Well We Made It To China! ⁣⁣

The border I’d describe as thorough and slightly uncomfortable, but overall a breeze. China is, in my opinion, the only country following a decent protocol at borders. Well, with the exception of them going through our phones – that’s a step too far I think.⁣⁣ I’ll post about it in full soon ☺️

Once we cycled into Khorgos we were impressed with its neatness – perfect roads, trees in perfectly straight lines and very clean indeed! We got cash easily, found a hotel easily and we managed to get online too! We were thrilled.⁣⁣

Then we tried to find food. We searched for a restaurant and of course everything looks like a restaurant to our English eyes because we only see Chinese symbols when there’s food! We finally found a place that looked perfect – grilled meat and vegetables. That’s right up Stew’s street!⁣⁣

We entered the restaurant and it took me at least half an hour to translate the menu (picture 3). We ordered grilled lamb, grilled chicken, leek, mushroom and green beans.⁣⁣

It came out looking so delicious (picture 2), but I immediately feared it was hot.⁣⁣

We had a couple bites and it was SO HOT! We couldn’t eat it, my lips were tingling after 2-3 bites 😂 we were so hungry and it wasn’t funny at the time especially after the time to translate the menu.⁣⁣

To save face I awkwardly asked for a bag, bagged it up, paid and chucked it in the bin around the corner. 😩⁣⁣

We went to another restaurant and I asked a young waitress if she could speak English – she could! Oh we were overjoyed! We both breathed a sigh of relief. She spoke very little English, but enough! We tried to order egg fried rice and meat – we got egg fried rice. We ate that, but we were both still hungry. The waitress had just enough English to understand we wanted more egg fried rice and a dish with no chili.⁣⁣

The next course came out in take away bags, I guess she was confused that we were ordering twice, but as you know hungry cyclists need their grub!⁣⁣

Is Chinese food typically hot??⁣

#worldcyclingtour #bicyletouring⁣

#bikepacking #adventurebybike⁣

#cycletouring #cycleadventure⁣

#cycle #worldbybike #cycletheworld @ Khorgos, Almaty, Kazakhstan