Welcome to the Real China.

July 15th, 2008- Bye Hong Kong..Hello Overnight Train to Guilin

We were leaving for our overnight train at noon so my main mission was to ship a package of my clothes and stuff I didn't need to the hotel we end at in Beijing so I wouldn't have to carry it throughout the whole tour. I found a DHL shipping point in a metro train stop. After like a 20 minute ordeal I ended up shipping my package for $768 HKD which is over a hundred American. I was a little pissed about that.

We met up with everyone in the lobby, took taxi's to a train station, then took a train to the border of China, went through a sketchy customs checkpoint, and ended up in the Shenzhen train station where we had to wait 3 hours for our first of five overnight trains on the tour. We ended up finding this weird restaurant in the train station to have lunch before we got on the train. They kind of took us through this backwards entrance and put us in the back. I ended up getting fried beef noodles. The translated descriptions of the entrees were hilarious. For instance you could choose the "The silver tooth shredded meat fries the rice noodle." Or maybe you'd prefer the "According to burns the chicken to dig up the sandwich." Or one of my personal favorites "The ham intestines young fries the double egg." It was hard to concentrate on what to actually order because the names were so ridiculous, thank goodness for picture menues. None of them really made sense. I took a picture so I post that when I get back. We waited for the train and played a lot of cards. The Chinese people, mostly the children, just stared at us openly. The best part of this train station was that it was our first experience with a squat toilet. These bathrooms made port'o'pottys in America look like a Ritz Carlton bathroom. You could smell the ammonia a mile away. People did all their business in these and did not really flush anything. It is basically like a rectangular hole in the ground and you squat over it. Just one of China's many pleasures.

The fun part came when we had to board the train. We were right at the coral entrance and as soon as there were like 5 mins out from boarding all of a sudden like 300 people just appeared and started forming a mob, there are no such things as lines in China. Then they let us in and it was like a mad dash. Meanwhile I was dragging my suitcase. Our train car was way down the platform. The sleeping births in the train that we had were hard sleepers which consisted of six beds, three on each side and they were solid, key the name. There are 15 people on the tour and one tour leader so twelve of us were together and then four others shared theirs with locals. Those were the fun spots. I was with the group but the ones sharing it with locals we also sharing it with a baby. You haven't experienced fun till you've seen a baby on a train for 12 hours. The kid would just cry its head off and then one of the group would try to calm it. There was also a lot of spitting on the floor and rubbing it in to the carpet. But hey spitting is one of China's favorite past times. America has baseball, China has spitting. Lights turn off at 10pm so the group went for a nightcap at the dining car. Everyone ordered beer except me because I decided to get a "cocktail." This cocktail turned out to be a milky, peppermint, egg type drink served in a small glass. It was pretty much disgusting.


July 16th, 2008- Arrive in Guilin, Bus it to Yangshou

Our train arrived at 6:30 am into the town of Guilin. It was early in the morning but there were tons of people standing outside the gate waiting for people to get off the train. This was our first experience of "real" china. As we boarded our coach to take us to take us to Yangshou. As we passed through town there were tons of people walking and squatting on the streets. The cars and motorcycles were driving in and out, there were no real lanes for people to stay in. The craziest thing was the motorcycles/scooters; there would be anywhere from one to four people on a single scooter. They would put a kid on their laps or wedged in between two people on the bike. It was definitely different than what I'm used to. We got to Yuangshou like an hour and a half later and were dropped off in the middle of the town. We had a little mix up on hotels and we ended up a Lisa's Mountain View Lodge. It was some pretty nice digs. As we drove into town you could see the mountains the Guilin and Yangshou are known for. It was definitely a nice site to see after being in the bustling city of Hong Kong.

We headed off for our orientation tour by our tour leader Dragon and our bike ride through the mountains. I figured this was going to be a short 30 minute bike ride around town. This turned out to be a 4 and a half hour bike ride with a stop for lunch in the middle and a couple stop for photo ops throughout. It was a little intense, and we managed to lose somebody pretty early on and Dragon had to backtrack to find her. One of the most notable events of the bike ride was when we stopped for lunch at the half moon cafe which was conveniently located beneath a mountain called the half moon because there was a hole through it that looked coincidentally like half of a moon. As we approached this cafe we had to go up a slight hill and all of a sudden there were like seven older Chinese women running up the hill with us. We had no idea what was going on or what they wanted but we parked our bikes and then they started to talk to us in very basic English and fan us. After a couple of minutes we figured our that they wanted our old water bottles because they would claim them for a return fee and they also fill them up with water and resell them. It was a little crazy to see these 50 or 60 year old ladies just hanging out in the heat to collect empty water bottles from the tourists who would roll up. For lunch I enjoyed a cheese sandwich, fries and a coke. I was pretty intimidated by the Chinese food selections that we could have had. We were also presented with the option to hike up to the half moon mountain (applicable fees apply of course). Not a single person was up for that. When we rode back I talked to this English guy name Alistair about rock bands and general pop culture for most of the ride which helped me to avoid thinking about the actual bike ride and then it came car dodging time. We had to dodge scooters, bikes, cars, trucks, pedestrians and other obstacles on the ride back into town. I almost got hit a couple of times. We were all pretty much soaked in sweat by the end of the ride.

For dinner we ended up at this very "western" bar/restaurant that looked just like a laid back bar in America. Sticking with my commitment to the Chinese delicacies, I ordered a margarita pizza which basically tasted like a frozen pizza. But they did have 2 for 1 drink specials but the one stipulation was that the drinks had to be the same kind of drink so Julie and I split some margaritas. We then ended up roaming the streets and ended up at Lisa's other property called Lisa's Cafe where we had a couple more drinks. On the way though there was a group of Chinese girls who asked to take pictures with us. It was quite funny. While we were sitting there, there was this stall set up where these guys were drawing people's faces on t-shirts. It was pretty similar to something you'd get at the state fair and they were only charging 40RNB which was like 6USD. I really wanted one but the lines were getting a little much so I decided to save it for another day.