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Published: November 11th 2007
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Today I ventured into China. From Hong Kong's Hung Hum station I took the 08:25 express train to Guangzhou. The journey took a couple of hours and was mostly a pleasant one, I didn't like the fact that I was facing the wrong way to which the train was flowing, I hate that. And also I didn't like the bit when I was given my free complimentary bottle of water and napkin to discover that my napkin had already acquired a bogey to it's CV.
So getting into China actually proved a piece of piss, it was just the next part of trying to find my way to my next destination of Guilin that proved to be the headache. My guidebook said that there were three bus stations surrounding the train station. I faffed about for a bit outside and managed to find one. It was all a bit confusing as everything was in Chinese. I then found what looked to be like an information desk of sorts and went over and asked for the bus to Guilin. The lady behind the counter spoke back to me in Chinese, I didn't know how to reply to this so decided to
Loads of 'em
This was the crowd at the first bus station. just stand there and look stupid, which wasn't to hard for me. Then she pointed back in the direction of the train station and spoke some more meaningless Chinese to me. I said 'Oh, ok, thanks' and walked away pretending like I knew what was going on.
I drew out my Lonely Planet guidebook of China and began to study the inside map of Guangzhou profusely. 'Bollocks', there's two train stations in the city and all the other bus stations are situated near the other train station on the other side of the city. So I went back to the train station and learnt that I need to take the underground metro train to the other train station.....of which I did.
According to the signs at the station when I emerge from the underground there should be a bus station on the right. Christ there was, it was like a Reading Festival crowd in front of it, it seemed like the whole 3.2 million population of the city were all trying to get a ticket. It would have been quicker to get a flight back to Heathrow. So I thought I'd try my luck at some of the
alternative stations before I even considered tackling this one.
So I faffed about some more trying to find the next bus station. When I found one the woman in the information booth took one look at me and sighed into her microphone and then spoke some more of that Chinese that everyone seems to keep talking to me. I held up the Guilin page of the Lonely Planet and did a man driving a bus gesture, she looked at me expressionless, like her face was made of stone and she couldn't move the muscles in it, she was scary and looked as hard as nails. She then looked away and picked up a piece of paper, scribbled on it and then presented it to me and pointed away from the station just as the previous lady had done.'Oh, ok, thanks' I said once again as I walked away still none the wiser......once again. I looked at the slip of paper which was all in Chinese, what the f**k was I meant to do with this s**t? I was getting a bit wound up by this point, she had even underlined some of the Chinese characters to seemingly make it more clearer and understandable to me, yeah well thanks for that!
I strolled along in the general direction to which she had pointed for a while until I happened across yet another bus station. This time I wrote what I hoped said 'Guilin' down in Chinese characters on a piece of paper to show the lady behind the desk. I've almost been making these journeys to the ticket booths sound easy, well there not , far from it in fact. There are people constantly jumping in front of you and if there's one thing I hate, it's a queue jumper. I think queue jumpers should be put in the stocks and bombarded with offal, there's just no need for it. But here it just seems the norm, I was happy that I wasn't the only person that it was happening to as the ones that were jumping in front of me were also getting queue jumped themselves. All quite annoying really, can't quite see the logic in it myself, queueing makes sense but it appears the word 'Queue' is absent from the Chinese dictionary. I think free for all is more to their understanding.
Anyway back to the ticket booth at the third station, I waved my note at the lady behind the counter and as on previous occasions was ushered on in another direction. So off I trundled to the fourth station and upon my insignificant entrance I eyed the characters for Guilin straight away, it looked promising. And indeed it was, I showed my wee note to the good lady and she served me well, along came a bus ticket to Guilin, success. Only problem being I had an 8 hour wait in the bus station to endure which sucked.
Turns out that I must have been the only freak in the city that day. Not even the crazy homeless guy who was trying to give away his own Yuan was getting any attention, I must have stole the show this time around, although I charged nothing for my freakshow, I'm good like that.
When the bus finally did arrive I took my seat in seat number '6' as my ticket stated. A few minutes later a Chinese guy approaches me and says something in Chinese to me. I could only assume that he was questioning my seat number, so I withdrew my ticket and showed him and pointed to the number '6' and then to my chair which also had a '6'on it. He then withdrew his ticket which also featured a '6'. I checked my ticket again, turned it upside down......'Bollocks', I was seat number '9'. Can't believe I fell for that old chestnut. Oh well!
And then it was onwards to Guilin.
FLOB COUNT: 32
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