Another city, another world

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Well, Im in Quangzhou, population 13 million, about 4 hours north of Hong Kong and I feel like I have accidently walked into a parallel universe. True, I had very few expectations, but this is still NOTHING like what I expected.

The train to Shenzen, the border between Hong Kong and China (I didnt realise Hong Kong was still another country?!? oh well, live and learn) was stupidly easy. I walked 50 meters down, pressed a button that said Shenzen, put coins in a slot and then two minutes later I was on a space age train with tvs and all, and twenty minutes after that I was in Shenzen.

After that it was not more smooth sailing. I had left my comfortable little port and had entered the stormy seas of....gulp.....China. Totally naive as I am, I was totally unprepared for it.

First I had to make it through the gauntlet that is Chinese customs. I lined up for half an hour in a queue that said "Foreigners" only to be yelled at incoherently by a man in a very official looking uniform. A friendly English man behind me said he was asking for my departure card. Once this was produced and stamped viciously I was ushered away angrily. Where I was supposed to go from here wasnt entirely straight forward. I just kind of bobbed around helplessly in the sea of unrelenting Chinese people. Every now and then I would come to a big yellow sign and a guard blocking the way who would point angrily in the opposite direction as I approached.

I eventually made it through customs, phewf. Next I had to change my money into Chinese Juan. Eep. The Bank of China had a deceptively helpful sign that said "foreign exchange", so that is where I started. The same process of nonsensical yelling and angry pointing began. Three queues and 45 minuts later I had changed over my $720 HK to 736.20 Juan (about $150 AUD). Now I had money I had to get on a train to Guangzhou.

This did not end up being as difficult as I thought it would, thankfully, as I was nearly at the end of my being yelled at quota. There was a big sign that said "blah blah blah Guangzhou blah blah". So I lined up and got a ticket that was covered with a lot more blah and a few random numbers. To get on the train I just followed the herd, an effective method that had done me well in the past. Once on the train it took me a few back and forths to figure out what the go was. I read an information sheet that helped me figure out the blah blahs on my ticket. Apparently it was allocated seating, but someone was sitting in my seat. I could feel the panic rising, I didnt want anyone else to yell at me. So I sat in the corner and prayed to god that no-one would ask me to move. The whole painful process would have been a lot less painful if I wasnt lugging around a 60k back pack that made me stand out like a lawn mower in a packet of Twisties.

The guy who sat next to me turned out to be one of the three people in Guangzhou that speaks english. He was genuinely lovely, and showed me pictures on his laptop of his vacations and his family, but I really didnt feel like small talk. I sat, with clenched and sweaty fists, for two hours and smiled and nodded although I mostly had no idea what he was on about. He turned out to be my saving grace. Amidst the chaos that is Guangzhou East train station he rang up my hotel, got the address, put me in a cab and yelled at the cab driver until the cabbie knew where I was going and promised to get me there safely. I had stupidly assumed that my hotel was just across the road from the train station and that I would be able to find it very easily after disembarking. Turns out that was I was at another train station, all the way across town.

Chinese cab drivers are a fearless breed with nerves of steel and the reflexes of a cat on speed. The cab ride was like some crazy arcade game, with stealth bomber bicycles and alien mothership buses swerving in and out of the screen all trying to annihilate me. The cab driver was true to his word, he delivered me safely to the hotel, but over charged me about 10 juan.

My hotel room is really nice (compared to the Hong Kong room). It is just a bed, table armchair and tv, with no windows and a common bathroom. But after my ordeal getting there it felt like the most wonderful sanctuary in the world. I stayed in my room all afternoon and all night, and ate dinner from the vending machine in the lobby because I was too exhausted (and just a little too scared) to venture back outside. I replenished my confidence by watching my favourite comfort movie (the three amigos) and by the morning I felt like I was ready to take on the world.

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