Leg 1-Buses, Taxis, Trains, and Subway Cars

---

Leaving our front gate two hours before our train left on any other day would have been ample time to arrive at the train station in downtown Hangzhou. This particular day however happened to be the day before Chinese National Day and one of only two holidays in which Chinese people actually go places. The other is Chinese New Year. We opted to take the night train from Hangzhou to Shenzhen then cross the border into Hong Kong to get a much cheaper flight to the Philippines.

When we first visited China in 2007, I remember looking at the flights within China and finding that on average they were no more than 30 USD, now they are around 100-150 USD each way. Inflation coupled with several years of 20% annual economic growth really has made China way too expensive. Let’s take into account that most restrooms still have no toilet paper, let alone even paper towels to dry your hands after using the sink to clean them. So how is it things in China continue to meet or even exceed prices found within the US, I will never know. So what this means is that trains are the most economical way of getting around in China.

In China train tickets can only be purchased at most 10 days within your intended date of departure. So in all likelihood, a little over the entire population of the United States is looking to get on a train during this holiday.

This story really begins ten days before as we went to the train station with two of our students. At the massive 30 ticket window selling station we discovered that tickets could only be purchased from the offsite kiosks. We headed to one and waited in line for over two hours just to find out that buy the time we got to the front of the line all the Hangzhou to Shezhen tickets were sold out. The line took forever since there was only one employee working the kiosk while two other dip shits hovered over the woman’s shoulder doing nothing. Keep in mind there were three separate purchasing counters not being utilized. To put things into perspective this would be the equivalent to a store only having one cashier available on black Friday in the states, only the busiest shopping day all year. We had to settle for two hard sleeper tickets, and not even in the same train car, that arrived in Guangzhou instead of Shenzhen. This was not a huge deal since there is a high speed train between Shenzhen and Guangzhou that departs ever 15 minutes.

I had questioned this ten day policy about the train booking and was given a suitable answer as to why these regulations are in place from one of my students. Apparently in years past people would buy as many tickets as possible and cause the tickets to sell out, then they would resell those same tickets for a huge mark up. I pose the following question; why don’t they just do what the airlines do and make each ticket assigned to an individual? That way someone could buy tickets months in advance without anyone being able to manipulate the supply and demand. I can’t figure out any other reason than some train official is getting their pockets lined somehow from the current situation.

Standing at our gate for nearly half an hour and watching cab after cab pass us by on account that they were all occupied we had decided a new approach must be taken in order for us to get to the train station. I had already anticipated this and previously asked if the school could take us to the train station, but we were reassured that there were many taxies near the front gate and there should be no cause for concern. In a slight panic we called a teacher who instructed us to get on a bus and head towards the West bus terminal, there we could find a taxi line and have no problems heading to the train station. His advice paid off as we were in a taxi about 30 minutes after calling him. In the end after some 27 hours of traveling by bus, taxi, train, and multiple subways we had arrived at our Hostel in Hong Kong. It was a great feeling to arrive in a familiar city that we both loved as well as to be heading out on our honeymoon the following day. We both agreed that we deserved some much needed R&R after our little adventure. That night we decided to get an early start by heading to Kraze Burger, one of our favorite burger joints in HK, to scarf down some tasty western food.

On a side note Kraze Burger was established in Seoul, South Korea and all the train tickets back to Hangzhou were sold out after we arrived in Shenzhen. W e decided it was best to spend an extra day in Hong Kong and fly back on the 11th.

---

Photos

Me reading my Kindle on a 20 hr train ride
Great investment while living abroad(hard to find English books)

Elyse supporting the fight against Breast Cancer in Hong Kong
Follow this shirt around our travels this year. In support of Jessica Coleman Strader now cancer free after 6 long months of Chemo treatments.