Chengdu,
Guiyang...
Wanting to
meet up with the friends we’ve made along the way, we decided to spend only a
short time in Chengdu & Guiyang.
Arriving in Chengdu, we could already feel that it would not be the same
as our past city adventures... but still looked decent. With not much time, the next day was spent
figuring out what our next move after Guiyang would be. It sounded like Guilin & Yangshuo were
the places to be. Nico (Netherlands),
Nicole (Boston), & Louise (England) were also headed there, & all for
the same week... Decision made.
Chengdu was
nice, nothing too exciting... We had met a few really nice people there that
made our time there great. Lonny from
Quebec, who had been away working & travelling for the past 4 years &
was on his way home to surprise his folks.
Joan & Troy from 1770, a town in Australia that came highly
recommended & now a confirmed paradise!
And Aleta, an Alaskan working in Mongolia with the Peace Core, now doing
some roaming throughout China & area.
A few of us caught wind to a mini-celebration for the Moon Festival on
the roof top. We each set fire to our
own rice paper hot air balloon (best way to describe it I guess...), &
followed them, eventually collapsing on the Sheraton hotel J
Almost
settled & familiar with Chengdu, it was time to move on. The biggest waterfall in China still had us,
so onto Guiyang we went. And hated every
moment of it... Gut instincts, pay attention to them! Finding a hostel in this city was hard
enough, but we did, so why not?! The
receptionist in Chengdu was kind enough to call the “hostel” to confirm that it
did in fact exist, that they knew we were coming, & how to get there once
in Guiyang. Thank the heavens she wrote
down, in Chinese characters, the address to the place, or we’d have been
hooped.
Knowing what waiting your turn means in China,
we threw our elbows up & tackled a taxi driver. He seemed confident, so away we went,
eventually pulling up to what looked like an office building & told to get
out. Okay then... We showed off our little piece of paper,
dubbed “life line”, to the building security guard who pointed to the
elevator. On the 16th floor,
we were thankfully greeted with “Mayflower Hostel”. After wandering through the halls, we finally
found a front desk. No matter how slow
& loud the lady spoke, we still didn’t understand a single word she said
(which I’m glad to know English speaking people aren’t the only ones who do
that to foreigners!). She passed us a
phone, & the voice on the other end told us everything would be okay... Alright
then. We pulled out some money, she took
what she needed & led us up to our room.
From all my childhood stories, I assumed all dungeons were in the
basement, but this one was on the top floor!
A classy dungeon we’ll call it...
It was horrid. The floors hadn’t
been mopped, swept, or not
spit on for what looked like centuries, the shower head straddled the hole in
the floor, & holes in the wall were incognito with the help of tacky wall
paper & scotch tape.
Ben & I
stared at each other silent, glancing at the various points of interest our
room had to offer... Then it was make or
break. We brushed up on our Mandarin
& bolted to the train station.
Apparently we butchered the language, because the ticket office just
waved what we took as a “No” & shooed us out of line. So we went for fried chicken.
Again, we
stared at each other while the restaurant stared at us. Sure that we were the only foreigners in a
city where apparently no one spoke English, we examined each Dico’s customer,
guessing if they would be the one to save us this time. Some younger folk walked in with backpacks,
twisted up hair, & converse high tops... these were our saviours!
“English?”
“Yes, her”
Turns out
these cats were off to Guilin as well & jotted down the exact train numbers
to get us there. We braved a night in
our high class room with the help of some local rum, a set of cards, & our
i-pod to help drown out the constant beeps from the streets below. Not kidding you, I slept for a short while in
my rain coat, hood up & everything, until I was sweated out of it! And Ben & I are the type who could sleep
in the woods for weeks... so it was that bad.
Up at the
crack of noon, we had a wonderful chat with my brother & his beautiful
daughters then set out again for the train station. Getting our tickets seemed a breeze once we had
the right train number. A whopping 50
yuan for a 10hr train ride, we knew meant she didn’t reserve us the comfy seats. Since we couldn’t let ourselves sleep anyways
(we had to keep an eye out for our transfer stop), we figured hard seats would
help to keep us from dozing off.
After a few
coffees at Dico’s, we joined in the frenzy, again with elbows up (we learned
quickly, that in China, if you give an inch, they’ll take a mile), &
boarded the train. Wow. This was nuts. People pushing & shoving to get a good
seat when really, it didn’t matter, our seats were assigned. Ben & I were across the isle from one
another, him in a 6 seater & I in the 4.
If you had a window seat, you were fortunate to get a 1ftx1ft table,
& if not, maybe you were lucky to sneak an elbow onto the corner (so long as
the other guy didn’t shove your elbow off his table!). I sat waiting to see if I had the whole seat
to myself... Nope. A lady & her son
decided that our 2 seater would fit 3. I
was okay with it, I’d find another place to sit, & had already accepted what
type of journey this would be. But
before I could throw myself a pity party, the guys sitting with Ben waved
everyone away & pulled me to sit with him.
Anytime someone came by to claim their seat they were told by our new
friends to move on! It was great!
“English?”
“No...”
What?! This guy could clearly speak English, but was
very shy. It took some persuading & eventually
he warmed up to us. Xiu Lie was a
University student studying Biology. He
was eager to speak with us because we were the first foreigners he had ever
conversed with. I don’t think he
understood just how happy we were too!
This kid was
our life line; translating jokes between my seat mate (a 5 foot nothing, 60yr
old man) & I, about our height differences, & how big my feet were. Ben & I couldn’t refuse an offer of, what
we were told was chicken. I “bawked” to
confirm that this was not a translation error... They laughed & nodded, so
to be polite, we choked the unusually dark meat down.
At about
hour 7, we strolled to the cabin link to let the blood drain back to our asses. We didn’t think anything of the guards
staring at us, as it was a usual thing.
Until the head honcho came over motioning for us to show our tickets. We obliged but he still did not seem
satisfied. Waving his hands &
raising his voice to the other train attendants, he pointed us to the other
cabin. We stood strong, pointing back at
ours, showing our tickets again. He left
us & went to find our seats & we quickly followed wondering what the
hell was going on. We could see ahead
that he & our new friends were having a conversation with a lot of hand
gestures & pointing at our bags & us, drawing quite a curious crowd. Rushing over we begged our friend to
translate. Put on the spot by all the
spectators, Xiu tried to find his words...
Eventually they came out...
“He says you
are very important people”
Really, that
was it?! Hey Zues! We thought we were about to “throw momma from
the train”! The main guy was saying we were “Ambassadors” &
shouldn’t be sitting in the hard seat section. (Ambassador could be a translation mishap, but
we’ll take it!). I glanced at Ben &
through my teeth (not that anyone could understand me anyways) asked, “are
there a bunch of people standing over me?”
He replied, “yup,
about 20... Me?”
“Yep, about 20.”
One of the
head attendants shoved my seat mate awake to squeeze in beside me. We had a basic Chinese/ English book, also a
major life line, & sat, for the next few hours, teaching each other our
native language, giggling with each statement.
“I lie Food ball! Hahahaha” &
“I a sicra argent! Hahahaha!” Every so
often, when the train would pull up to the next stop, the employees would jump
up, almost forgetting they were still working!
At one stop, they pulled Ben off the train to stand with them &
speak English to the new passengers.
Photo’s were snapped, weird jokes told... Ben’s moustache tattoo was a
good party trick! By the end of our
first half, the trip seemed to be going well indeed! I guess that was the reason we weren’t
supposed to get the ticket the day before.
It’s 2AM
& we’ve arrived tired at Liouzhou.
You cannot buy tickets from a different city, so we rushed to the
Liouzhou train ticket office to buy our next train to Guilin. While in queue, an attendant came up, cleared
a pathway in line motioning for us to go ahead... This rock star treatment was
starting to go to our heads! We politely
declined & waited our turn. He
didn’t accept & so took our sweaty piece of paper to hand to the ticket desk. No go, the computers were down. Ben, the sweetheart, stood close by the line
for when chaos started up again, to let me rest on our bags in the corner. With an hour to spare, a commotion started
up, Ben followed & managed to get our tickets sorted.
Our second
train apparently didn’t get the memo that we are special... But, we did get “soft” seats which could only
be considered soft if you were coming from a 10hr hard seat train ride. At the time, it felt like 10 inches of
luxurious NASA foam!
Watching
through the window as we rolled into Guilin in the early morning, we both had
that good feeling back. Crashing out in
the hostel restaurant, we waited for our room to be made. Wouldn’t ya know it, not only are we getting
to pick up with our friends Nico, Nicole, Aleta, & Louise, but turns out
the Spaniards are here too!! And what’s
the first thing they give us to say hello again? A bottle of Scotch! Yikes!
Ben’s off to
have a look at the city with Nico & the Spaniards, & I will stay up in
our nice, clean, trendy room. Cozy with
my Feist, tea, leggings & sweater (it’s chilly & raining today) I’ll
wait patiently for my ears to unplug.
The pain is pretty unreal & my cold is preventing the classics like
yawning or chewing gum to work! (The
pressure change in the train cabin was so intense that plastic bottles were
eventually crushed). Okay, I’ll stop
whining & let you go. As always,
much love to you all from China!
B&B
