As I had posted a parcel of clothing etc to Guangzhou we had to make the 568 km trip to pick up it up so we decided it was a great opportunity to try the Sleeper Bus. Our tactic was to pay a premium price to ensure the best possible experience, so we paid 200 Yuan ($30) took an empty backpack and arrived at the travel agent at 10pm on Monday night, we were then escorted to ‘the highway’ which turned out to be the petrol station about a 5 minute walk from where we live and sure enough a huge new double decker bus arrived. This bus has come from Guilin so it was already full of people, after taking off our shoes and storing them in a plastic bag, we were treated to lots of smiles from the conductor as he encouraged us to make our way through the sets of beds until we got to the very back of the bus which was sleeping 3 people so 2 more makes 5 people lined up at the back of the bus. I took a sleeping pill and the rest was pretty hazy but Nick reports that he was dealing with a knee in his back and accused me of being a blanket thief (we only had one blanket.) Before I knew it, it was just before 6am and I was being told we had arrived. We scrambled around for our belongings and were left standing in a bus terminal that did not look like it belong in the third largest city in China, we anxiously tried to check with people but didn’t get a decent acknowledgement and there were no visual clues. Unfortunately we knew the hotel was less than a kilometre from the bus station so ignoring the taxi’s (they always rip you off anyway) we set off on foot, past the motorbike repair shops until we got to a freeway and gave up, flagged a taxi down, the taxi immediately made a U turn and after 10 minutes delivered us to our hotel. To this day we still don’t know where we were dropped off, though we suspect it was a minor bus terminal. My parcel was at the post office so we successfully picked that up, got into our hotel room by 11am and fell asleep. We had arranged to meet up with Marcus a friend from Harbin around 6pm so we found each other and board a boat for a Pearl River Dinner/Cruise, it cost 128 Yuan ($18) and it was great, the weather was perfect, after our dinner we sat on the foredeck with a drink and watched the city drift by. We had discovered that most of the shopping near our hotel was clothing and I am talking entire department stores dedicated to one specific item of clothing, whenever you buy something they ask how many do you want? So I think its primary purpose is wholesale, we got quite outrageous with our bargaining and were successful! One top was 180 Yuan, I said 70 and started to walk and sure enough I got it for 80 Yuan. Nick and I have become quite the bargaining team and are even getting good at walking off, we try to discuss beforehand what we want to pay so it’s not so confusing and really what we are prepared to pay is always going to mean a good deal for them. We did this after shopping in the mega pedestrian mall and decided to pay 20 Yuan to hire a 3 wheeler open air taxi to take us back, so we bargained beautifully and hired the taxi successfully only to find that we were then driven over a part of the freeway – OMG it was a bit unsettling to be jostled around with no seatbelts, crash helmets or leathers in that traffic, I’m not sure if my hair was standing up at the end of that trip from fright or the wind.
We spent our last day wandering around a large city park (Yuexiu) but found the views very limited due to the heavy smog and I also broke into a sweat hiking up a hill – very exciting for someone who has been cold for so long. What I enjoyed most about this park was all the activities going on, it seemed to be mainly the older folk but there were several groups of ladies doing the gentle exercise dancing (it happens all over China), lots of groups playing Have-A-Sack (and the oldies are pretty good), table tennis, badminton and crochet. I just thought it was an excellent use of public space, no one was dressed in designer lycra to jog around in technological masterpieces to achieve optimum heart rate.
To my surprise Nick decided to try the Sleeper Bus on the way home so we loaded the backpack to its limit and walked to the bus station, in fact the train station and several bus stations where only down the road from us. This time the ticket was 160 Yuan and there were only 3 people on the bus, the conductor showed us to some beds at the very front of the bus this time and we spread out over 3 beds and we had 3 blankets as well. The view was excellent and I just didn’t think about what would happen if there was an accident, though I must admit I didn’t feel unsafe, it was such a monstrous bus. We left Guangzhou at 6.30pm and by 8pm we had picked up enough passengers to fill most of the beds, as my bed was directly under the TV I was forced to watch a Chinese movie until I eventually drifted off to sleep, only to be rudely woken around 1am when the buses lights were snapped on an a toilet break was loudly announced, so that probably answers the first question people ask about sleeper buses, no there aren’t any toilets but they do stop regularly every 2 hours for breaks. I couldn’t sleep after 1am as I was trying to work out where we were, the road signs were too difficult to read as it was raining and the lighting within the bus made it to difficult, of course the landscape (limestone peaks) are unique to Yangshuo but again couldn’t see that far. At 2.40am we stopped and the conductor smiled at me and said Yangshuo Ok?, if only I had known we were going to be prompted I would have relaxed more. So we confidently grabbed out bags and thankfully the rain stopped for the 5 minute walk home.
