Thanks to the Rice Vine and beer yesterday I woke up much later than I wanted. John, his friend and I had breakfast at a pastry shop, which was a new experience for both of them as they normally have rice for breakfast and they basically don't eat pastry at all. :-) After that I wanted to leave as soon as possible. However, thanks to the fact that almost all hotel staff wanted to take a picture with me and talk to me I didn’t manage to leave until after noon.

After a whole day ride (or more accurately rest of the day ride) I arrived at an expressway tollgate, where the guy in the toll booth started to talk with me which at the end led to an offer to stay in the restaurant building complex instead of trying to find a hotel in the dark that surrounded us already. The owner was this guy’s friend and so I did for 20 Yuan (after I laughed at their initial offer of 50 Yuan :-) ), which has been so far the medium budget price for me. I had a dinner, which I had to prepare myself, so it wasn’t too great :-). To my defense, however, I have to say that it wasn’t too great mainly thanks to the fact that I didn’t know what I had available and they seemed to have only spices that I either didn’t know or didn’t like. Fish, vegetable and rice should be nutritious enough to compensate for the taste deficit though… ;)

During my time on the road today I was just thinking about my Czech home when I passed a big sign announcing a turn to a city named HOUBA, which coincidentally means mushroom in Czech. Almost immediately after that I was closing in on what I thought was one of the many Volkswagen Passats from behind, but when I got closer it actually turned out to be Czech Skoda Octavia – the first Czech car I’ve seen in the whole Asia so far if I don’t count a dealership in Thailand that was apparently selling Skodas but had none in the showroom as far as I could see from the road.

(340 km)