Cycling the steamy highways of SE Asia

After 4 1/2 months and 3,500 miles of cycling through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China, looking like a noodle and a grain of rice, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and headed north to more temperate lands.

It was a period of my life when I felt like I was melting and watched T constantly wiping the sweat from her upper lip. In hindsight the monsoon was not as wet as we had imagined (although we escaped the worst of it by fluke of luck in cycling through Vietnam, which is least effected), though ironically the rain turned out to be the best bit as it cooled everything off and the tropical storms were amazing to witness. Nevertheless the heat and humidity did at times take us to the edge and we were saved from combustion only by consuming 2,000,000 litres of sugary iced drinks.

I had been to this part of the world before and had wonderful holidays, so had been looking forwards to this leg of the trip. Turns out that SE Asia on a bicycle is a very different affair. For a start people aren't constantly running out of their homes pointing their baby's bum at you so that you can watch it wee/poo in the gutter as you pass. As concerned planet lovers we think the Asian "no nappy" approach is great, but not something to witness on an hourly basis.

The biggest disappointment was the cycling itself. SE Asian countries have not developed a network of surfaced rural roads linking villages - instead all roads feed into the surfaced highways, so if you want to travel any distance you have to ride the major roads. Although at times these are used as much by buffalo carts as heavy vehicles mostly they are busy, noisy, dusty and sometimes dangerous - and there is something about highways that makes them less enjoyable than minor roads regardless of the volume of traffic. We did ride some lovely country roads but they were few and far between.

As if in compensation we were entertained by the antics of millions of motorbike riders carrying their loads of live pigs, ducks, chickens, cows, dogs, rats and pet cage birds, ; transporting TV's, fridges, washing machines, full-length mirrors, billboards, window panes and fully inflated paddling pools. Parents carrying new-born babies in one arm while they drove with the other, whole families piled on for a day out, teenagers cruising on the week-end, elderly grandmothers with walking sticks climbing on board for a lift to the shops, passengers slumped asleep behind the driver, children in uniform driving themselves to school - At times it seemed as if they were playing out their lives on their bikes.

There are few chain-stores and most businesses are family run, very often from the front room. During the day these spaces are dining areas, cafes, shops or motorbike repairs and by night the dining room, living room and bedroom. It was always a pleasure to make a stop for food and drink in these places; looking around at the family photo's on the wall, the offerings in front of the shrine, the children's toys and if we needed the toilet we were usually escorted through the house, past grandmother asleep on the daybed, to their own bathroom - it was a small but intriguing insight into their lives.

In Asia if one person is selling something there will be a dozen others nearby selling the same thing. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the roadside. All of a sudden, as if by magic, lining the highway for a mile at a time we would pass vendor after vendor selling exactly the same thing. Some of these were understandable - salt sellers next to salt pans, fruit sellers next to orchards, stone carvings next to quarries, but others seemed completely random. In Thailand on a quiet stretch of road we passed 50 vendors all selling steamed chinese buns - the only roadside bun sellers we saw in 3,500 miles.

SE Asia is also the land of Lilliput and when you are sat at a table designed for 3 year olds its hard not to feel like Gulliver. For a ravenous cyclist the biggest nightmare are the tiny portions of food - many times I had the patrons gasping as I ordered a second or third plate of food "no wonder these westeners are so big, look how much they eat!". It was surprisingly easy to forget how tall we were by comparison and then find ourselves shocked at how short everyone else was - somewhere in central Vietnam a man asked to have a go on my bike but I had to refuse him when I realised my seat was at chest height. In hindsight perhaps it was our giant-like stature that caused such an interest in us rather than the fact of being strange westeners on cycles.

Asians are as obsessed with having white skin as westeners are with getting tanned. It is this which has driven women to wear ninja outfits of wide-brimmed hats, face masks and arm length gloves in 40C heat. Often all that could be seen of them was their eyes hidden in the shade of their hats. Understandably they were shocked and appalled to see Tracey with naturally blue skin, out in the heat of the day in a vest top and shorts. Every time we stopped they would be over, gesticulating at the sun and prodding Tracey's skin - something they soon regretted as lathered in sun cream and sweat she was as slippery as an eel. Doubtless there are now wild rumours spreading across the Asian countryside that western cyclists are as slimy as frogs in a pond.

Thailand's King, Ho Chi Minh and Chairman Mao - I feel like I know them all personally. Asians cultural deference to authority has elevated these leaders to god-like status and in every town and village they look down at you from statues and posters. As we passed through dozens of places every day we were being greeted by their faces at every turn. On the TV there seemed to be endless programmes highlighting their achievements and every other day was a celebration of the day they were born/died/liberated the nation. Coming from a culture where authority is challenged and ridiculed it was hard to understand the reverence surrounding these iconic figures and their ubiquitous presence in peoples' lives.

But perhaps the memory of SE Asia that will stay with me most is cycling for hour-after-hour, day-after-day past millions of smiling, waving rural people living in grinding poverty away from the cities and tourist towns and behind the facade of rapid economic growth.