A Little Break with a Little Errend

Flying back to KL, the mini adventure that started on November 2023 ended. It was a good run backpacking through China then continuing with a bikepacking through Vietnam. I had practially no choice but to go home by Feb 2024. There was a few crucial things that needed to be done.

Firstly it was to be back home for Chinese New Year. While I had skip this important family gathering previously, there was no reason to skip it since I had to be back during this time anyway. 

A picture of Me & My Niece Back in 2020 where COVID-19 was still restricting travels. 

Meeting family and friends catching up it was a good mini holiday from my holiday. A different type of feeling and one that had two types of stories everyone was trying to extract from me.

How as your trip and whats the next trip ? This was generally the questions asked.

After CNY I bassicly had to run a few errends.

1. Apply Visa for China

Slogging through the endless forms to fill for China Visa application then making an appointment at the Visa Center, this was the most important errend of all. Everything else I did in between but this was the key.

2. Tune up Bragge.

The top Cam shaft had a leaking oil seal so I had to get back to the dealership to fix it since it was still under waranty. Then it was a modification of the spokret ratio and chain. I change up the ratio to 15-41-428 instead of the original 13-38-520. 

Bike Jargon I know to most people, so the basic principle was that I made the bike faster by sacrificing power. I could now cruise at a higher top speed but climbing steep slopes would be slow with lesser torque.

3. Shopping & Packing up.

This time round I had new side pannier bags that I successfully shopped in Vietnam. My friend helped me carry it back since he had more carry on capacity that me and after meeting up during CNY I now had a new toy. 

I did much shopping as well buying sleeping mat, side jack, food container, canned food, and all sort of stuff to be packed for the long Central Asia road trip.

While I did No.2 and No.3 in between the process of obtaining No.1, I can say that effectively once I gotten the Visa for China, I had hit the road a few days later effectively starting the trip for a long long journey.

Traveled on: Feb 2024

How I Write My Blogs + A Broken Hardisk While Travelling

One of the many questions that friends and people who meet me on the road usually ask when they know about my blogging activities is how do I recall all the excitement and experience to put it in words.

It may sound like a dumb question but those that had tried blogging while doing a long travel stint or even video blogging will tell you that it is seriusly time consuming. It’s actually one of the main reason I avoid making youtube videos. The effort, time and energy spend editing the video would cut into the travelling time making one missing out the “moment”.

A Random Double Rainbow - Balkash Kazakhstan 

Hence I stick to blogging and it has serve me well for over the years since I started in 2012. Still those that follow this blog knows that I tend to have a lag time during travels and that lag time usually starts at one month and grows larger the longer I travel.

Recently in 2024 while in Bukhara my laptop hardisk decided to go Kaput. It was not a blue screen but rather a blank screen and there was nothing I could do despite all the online methods playing with the power button for 8 seconds, 60 seconds, flip the laptop upsidedown and turn it on, nothing worked to revive the laptop.

Why am I writing this?

Well just to give some insight on how I generate post for blogs and the agony I had to go through recently due to the Kaput laptop hardisk.

Normally during travels, I carry around my laptop and its not an everyday thing that you will see me playing with laptop while one the road. Nope. Usually it’s like 4 days to a week and I find a nice quiet spot where there is no major travel activity and I open my laptop just smashing away the keyboard on what happened the last few days.

There are times however when crisis happens during travels. A missing luggage, a fall from the bike, a hospital adventure, just those crazy things that one cant predict and it’s so emotionally heart wrenching that I would almost open the laptop the first chance I get to pen down my emotional trouma together with the experience.

These are the raw writing, which I do not care in the world what grammer is nor how the platiconic structure works but just smash that keyboard away to try and put all that emotion and memory into letters.

Next which is usually a few months away, I would start to reorganized the blog post. Many raw writing are usually boring. I almost always cut these all away. Throughout the years some of the more lazy post even get myself baffled when I look back.

Example 1

“Today I go to the supermarket and finally found a body shower that is just the right bottle size. I had been searching for this nearly three countries and everyone had only big bottle or super small bottles. You want the body shower to last approximately 2 weeks so that you dont need to keep finding new bottles but you also dont want a too big bottle coz it just takes up precious space”

Example 2

“No idea what I am doing in this stupid town. Moving on.”

So the second part is me reorganizing a raw entry or combining a few raw entry to make a topic for a blog post. i.e Title. This part is where I can become lazy usually and take a few weeks to a few months before it even goes online and since I tend to do the blog post chronologically, the time lag gets longer and longer.

The important thing is, regardless of how long the time lag is, with the initial raw entry that I constantly do during travel, I could recall my own emotions then and with photos taken usually the post would flow out somewhat.

Anyway this ranting is to give some background for that broken hardisk in Bukhara wiped out all my raw files from the beginning of 2024 up to Bukhara. Means that the initial kick off in March or April 2024, drifting through Malaysia – Thailand - Cambodia – Laos – then really starting the trip to China – Kyrgystan – Kazakhstan – Kyrgystan – Tajikistan is lost completly.

I lost a good four months of raw travel write up. While I try to recall as much as I could, it would not be the same. Arrgh ...

Traveled on: Summer 2024