This was the first time Huang Chong had ever left the country across both his lives.
As someone born in 2000, part of the post-millennial generation, he had grown up during a time when China's development had already accelerated rapidly.
Combined with the highly developed internet, his generation rarely longed for some foreign world.
And now that he had actually arrived in Thailand, he was traveling with the national team, while the road cycling program's budget was extremely limited. There was no way he could treat this as a trip around the world.
As for spending his own money to go see ladyboys or something, that was equally impossible. The schedule was simply too packed.
He arrived in Rayong Province on June 11. By the time they had settled in, it was already evening.
On the 12th, he threw himself completely into training, because the men's road race would be held on the 13th.
As the Asian Road Cycling Championships held a year ahead of the Olympic Games, the top two finishers in both the men's and women's road races would each earn two direct qualification slots for the Olympic Games.
At the same time, aside from them, the other eighteen Asian nations participating in these Asian Championships also needed to use this race to select their entries for the Asian Games in Hangzhou later that year.
This Asian Championships was therefore packed with elite riders from across Asia, with nearly every country sending its strongest cyclists.
And for every Asian nation, the greatest common opponent was undoubtedly the Kazakhstan national team.
After all, Astana Cycling Team, one of the eighteen UCI WorldTour teams, was sponsored by a Kazakhstan state-owned enterprise and named after the country's capital city.
"Huang Chong, I've already compiled a list of riders you need to