Interpret my comments as you choose BD, but allow me to correct you when you misinterpret.

1. I also saw the police at the toll stations - read my blog. I stopped at every police checkpoint and engaged them in conversation - no attempts to sneak past surreptitiously - I needed to do this otherwise I'd never have found my way across China. Navigation, when you are unfamiliar with pictograms, is the bane of every traveller to China. I repeat - something which you choose to ignore - that many Chinese vehicles, including police vehicles - do NOT have plates, and their non-existence was not of ANY concern to any police officer I came across.

Let's do some simple maths.
31 days riding * ~ 15 initiated interactions (by me) with police daily = 465 total.
31 days riding * ~ 50 non-initiated interactions (e.g. passing through tollstations, waiting at traffic lights) with police daily = 1550 total.

So, some 2,000 interactions in total, and yet not once was I ever queried for something as blatantly obvious as not having plates??. Seems hard to believe if the laws are truly enforced as you state they are BD??

I'm now going to take it one step further. On Day 2 of my ride I stopped overnight in Gui Ding and checked into a small hotel which did not know how to register non-locals. The hotel owner took my money, sent me up to a room and then called the local police to assist with registration. The four police very helpfully checked all my documentation, asked me what I was doing in China (answer: riding across it by local motorcycle) saw the bike, told me where to park it safely for the evening and then offered to take me to dinner. As my bike was by that stage locked in the hotel foyer for the evevening I was ofered the pillion seat on the back of the local QinqQi 150 police bike (yep with siren, lights et al) and taken for a meal of bozi. The police refused to let me pay and on return from the restaurant the police rider INSISTED that I ride the police bike back to the hotel with him on the rear! Hardly seems like they had grave concerns about my lack of a local licence does it?

2. As for your suggestion that I am recommending offering bribes, I take offence at that. Quite the opposite, I will go out of my way to avoid a bribe and take the real hit. What I am saying though, and maybe I didn't express myself particularly well, is that the reality is that if you are involved in an accident the authorities will not care about the insurance because insurance will take months to come to the party. Unless you want to wait around for months in fulll - or semi - incarceration whilst the insurance company gets its act together then I suggest you are better off paying out in cash whatever amount the police determine you owe to the aggrieved party, and then getting on your way. Yes, if you had insurance then ultimately the insurance company may refund you but if you are a tourist like me then you ain't going to be around in China to receive the refund anyway.

BD, like too many people on the internet you are too happy to throw around insults telling people they've got their head up their arse and / or they're idiots. Read any of my posts, I simply state my experiences and give my opinion based on those without calling everyone who disagrees a fool. Try and do the same.

I've been doing these international motorcycling jaunts for 35 years now and am not some wet behind the ears neophyte. The reason I've survived so far without any conflicts with authorities is because I know how to go with the flow - bend the rules when appropriate but never butt up against authorities just to be consistent with some western image we have of ourselves, or to believe there is one rigid single view of the right/wrong way to do things.

Garry from Oz.

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