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Published: February 6th 2010
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Travelling - 2nd Stop - Guiyang
So, this train is our longest one yet - a full 24hrs. Andrew insisted on the top bunks (his favirote) this time and I discovered I violently dislike them! You can't see out the window at all! 😞 so when not sleeping I sat down by the windowreading - and also playing with some very sweet little chinese girls - must have been about 2 and 5yrs old, running up and down the carriage (them not me!) and drawing pictures on my e-reader. More than enough to keep me occupied!
We arrived into Guiyang at 7pm and found the hotel, with the help of a very friendly taxi driver who would not believe we couldn't speak chinese, and carried on talking to us before failing to find our hotel and dropping us off somewhere on the street, but we found it ourselves nearby. Then we went hunting dinner, after walking down a huge street food street with many livers and sheeps stomachs on display we opted for a local restaurant instead 😉 Andrew managed to order the spiciest lettuce in the world which he (just) succeeded in eating (much sweating involved) - spicyest
Some chinglish
The consequence of taking earth randomly is desert everywhere food in China so far!
The next day (our only full day in Guiyang) we had to spend the morning organising tickets to Guilin for the next day. and hit our first ticket troubles, no train tickets left! so we headed to the bus station and succeeded in getting our first sleeper bus tickets. We spent the rest of the day exploring a Guiyang's national scenic spot, a huge park of many very steep forested misty hills. It was very beautiful but we were a little disappointed by the lack of monkeys as the park is also famous for it's wild monkeys. It is winter though and I imagine they have found somewhere warmer to be - it's still pretty cold here (though not when climbing up the hills).
Our bus the next day leaves at 7.30pm so we have most of the day (though lugging our bags around) and it is raining, so a little bit miserable really so we decided to check out the museum - they can store our bags and it's out the rain! The museum turned out to be pretty good, lots about all the ethnic minorities in Guizhou Province, it even managed
A Kingfisher!
apparently China has the same ones we do. not to be patronising at all (unlike CCTV!) and we met a lovely girl who insisted on showing us round because she wanted to pracice her English and tell us all about the minorities (she was from the Miao minority). If anyone ever finds themselves in Guiyang she insisted on giving us her phone and email address!
We eventually made it onto the sleeper bus - real Knight bus style (for those who read Harry Potter), I'll put up some photos when I get back! Not the most comfortable journey though and only about 3hrs sleep as they had a toilet stop at 2am and turned all the lights on and everyone traipsed past. never got back to sleep after that, grr. Still, we arrived in Guilin an hr late - a more reasonable time of 7.30am (rather than 6.30).
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Claire Bear
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Knight Bus
Did you get a hot chocolate on the Knight bus and fall about all over the place?! Looks awesome though - I love the patchwork!