Day 140 - Cycling around Lake Erhai, Dali

Start: Dali, Yunnan, China
End: Dali, China (Yunnan, still)
Distance: 121 km
Time: 6'55"
Avg: 17.5 k/h
Max: 39 k/h
Total: 8648 km
Total riding days: 95
Riding hours: 0945 - 1845

According to the rules, unladen cycling doesn't count, but I made the rules, so I suppose I can break them.

Spend the day dodging small children bearing large guns, which look plastic but you can't be sure.

A surfeit of deep fried goat cheese at breakfast time had made itself felt on km 119.5, only 1.5 km from safety. I had to make an emergency pit-stop in a local squattery - those of a squeamish disposition look away now. Which is not what a small gaggle of other WC customers did as I teetered and tottered (my hamstrings are not long enough to squat properly) above the open-plan slit-trench dunny.

"Look at the Laowai!" they cried.

They hadn't found me in the best of tempers. I said something not very nice back, which I don't think they understood, because they smiled and said Hallo in return.

In fairness, I must have looked rather odd, wobbling there with a cycling helmet still strapped to my skull, a heavy-duty Shanghai-bike-thief-proof bike lock round my neck, and my bicycle half-blocking the entrance to my stall.

The Australian government is a curious mixture of the good and the bad. On the one hand (the bad one), it is the loyal lap-dog of Dubya's War on Turrrh (I'll stop going on about this at some point); on the other hand (the good one), they publish this website: http://www.toiletmap.gov.au/ - which you would have to take for a spoof if it weren't for it's official .gov.au domain name.

Listen: "A project of the National Continence Management Strategy."

"Register for My Toilet Map to save your trips, favourite destinations and public toilets."

You've got to believe it. I'm serious. Check it out.

The FAQ section is great: "Can I use the Toilet Map with my Global Positioning System (GPS) device?"

And yes, I did find it by using Google* to check the spelling of 'dunny'.

*evil Chinese censor-appeasers though they be.

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For the benefit of the evil search engines, this blog post is about cycling, biking, bicycling, and visiting public toilets in Dali, Yunnan province, China.