And, the last day...

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Wednesday morning, we slept in pretty late, packed our things and checked out of the hotel by 11am. We asked Lily if we could store our belongings there for the day- a hotel worker opened a door and pointed to another door. Upon opening it, Jimmy was confronted with a bed and a sleeping Chinese person. Naturally, we'll just shove our luggage in here and not disturb this persons slumber...

The four of us headed out to get breakfast, once again at Jimmy's Cafe. Jimmy, Cali and Martin weren't feeling the greatest after their epic night of drinking, but I happily enjoyed my hashbrowns feeling just wonderful (don't worry, I stayed sympathetic, we've all been there).

We were all tired and sort of out of things to do, especially given their hungover state and my injury. We spent the day just lounging by the river, getting some coffee and finally eating one last meal at Kelly's Cafe. Kelly asked when we'd be back to Yangshuo and Martin resisted asking for her autograph. We miss you already, Kelly.

At around 7pm, everyone in the CTLC group met up back at the Yangshuo bus station to get back on the bus. We were dreading the bus ride, especially if it wasn't a sleeper bus. It pulled in finally and we breathed a sigh of relief- sleeper bus! Nothing could go wrong this time.

Martin and I unfortunately were some of the last people on the bus and ended up with two top bunks in the very last row of the bus. Picture a narrow uncomfortable place for you to lay with your feet basically in a little cubby underneath the head of the person in front of you. There's no pillow, only metal, and a blanket that probably hasn't been washed in 5 years. I was in the middle, so had metal bars on either side of me. Martin had one metal bar and the window on the other side. Luckily we were surrounded by other CTLC people to make the passing time more fun, but it definitely wasn't a comfortable ride, especially for a 6'5'' man!

We took off a little after 8 and soon realized the lights on the bus didn't work to let us read. Hmm. Okay. I tried to sleep. The road was once again ridiculously bumpy and I got some serious air in my seat every now and then. Sleeping was proving to be quite impossible as well. I listened to my Ipod and tried to doze on and off, chatting with people in the group every now and then. Hours passed. I was aware a few times of the engine dying and it feeling like we were coasting, so I knew we must be going pretty slowly as a result of that.

Around 7am, I woke up and thought "wow! we must be there by now!" It was supposed to be a 10 hour bus ride. I curiously had been sleeping for the past five hours and felt pretty good. Then I looked around. We were stopped. Lots of people were outside the bus. We had been pulled over for FIVE HOURS. The engine had finally died sometime around 2am and that whole time I'd been peacefully sleeping was because we hadn't been moving at all. Everyone else seemed to have the same reaction.

China doesn't believe in maintenance. They use it till it breaks and figure it out then. There were about 7 Chinese men outside squatting and staring at the engine as one man hammered on metal. Hmm. Martin and I peed, stretched our legs, and cracked jokes with fellow CTLC'ers about our especially bad bus luck.

Around 9am, we finally started moving again. The engine still didn't sound too healthy, and poor Martin kept feeling the heat of the engine in the part of the bus directly behind his head. We had no idea how far we still had to go, but the only thing we could do was once again read, sleep or just hang out. Everyone was getting hungry and irritated; some of us had brought a few crackers or random snacks, but hadn't been fully prepared to be on a bus for that long.

It turned out we still had a long way to go. Around 2pm, we pulled into a random bus depot and everyone was instructed to get off the bus and load onto a different sleeper bus. Apparently that was the mechanic place for our still-broken bus.

We took off again. Finally, around 3:30pm, we started to recognize Bao'an. Our group coordinator told us to move to the front so that we could be let off near our bus stop, well before everyone else in our group. The bus driver missed our stop and ended up dropping us off about 1.5 stops down, which meant we had about a 30 minute walk ahead of us. With luggage. After a 20 hour awful bus ride.

It was pleasant.

We finally made it home a little after 4 and collapsed on our bed. We knew we had to get to the store to buy a new hot plate and some groceries, but that seemed an impossible feat after our long day, especially with my knee still aching (which the cramped bus situation had not helped), so we opted to eat at the school cafeteria and do laundry.

Eating at the cafeteria after a week of amazing Western food was pretty sad, but it was free and easy, so we sucked it up.

And, folks, that ends our first vacation. If you read it all, I'll give you a gold star. 😊 Despite the injuries and the bus mishaps, we did have an absolutely fantastic time!

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Comments

[Debi]

I get a gold star. :) Thanks for sharing your adventure, the good and the bad.

[Mom/MD]

do I get the Gold star?
Wow...even your return was quite the experience...but it's so great to hear that you still rate it as a fantastic time...quite the adventure I would say!