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Published: August 30th 2006
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another night in the train that was pretty relaxing. this time i had the upper bed end again no air condition (but since most of the shanxi province is on higher altitudes the there nights are cool anyway). arriving in tianjin i still had no real plan how to get to the fairy to dalian or how to buy the ticket. from lonely planet i knew that the fairy terminal was about one hour away from tianjin and that the busses would leave from the main train station. i was was at the norther train station. lonely planet also said, that if you are in tianjin it would probably a good idea to buy the tickets there. but the only ticket selling office i could find on the map eas the CITS, which was pretty far in the south.
i didn't feel like trying to get there so i took a taxi to the main railway station. looking around there i couldn't find the busses. a guy came to ask if i wanted to go to beijing and i told him that i wanted to go to tanggu (the place where the fairy terminal should be situated) on which he replied
that he would bring me there for 300 RMB. i laughed at him because in lonely planet i had read that the bus there would probably cost me 5 RMB. some other guys tried the same. i tried to ask them where i could find the busses amd they told me there were no busses. i surely didn't believe them. still, i was insecure what to do. i started thinking if i should take the train out there but there where such crowds in front of the ticket selling counters and i was not sure to which one of them i should go, so that i gave up hope that they would give me the time to explain what i needed nearly immediately. it started to rain. i asked a guy who was just standing around somewhere there and he told me that the busses where just around the corner. in the meantime i was already tempted by the offers of the guys who wanted to bring me to tanggu because one of them had alreay gone down to 100 RMB. still i decided to give the bus another chance.
around the corner there really where loads of busses waiting to leave. they all had numbers and i couldn't figure out which one of them would go to tanggu so again i asked someone. probably it sounds strange that i'm always hesitaiting with asking someone, but in fact when i write down here "i asked" or "he said", this is more than just a simplification. in fact it means using hand and feet, the lonely planet, a phrase book and probably something to write and still it's not said that the communication has any useful results. most of the time it's worth trying to figure it out by yourself and than just trying to get some kind of verification if your thoughts have gone the right way.
this time i was quite lucky and the guy i asked nearly immediately understood what i wanted and wrote down the number of the bus on a piece of paper for me. i found the bus, paid 5 RMB and 10 minutes later i was on the way to tanggu. well, tanggu of course doesn't mean fairy terminal. and at the place where most of the people got out i tried to ask the bus driver. after a while he wrote down a number (think it was 102) and some chinese sign next to it. i supposed it was the number of the bus that could bring me to the fairy terminal and later i found out that i was right. still i thought that it can't be that far anymore and just took a taxi. it was not really close but it was ok.
the surrounding of the fairy teminal was a really dead area. there was really nothing. i went in, there were just 3 or 4 guys hanging around there, doing nothing. one ticket counter was open and i went there. at least no crowds that would put me under additional stress. i made clear somehow what i wanted and the clerk (at least i think so) told me that there were no expensive tickets left any more. that was fine for me and i took the cheapest ticket availible. 170 RMB for 13 hours on a boat. later i started to think, that this could have been a bad idea. i tried to imagine what sort of place i would get for this money and the worst i could imagine was standing the whole night outside just kept warm by crowds of chinese people who couldn't afford another ticket. not very tempting.
it was 11 o'clock then, the fairy would leave at 7 p. m. 8 hours left to explore the area around the terminal. but as i said, there was nothing. i even couldn't find a place where i could store my lugagge and already thought about going back to tanggu but finally i decided that 8 hours of reading and relaxing could be quite ok.
i looked for something to eat. if somewhere in china there is nothing that doesn't mean there is nothing to eat. that would be less than nothing. and really i found a place just across the street where some workers were eating. a guy was cooking next to the street. i went there and all the people there were pretty amused to see me. they put up an extra table for me under a tree because it started to rain again and gave me more noodles with vegetables, meat and soja sauce than i could eat. it was really good food and i paid 5 RMB for it. amazing, but still i'm not sure if everyone there had to pay as much as me. who cares, i thought, it's worth it. i got a lot of stares while eating there and time to time i would get a big smile and would give one back. great country, i thought once more.
the rest of the afternoon i spent with reading, writing, thinking and just waiting. when i got on the fairy i had already had a lot of phantasies of how bad my place i would get could be and i was already convinced that going by fairy was one of the worst ideas i had had on my journey up to now. dead wrong! it was actually one of the best ones i ever had. i was amazed when i found out that the cheapest ticket just meant that you would get a bed very deep inside the ship somewhere not far from the machine room. there were a lot of great people down there. with one of them i got some contact. he could speak no english, his girl friend knew some words. but with the help of my phrase book again we could exchange some informations. i bought two beers (thay really have great beer in china) and went to bed early. in the morning i went up onto the deck and watched the sun rise over dalian. it was not a specially nice sun rise because of all the fog and the clouds but standing there somewhere in china on a ship and looking around i couldn't help but being happy.
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Dr. Orgasmus
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Danke fürs Hizufügen meiner mailadresse in die Verteilerliste. Bin noch am Durchgraben all deiner Einträge, aber was ich bis jetzt so gesehen habe, wirklich spannend. Schön dass es diese Seite gibt.