Hello,
Still in Beijing. Each day we say we are leaving and each day we're still here when the sun goes down and we tell people tomorrow... So, we're leaving tomorrow.
About a week ago we payed a deposite to see what a cheap tricycle fitted with an engine would look like. It took a few days and when we saw it I wondered if it would make it out of Beijing let alone Vietnam, but when we told the guy we didn't want it he insisted that he made it for us and we had to buy it. I insisted that we payed a deposite to see the bike. I never promised to buy it. He could keep the deposite and the bike so what's the problem. After hours of arguing I said lets go to the police station, because I was convinced I was in the right. We went to a police office and they seemed to be leaning our way, but they didn't want to really want to get involved, so the said they are just an office so they sent us to a police station. At the police staion the shop guys got to speak first and just went on and on. We had a shinese friend with us (my Chinese is getting better, but still sucks) and she tried to get them to understand but it seemed they were siding with the others. It was exactly like the sceen in Lost in Translation where the director spoke for 5 minuets and the translator said one sentence and he asked one question and she talked for another 5 minuets. We tried to work another deal where we buy different bikes from them, so they don't take a loss, but the deal kept changing, so we ended up paying the deposite again to be done with them. The owner still wanted to throw a mouontain bike at me and swing a chair like a WWF wrestler for embarassing him, but his worker pulled him buy the arm away. He was a bit unhinged though. He started yelling at everyone his worker and the cops, so we looked justified in the end even though we payed more. Oh well.
The next day we ordered fancy new bikes from a catalog at a shop with a nice friendly owner who gave us a good deal threw in loads of extra repair gear, gas tank and lock, because we were buying 5. We've been testing them the last few days a few things need to get fixed, but they're running good and the slow bums I'm going with finally have all their gear, so I think we might really leave tomorrow, even though we've had great times hanging around the hostel. Nobody around here thinks we'll make it out before New Year, but we'll show 'em.
We spray painted fancy new paint jobs. My green turtle, pirate of the open road, is looking pretty stylie. I'll post a pic from the road.
Cheers,
Steve
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