Hot (S)Pot

Lee's recommendation, via phone text message!

Today we met a local by the name of Lee Cui.  

Lee spent about 5 years in Australia at Macquarie University in Sydney before moving back to China.  He brought us the octane booster that we are keen to have (for the not-so-good fuel we’re expecting in Mongolia).  

Lee also gave us a restaurant recommendation, which we went to for dinner tonight (see at right).

It was something of a circus.  Everything in Chinese, except for a few things we didn’t really want -   intestines, duck tongues etc.

After struggling with the menu for a while and getting nowhere, we rang Lee then passed the phone to the waiter for Lee to tell him what to feed us.  We still needed a lot of help from the waiter. 

You had to cook for yourself by throwing the components in the… let’s call it broth, for a couple of minutes.  There were two lots of broth, one white-ish and the other black-ish but both seemed to be made up of hot stuff.  

Lots of chillies.

But, after that dubious start it all went down pretty well.

Beijing in the smog

Beijing is big.  But taxis are cheap.
Today we are tourists and have been to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.  We will spend the later part of the day sourcing some octane booster to mix with the low grade fuel in Mongolia.

To get into the Forbidden City you have to show your passpost and buy a ticket.  The good bit was that from our passports, the lady determined we were "seniors" and we got in for half price. 30 Yuan instead of 60 Yuan, That’s a little over $12 in Aussie money.  You then have to queue up for a security scan on the way in.  At the Tiananmen area you don’t need a ticket, but you still have to show a passport and go through the normal airport type scan.

We went relatively early in the morning but we still had to queue for a while.

Yesterday was a relatively clear day, it had rained early in the morning, but today is quite smoggy.  Enough to show in pictures and make tired eyes sting a little.

Team GT ?

The journey has begun. I’m writing this on the flight to Singapore. We caught a train to Sydney and sadly, got the chat from another traveller for making too much noise in the quiet carriage.  Well – I suppose we are excited.

Check-in was a bit unusual.  Apparently not everyone travels with a Dunlop tyre.  All OK once they established it was not inflated.

We had allowed an extra hour for safety to get to the airport, which allowed an extra hour in the Singapore Airlines lounge. 

I sampled the champagne, the chardy and the shiraz at the lounge.  Now I’m retesting on the plane and as I’ve always said:  There is nothing quite as good as chocolate, red wine and black coffee at 30,000 feet. Perhaps I should try the port.

On the subject of alcohol, we are looking at forming a team with cars 103 (Rene Declercq/Eric Claeys)a 240z, and 107 (Joost Van Cauwenberghe/Jacques Castelein) a Mercedes 450SLC. We know these guys from the London to Cape Town (2012) and the Sydney to London (2014) rallies.  They are Belgians, liked minded travellers, and very partial to Gin and tonic.  We though we could form Team GT.

Our next report will be from Beijing.

...from the Newcastle Herald and NBN TV

Some weeks ago, our local TV station NBN ran
this item on Mark and Dave's preparation for the rally
(If the video doesn't load, click here for the YouTube version):



and now, the Newcastle Herald has this story:

Just about all ready to go!

The car has gone, we have all the required visas and vaccinations.  We have a document saying we are allowed to bring the car home.  Now there’s nothing to do really.  There must be something to worry about.  I’m worried there is nothing to worry about. 

Well - A couple of little worries I suppose.

At the Alpine last year, we bought two 195 size tyres as that was all we could get down there. We normally use 205s. Cleaning up after the car has gone, Mark can only fine one 195 tyre.  We think there is a good chance we have sent it off with an odd tyre.  Never mind, we can take a matching tyre with us as luggage on our flight!!

All the countries we travel through on this event drive on the right hand side.  So Mark has installed an arrow (left) at the top of the windscreen in front of the driver to try and enforce which side to go for in an emergency. 

On London to Cape Town we had a very minor head-on with some Belgian boys (now good friends) when on a very narrow road we both should not have been on, they went to the right to get off the road and we went to the left.  The cars just touched gently and no real harm done but we’ll never forget it.

We are still to organise sending some tyres to somewhere in Russia and I can spend endless hours looking at maps of where we are going.

The car isn’t there yet.  It went via Japan and is now on the way to Shanghai.

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:690117/mmsi:477898700/imo:9329538/vessel:OOCL_YOKOHAMA

Next update, hopefully from Beijing.