Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang, China
November 25, 2013
It’s been a busy last two days without achieving a massive amount really. I was up early again after trying to get some decent rest the night before. My shoulder is still giving me a bit grief and lugging the big bag around the past two days hasn’t helped but it’s on the mend.
I spent some time on the morning refining my plans for Guilin and Yangshuo, booking hostels, cancelling them again, re booking…too much rice wine lately me thinks. I got sorted in the end though as I’m meeting up with Gary and Bhavik in Yangshuo then catching the same train on Wednesday overnight to Shenzen to hop across the border from there into Hong Kong a day earlier than planned.
Hui popped back to the hostel from a bit of mornings shopping and although she speaks no English at all it was a really nice surprise that she had bought me a few presents! A couple of lucky charms to put on my bag for traveling and some nice little hand embroidered coasters, really touching as we haven’t been able to communicate at all really so a very nice gesture. I had been out earlier and got us all a friendship bracelet earlier so I passed them round once Doc and Shua had arrived from their Hostel. They also had a gift for me as well of a little embroidered wallet. Hui needed to head off early to catch the bus back to Jishou as she had an early train to catch back to her hometown in China so Doc, Shua and myself headed out for a bit lunch before we caught the bus ourselves.
Doc and Shua did not have to catch their train back to Beijing until 2am the next morning so they had booked a hostel in Jishou for the night so we chilled there before popping out for a bit tea in Jishou ahead of me catching my train to Liu Zhou to connect to Guilin. Jishou is only a small place and obviously doesn’t get many, if any westerners there so I settled back into the usual stares from the local folk. It’s quite weird at times. Since Zhangjiajie I have had my photo taken with many random Chinese folks and families. People just come up to you and ask to have their picture taken with you. I’m not sure what they are going to do with these photos, maybe I’ll be hanging above a few Chinese mantle pieces that I will never get to see with folks bragging about their English friend that never was, who knows. Other times you get simply gawped at so I’ve grown used to gawping back then smiling and saying hello in Chinese. Most folk are fine and have a laugh when you do that.
I said my goodbyes to Doc and Shua after they walked me to the station and I really appreciate all the help they have given me the past week. I have met some very nice people on my route through China who have gone out of their way to help me. It’s great to think there are kind honest people out there in every country who are happy to help others no matter where they are from, gives you real hope in the human race. While waiting for my train I bumped into another familiar face. A Chinese lad who seemed to have been following me round since Zhangjiajie! He was in the same hostel there as me and I had also seen and spoke with him in Fenghuang….now he was in Jishou train station waiting for the same train and also headed to Guilin on the same connection! What the hell is going on here, over a Billion people in China and this lad is in three places at the same time as me, what are the odds of that? Anyway he was a nice enough lad who is a doctor back in his own small hometown he said he would catch me at Liu Zhou station for the transfer. Cool.
So my first train was from Jishou to Liu Zhou and departed at 8:30pm destined to arrive at 4:30am in plenty of time to catch the next train to Guilin at 8:59am. I had a hard sleeper for this one but there was already a bunch of women in the compartment when I got there who were trying to get me to swap to another carriage so they could all be in the same cabin. Fair enough I didn’t mind so was lead off down to the next carriage only to be confronted by 6 adults one of whom had her 5 kids with her and was flatly refusing to let me sleep in that cabin as it was so overcrowded. So back we trotted only to be confronted by another two women in the next cabin that they tried to put me in with who simply sat in the door way and didn’t want to budge. Nobody seemed to want Johnny Foreigner in their cabin and none of them spoke any English until a lad in that cabin arrived who spoke a tiny bit. Eventually I got in there and sorted myself out and had popped for a cigarette at the end of the carriage when what can only be described as the tallest manliest transsexual looking Chinese prostitute arrived right in front of me fluttering his eye lids. He/she…whichever was trying their best with no English whatsoever to coerce me into joining them for a drink. I had just about finished my smoke when one of the ladies in the next cabin who had been part of the cabin sleeping arrangement team turned up to drag me back off to my cabin. To be fair I would like to think I was pretty much in control of the situation and didn’t need saving but it was a nice enough gesture all the same. Once back in my cabin it came to light that the two hard nosed looking women who blocked my entry for a while were all mates with the women next door who had wanted to rearrange me in the first place….and this time following my transsexual experience they were nice as pie. Out came the phone and an English/Chinese translate app was downloaded and away we went chatting between ourselves for the next few hours, it’s crazy how it all works out at times. They were all really nice to me from then on and we had a really good laugh especially when the translate doesn’t always work as expected!
So after a rude but welcomed awakening by the carriage guard at 4am to kick me out of bed it was bag on time again and I said my goodbyes to the nice folks I had met and wandered down the platform to find Fredeck (what my new Chinese stalker had told me was his English version name!) waiting for me to go back in through the entrance for our connection. We had a good few hours to kill and were just having a craic when ten minutes before our train was due to arrive the board flashed up that it was delayed by 30 minutes, not too bad as we had waited a while anyway so 9:30am would hurt me that much. Then at about 9:25am the board flashed again to say the train would not be until 11:30am. I wasn’t feeling the best now with hardly any sleep and a shoulder that felt like I had done a round with Tyson but hey ho.
So finally at 11:30am we were let through the gate for our train….only to walk 15 yards and get stopped by guard as our train really hadn’t arrived. I think they were just trying to pacify us at this point. So we stood there for 30 minutes until we were finally released at 12pm to get on board. I would rather have sat for another 30 minutes at this point but at least it was progress.
Eventually a few hours later we finally rolled into Guilin station after I had been fed fruit and water by some kind of School netball team and their teachers who were on the same carriage as me. This is brilliant, whilst at the same time some older blokes further down the train had been playing some kind of drinking version of paper scissors stone…now that’s a recipe for some very quick drunkenness especially when its 50%+ rice wine that is the forfeit!
Once off the train I immediately bumped into a Norwegian girl I had met at the hostel in Xi’an very briefly, she was off to a different hostel in Guilin to me but talk about a small world, this is getting silly now. Fredeck got his phone out and popped his maps up and very nicely walked me to my hostel before disappearing to his own for the night, but we are meeting up in Yangshuo tomorrow as he is staying in the same place and I’ve also had a mail tonight from Gary and Bhavik to say there are a couple of Scottish girls I briefly met in the hostel in Zhanjiajie that I will catch up with again tomorrow as well. On top of that Natalie the Russian girl who drank me under the table in Beijing somehow randomly found me on Facebook today so the little circle is now growing into a rapidly big circle of contacts and travel buddies.
I like it!
I haven’t really had a lot of time to see much of Gulin itself due to my late train and the fact I need an early one tonight as I have to catch a four hour boat to Yangshuo at 7 in the morning but it seems quite nice and chilled. Great noodles here, probably the best I’ve had so far in China and they are apparently a local delicacy here. The locals here seem cool, doing their tea time exercises together down by the river and sat playing Mahjong in the little cafes dotted about.
Yangshuo tomorrow, I can’t wait.
