Bare with me while I catch up on all my adventures (both of them) and try to find my voice as well as a regular posting schedule.
I had a lot of time off before my next trip. Well, maybe only two weeks, but when you’re doing nothing it goes by slowly.
I spent a lot of time watching movies that had come out while I’ve been in China, losing the weight I gained in Yángshuò, stumbling around the internet, dreaming of starting a business in China or opening a brewery in ND… when I should have been writing!
Second week in August: I went to the ticket counter with my Chinese sister only to find out that they didn’t have the sleeper that I wanted (for some reason all the trains I take leave at night). But I had a hotel reservation for the next night so I had to take the last hard seat ticket. For those of you who don’t know, “hard seat” is exactly what it sounds like. For added comfort, the seats are shaped like an “L”, no reclining! My ride lasted for 10 hours, arriving at 7am. I can’t say it was a horrible experience but my back hurt for the next 2 days. I definitely learned from it, book ahead and get a sleeper!
Not everything about hard seats is terrible; it’s a great way to meet new people (if you can understand them). The guy next to me was very friendly, tried to teach me a card game, commented on how strong I looked, and pulled on the chest hair sticking out of my shirt. Yes, most Chinese don’t have a lot of body hair… perhaps he wanted to know if it was fake?
The seats look like this and yes, people sleep anyway they can.
(The pictures included aren’t mine, I don’t have a working camera. All obtained via Google Images.)
I got off the train in Shēnzhèn and, because I hate taxis, I decided to walk until I found my way. My previous theory of following buses and people didn’t work in this city of 14 million. I thought I could still find my way. Keep walking, see a McDonald’s, and decide to turn away from it. After 30 minutes of walking I finally looked at the bus stops for any signs of help. I noticed signs for the metro (what I was looking for) above some stops. But I was walking the wrong way to the closest metro stop. After 30 minutes more I passed by a familiar business sign, “EF”. This was a company I recognized from high school that offers people a chance to study abroad. I walked past at first thinking I can just keep following the bus signs, but on second thought I go in and see if anyone speaks English. Of course, the woman at the front desk spoke perfect English. Though I didn’t get on the bus she told me to take, as the metro was only two stops away. Along the way, I pass right by the McDonald’s I was near earlier. Which leads me to my new way of finding mass transportation and popular locations, follow the McDonald’s. I found the metro perfectly but after the ride it took me another hour or two to find my hotel. I stayed at the Hanting Inn in Luōhú, which had to be the cheapest hotel in the area and with small but great accommodation (three in one, shampoo/conditioner/body wash, in the shower!).
I spent two days in Shēnzhèn walking around the city. Shēnzhèn was the first declared Special Economic Zone (SEZ, basically a way for the government to flirt with capitalism while remaining communist) in 1980 when it had a population of a quarter-million. I quickly found out that the city is actually one massive shopping mall. There is one building in the SEG electronics market that is 10 stories of computer parts!
Peter2 finally joined me to immediately head into Hong Kong. I derailed those plans and talked him into eating supper in Shēnzhèn because I had found the most delicious spicy pigs’ lungs (seriously delicious), we also sampled a dry hot-pot (I think the place was called “Chili”, maybe the 4th floor, in King Glory Plaza).
Just before leaving the city we tried to secure our transport out of the area. After two wrong ticket counters and an hour of waiting we found out they only book four days in advance… we’d have to wait. This didn’t bode well.
From my previous days of walking I saw signs saying “Hong Kong” and an arrow. So, we decided to walk into HK. Chinese Immigration>HK Immigration>HK metro. It was just that easy. Except that we had to change currency to buy a metro ticket (HKD44!) for an hour-long ride complete with 2 transfers. Ok, maybe two hours after we “left” China we were in the actual city.
We found the hostel (Hong Kong Hostel) easy enough and tried to settle in. But for the night, thanks to the hotel manager not reserving the correct room, we would have to share a bed. The first room was awkward; it was like renting a room in someone’s house. The second room was much better, besides two beds, it had wonderful amenities like an actual shower (not one of the “your bathroom IS a shower” types). We completely wasted the first day because we had no plans at all. I think the highlights were finding the most delicious coffee chain (Pacific Coffee Company, “The Perfect Cup”, they hold true to their motto), buying beer at a 7-Eleven (they’re everywhere in HK), and buying Cuban cigars.
…come to think of it, we really didn’t have any plan for HK before we got there. A lot of it was spent taking the metro and walking around the city (enough walking to permit blisters). The most annoying part of this was that every metro stop would lead you straight into a mall. So, after waiting on the metro for however long, you’d have to walk by the same expensive stores, mall after mall. There were some parts of the city that were very interesting, like Soho, that had endless bars and quaint restaurants, Midlevel escalators (longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world), and the area around the Walk of the Stars.
We managed to do the two most touristy things while visiting, riding a cable car up to the Giant Buddha and the Peak Tram. The cable car had great views of the airport, some scenery, and endless apartment buildings in the distance. When you reach the top, you’re in luck, a strip mall that weaves a path to a courtyard. Pass the courtyard of famous warriors, turn a corner, go upstairs and see the glorious, historic… 25-year-old Buddha. Maybe it’s the Subway restaurant at the bottom of the hill that made me cynical but, this seems like it was built for me to spend money. Word of advice, the water at the top of the Buddha is less expensive than at Subway. If I were to do this again, I would have hiked one way up to the Buddha and taken the cable car down. They give you the option to have a “crystal cabin”, where you can look through the floor of your car. We did this novelty, but you don’t see much below your feet.
Ohhh, look at the tower and trees!
The Peak Tram is the “Number One Tourist Sight in Hong Kong” and the lines proved it. Fortunately, it was only an hour wait. The tram is actually quite fun. It goes at such a steep angle that you’ll lean far enough forward to think you’re even with the ground and see buildings that aren’t on that level. And when you reach the top, of course, a mall (at least here, if you don’t like the one you land in, there’s another close by). We should have spent more time in this area, walking around in the parks but my feet were killing me, so we ate some poutine and got back in line to go down the tram.
"Gravity Defying"
The other highlight in HK was the food. It was all so delicious, like the curry at Rice Paper (“Today’s Vietnam” …I’m a sucker for slogans) or the curry anywhere (turns out, I love curry), but what hit the spot for me was the restaurant with NY deli sandwiches and Dr. Pepper.
English books are scarce in our city (correction, province) but not in HK. We spent many hours looking around Dymocks, a chain from Australia. I tried to find card games and Peter2 toyed with the idea of bringing back books that are probably banned in Mainland China.
While in one of these bookstores, a guy approached us and gave us a little flyer about a pub crawl. We had no other plans so we decided to tag along. I wore a hockey t-shirt because that’s the easiest way to find the Canadians and Northerners. I actually ran into two women from Winnipeg who know my friend’s sister and another girl from Minneapolis. We also chatted with some very interesting guys from Australia, England, and a couple of others who protested my Calgary Flames shirt.
The problem with HK is that it’s an expensive city, especially since we’re teachers in Guǎngxi (low pay). I feel terrible spending HKD300 on a meal (HKD48 for the water since they only have bottled) or HKD66 for a draft beer, knowing that I can have a delicious meal back in Yulin for Y7 and be full (though Tsingdao for Y3.5 isn’t my kind of beer).
Our other problem with money we had is that Peter2 lost his bank card and couldn’t get cash out of his account, so we had to try to make MY funds last for the rest of the trip. I’m totally against going to American restaurant chains in China but I settled with Subway one night as a cheaper option.
The original plans were to stay in HK for a week but after three days of expensive meals we decided to leave a day earlier. This was a pain in my ass trying to explain to the hostel how much to give me back since I paid for seven nights (they were “generous” enough to return HKD50 for not giving me the correct room the first night).
After living in Guǎngxi and a less populated city, Hong Kong seemed completely different, totally western. No jaywalking, no smoking in many public areas, no spitting, sit-down toilets, anti-drug advertisements, regularly cleaned handrails, taxi queues, no one searching through garbage cans for bottles… this wasn’t the China I had grown to love.
If you go to Hong Kong, have a plan. Do/see what you want to and get out! (Unless you’re rich)
To Macau: It was either: leave HK for a day trip in Macau, then head to Shēnzhèn to get a hotel OR to go to Shēnzhèn, secure a hotel and train tickets, drop off the bags, then go to Macau and then back to Shēnzhèn. To be safe, we chose the latter. This seems trivial to include but go with it…
After crossing back into China, they make a mark on my visa. Noticing that this is exactly what they did when I arrived back in February with my temporary visa, I compare my visa with Peter2’s. Turns out, mine is only valid for a single entry, not what I was promised by my boss. If I leave China again, I can’t come back. Macau’s out of the option.
The train to Nánjīng: there’s a site online through which one can see if certain train tickets are available. I checked this before we left HK and it didn’t look good. Maybe, just maybe, we can leave a day later and then get a hard sleeper. At the ticket counter there were no available seats for the next day, standing room only. The day after that, still just standing room. A day more, hard seats. We decided to take the train for ten hours, find a hotel in Wuhan, then get another train the next day. But I couldn’t explain this well enough… we were booked on a 25-hour hard seat (Y236).
Two more days in Shēnzhèn. It was cheaper and calming. Though we still had delicious coffee and spent a night outside one smoking our cigars we bought in HK (coffee and cigars are one of the best combinations, the other being bleu cheese and red meat). We had an amazing hot-pot at Little Sheep (chain restaurant, all over China, even in Canada and the US!). Since the Universiade games happened to be going on in the city at this time we also decided to check out team USA play. The only sport they were participating in while we were free was women’s water polo against Russia. After a 40 minute metro ride and 20 minutes of walking we found out the game was sold out. Great. We decided to do the next most American thing, Wal-Mart. We bought Cheetos (no cheese flavor here but steak, turkey, and milk), instant ramen, and other health foods for the train ride.
25 hours: We find our seats; I am in a row of two, next to a window. Peter2 is in a row of three in the middle. A woman across from Peter2 offers me her seat. I accept and immediately regret it. Now, I have nothing to lean on and more people have to leave before I get the row to myself.
The first 12 hours of the train ride were mostly uneventful. Around hour ten we start to play a movie (District 9) before everyone starts to sleep. Turn the laptop toward the aisle, crank the volume, switch on the Chinese subtitles, and get a crowd of ten surrounding our row (I imagine some were frustrated because of a skip near the end of the movie).
My favorite thing to do while riding long distances? Sleep. Melatonin is great but it’s too bad it doesn’t make you sleep in all circumstances. The woman who had a lump in her throat every minute, getting it out with a large *AHEM*; the men conjuring out their tar infested spittle; the babies crying; and the people whose mobile phones have an apparent low-volume microphone will all keep you awake.
Hour 18, a light at the end of the tunnel. A major stop has just happened. Many people are upgrading their seats to the now vacant sleepers. Standing, arms crossed, I stare in longing contemplation. Peter2’s row is now empty; he lay down to encompass the three seats, fetal position and his feet are still going into the aisle (he’s around 6.5 feet). The boy in the yellow Indiana basketball shirt to the left of me leans his head up to see the line for sleepers has depleted. No one is turned down, there might be more available. He gets upgraded. I watch his ticket being replaced and position myself across two seats. There’s only one person to go and I know he’s not going to the end of the line; he’ll have to get off soon.
Hour 19, I have three seats to myself and finally get some real sleep.
We woke up around hour 23. This was already 13 hours longer than my last hard seat and my back didn’t hurt. I was ecstatic to say the least. We spent the last two hours recalling the most annoying moments of the night.
It’s odd to think that a 10-hour hard seat would hurt my back more than a 25-hour ride. But, like I said, I learned my lesson after the first voyage. During my first trip, I spent most of the time sitting and adjusting positions to keep my ass from going sore, only getting up to urinate. On the second hard seat I spent at least 4 hours standing. My advice, stand as much as you can, stand until you’re tired, it’s better than having an aching back.
Nánjīng for a day: With the last train ticket debacle fresh in our memory, purchasing tickets was first on our agenda, besides meeting up with our friend. If only my cell phone didn’t run out of money! I conjured up the Mandarin for telephone and, thankfully, without much of a wait, met up with our host, the wonderful Nichole. There were two ways we could get our next tickets, wait in line at the train station or go to a proxy ticket office. We opted for the proxy. This time, there were actually tickets left! The down side, they were first class. Why is this negative? The trip is only six hours long (fast train) and it costs, Y600, almost three times what the 25-hour train cost. We have reservations for the next night; we had to take these tickets.
First Class! The seats actually recline.
Needless to say this leg of the trip was a breeze. First class was great (the first time I’ve ever traveled first class on anything) but it was not worth it. For Y200 less, the second class is just as good, it still beats traveling on a hard seat!
Next post: Qīngdǎo, back to Nánjīng, and a layover in Wǔhàn on the way home.
China Syndrome 