a party the next day and.. well, instead of one day it felt like I had a birthday for three days.
:)

Johney wondering how much further the mountain goes up!

Cycling in Yunnan

We're now in Kunming , the capital of Yunnan province. It's so great to be back in China!
We cycled for 5 days from Lao Cai, Vietnam to Mengzi, Yunnan. It was a pretty tough ride i must admit, but as gorgeous as it can get! All the way we cycled next to the redred Red river, cooled ourselves in it, had a clay fight on the shore, met a chinese dude who gave us some boiled water- no charge! And then we cycled straight up to the clouds. I don't really have a suitable gear on my bike for cycling up the mountains so most of the way i had to just push my bike and now i have big muscles on my hands. No match in wrestling for me anymore!
It was quite a lonely road, there was few motorbikes and cars passing by, some horses and waterbuffalos, some really old and short ladies in tribal costumes carrying big baskets on their heads and machete in their hands, going.. somewhere..
One time after hours of pushing we got really hungry and started knocking on the doors in a small village to ask where we could eat and luckily one household was just about to start eating and they very kindly let us join in. Yunnan people sure know how to cook! Wow, the food here is so delicious that it's a bliss to get hungry. I guess that was the only time we got hungry because other times after each hour someone invited us into their house to eat. Very hospitable people indeed.

Below - johney feasting on the delicacy of chickens head and his new girlfriend!
In the mountains it was also the first time for me after like 4 months to feel chilly. Kunming is also higher up and it feels like the season has changed, well Kunming is actually called the city of eternal spring. It sure is nice not to be sweating all the time.
After 4 days cycled we pulled into Mengzi (about 170km from the Vietnam boarder) and met some guys who owned a bicycle/tattoo shop. They took us to eat, fixed our bikes, offered us a place to sleep, made a tattoo on Johnnie's shoulder（which looks like this: 二百五 , literally it means 250, but it means "stupid" in Chinese). Also local Mengzi Tv came and took an interview with us and filmed us playing music and Jimmy's tall bike ofcourse. I managed to answere all the questions in chinese! After two days of taking care of us in every way, we closed our ears to our new and cool chinese friends entreaties to stay in Mengzi for ever and we caught a bus to Kunming!

I'm really happy being here and improving my chinese and being able to speak with locals even just a little bit.
你好妈妈！
再见！
Triin

Below left

On the roof of a local who invited to dinner and to see his newly cemented roof!

Below right

Pushing up the steep rough roads over the mountains in Kunming!

HUE Vietnam may 2007

Left Jesus preaching to the motocycles - Hoi An - Vietnam

At the moment we are in Hue - central vietnam - johney (the bass player) has his birthday tomorrow and i think i will carve him some ice pants - he is very very bothered by the heat. I am bothered from the lack of sleep because johney wakes me up at 4am to cycle - he is right that it is too hot to cycle between 10 am and 4pm and the cycling so early in the day is very beautiful, the trouble is i drink too much DELICIOUS vietnamese coffee and am tense with imsomnia - i am seeing stuff and getting paranoid and act with exaggerated behaviour - reading Rigadoon by Celine may not be helping!! We did cycle at night before, but now we are on the main vietnamese 200 year old north south road and it is very scarey with the huge trucks zooming past with the loudest horns i have ever heard- even in the day time - at night it is almost suicidal!!
We crossed a big pass between Dannang and Hue - it was a tough climb through fantastic tropical vegetation with vistas of islands out to sea, golden beaches below, waterfalls and tiny sailing ships in the opal coloured water. It took us a long time and we hung out with some police/road guards??? (see photos left) for about 6 hours on the way up to pass the hottest part of the day - sleeping in their beds. They cooked rice and some water grass for us which was very very bitter - it was a very basic meal indeed but what they lacked in comfort they made up in good cheer and hospitality! They were so generous and kind! They tried to make us drink some spirits but not much luck - but they were delighted when i brought out my chinese chess set - they play it a lot here - but i think i was disappointingly easy to beat AND they seem to have different rules! Some dudes here in vietnam play chinese chess with all the pieces except the king mixed up and covered with bottle tops and after the first conventional move for whatever the piece in that position would be they take off the bottle tops and reveal the true piece and continue the game from there! WILD!!! (Below: View of the China sea on the pass of the clouds - Danang - Hue old road)
When we finally made it to the top of the hill we had no time to enjoy the view because we were set upon by the sunglass, water, coke, watch, postcard - you name something useless they sell it -vendors. It was like we were seeds thrown in a pen of hungry chickens - they were all over us - Johney flipped out and i had to scare them away with the old oily hand mad hairy troll tactic. It was really crazy! They were utterly relentless. Vietnam is really great and all in all i think I prefer it to the other south eastern asian countries i have seen for the cooking and people and countryside but they are for sure the most cheeky people i have ever met - you settle one price for a meal and then at the end they charge you way more - if you dont settle the cost of the food or drink before you buy it they will ask for double the right price and they rampage all over you to get you to use their services - one rickshaw asked us if we wanted a ride incessantly while we were cycling on our bikes - he was totally earnest and pestering. Very strange! I think i will be relieved when i leave in a week or and johney is really looking forward to going somewhere cooler.
Triin is as ever pretty cool - perhaps too nonchalent - a few times after we have eaten at a restaurant on the road she sets off back the way we came because she has lost her sense of direction since we paused in the restaurant just one hour before!!! But she is as ever constant and kind and pretty much always positive which is a very rare and GREAT quality!!!! I am very proud of her going over all these big hills!
We will hang out in Hue for a couple of days to get our visa extension then onto Hanoi - probably by train. for some more money earning there and concerts so we have some funds for china and the boat to Japan!!! Going to be an exciting and hopefully cooler summer than the spring in the tropics. The music is going well but no acts unfortunately! Coming, coming!!

Bamboo boat south of Hue and Jimmy meets his role model at a funeral ceremony in Danang!

Stay in Vietnam? Forever?!!

Left: Street hairdresser in Saigon - Jimbino had this man shave his beard and tidy up his home made hair cut and found himself having his ears, forehead and NOSE shaving thrown in all for $1!

Yesterday the Jazz Workers were offered a job! We were fatten up with delicious 4-course meal, given generous tips for our music, nurtured with champagne..
Well, it's somekind of a fancy restaurant and they want to give us a free place to stay and money and working visas incase we start playing music for them..um, perhaps everynight. It's a very generous offer, but tonight we're going to Nha Trang, which beach is one of the best in the world (!) and forget about that hooly- shmooly-jibberishtalk quite soon. Someday in the freezing European winter we might concider it a bit more seriously! Right now it's nice just to keep travelling.

Below: an article about us in the Saigon newspaper

20. mai- Ho Chi Minh city, Saigon.

Chadmo triin johney and a local kid with ballon - ho chi minh city vietnam!!!

In two days we get our Chinese visas and then leave Saigon. Yesterday me and Jimmy met a
Vietnamese girl through Coucsurfing.com and went to a nice restaurant to listen to traditional
Vietnamese music- beautiful! After the band finished we played some songs too and the audience seemed to like it and the bar manager- who was at first very nervous to let us on the stage- well, she didn't know who we are and what we do-was happy too and invited us back the next morning. Me and Jimmy went together again and played like 8 songs and then ate breakfast and icecreams and juices or whatever we asked for and listened to this amazing Vietnamese guitarplayer. Just on Jimmys mini-guitar he played all these popsongs (Abba, Beatles), supermario themes, django reinhardt, classical pieces, bossanova... ...! He had arranged the songs by himself and learned to play the guitar all by himself. what a dude!
It's really cool in Saigon- after a long while it's a city where theres actually some concerts and exhibitions going on. Lately almoust everywhere we've gone have been very poor in culture-try to find a concert in Cambodia! You can imagine how grateful are the white guys who have been living in Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) for 10 years!
In Saigon we're living in a district where the most of the tourists hang out. It's good for us- alot of caffes and terraces to play. But at the same time there's quite a few nuisances due to that. Theres at least 4 motorbiketaxis on EVEry corner and each time you pass by they ask: "Moto, madam? Where you go?" and sometimes when you actually need a ride they don't understand english but they nod and say "yes, yes, ok!" and take you to a wrong place. (Im not falling for that one again)
Two days ago we played some music in the swing dancers training or party- it's hard to differ which one it was- all their trainings are like parties! Dance and music nonstop!
Jimmy took over the dancefloor and had a crazy swingduo with a local girl, definitely the best performance during the evening!
It's getting darker, might start raining, soon it's time to rinse out!