Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Objective: Get from Hong Kong in the most efficient way possible (Read: cost and time effective. Read even deeper: NO OVERNIGHT BUS).

Solution: Take a taxi to a train to a taxi to a plane to a bus to a bus to a motorcycle. Yeah!


It all started at 6am when the alarm went off. We showered and dressed (though Stacey had drugged herself to stave off motion sickness, so I nearly had to shower and dress the two of us). Return key, hail cab, hail Stacey into cab. Arrive at train station and eat something wildly overpriced and wildly not delicious for breakfast. Wait.

Board train and take forward-facing seats. Listen to Stacey utter her first words of the day “Wow. I feel a bit more awake now.” Good. It’s now 8:30am. Arrive at Chinese border and begin the onslaught of delays. Message: “Sorry for the delay, but we will start moving again in just a moment.” If a moment last for one minute, then we started moving 120 “moments” later. Stacey has been asleep the entire time thanks to the “wonder travel drugs.”


Arrive in China and begin the usual China chaos. No lines, people shouting, total chaos. I LOVE IT and re-enter “China mode.” Pass customs and pit-stop at the toilet. Stacey’s mind is saying “yes” but Stacey’s tummy is saying “no.” Airport buses are all cancelled for “a special reason.” Oh how I missed Chinese “special reasons.” Cue the onslaught of taxi drivers promising a “good price,” none of which are good. Settle on man wearing plaid pants, a checked shirt and alligator skin shoes. He’s also on his cell phone and walking a consistent 10 feet in front of us, looking back every so often to make sure we’re still with him.

We’re now outside in front of a tienda that sells EVERYTHING, like most shops in China. I’m LOVING EVERY MINUTE. “Sit here and have a rest while the car arrives.” Oh how I missed Chinese rests. A small car/van/thing arrives. We load ourselves in and head out, handing over the stack of “receipts” that were given to us at some point by someone to “pay” for the taxi. NO IDEA. Still loving it.


Get to the airport two hours early and spend the first out the cowboy-hat clad salesman luring us into the “Guanzhou Airport Wine Festival.” WHAT? Security is a breeze and I decide to purchase some instant noodles for old time sake. They are divine. Boarding is a train wreck as expected. “We are now boarding rows 21 to 30. EVERYONE ON THE FLIGHT RUSHES THE GATE. I can’t help but chuckle. I am so happy right now.

The flight leaves thirty minutes late but manages to arrive 10 minutes early. HOW DO THEY DO THAT? Baggage claim is a breeze. The guy driving the luggage truck zooms past the belt - T-shirt rolled up to his armpits and cigarette hanging from his bottom lip - and pulls the pin, sending the bags hurtling into the wall. They fly everywhere. I am laughing hysterically. Stacey misses the whole ordeal. She’s still in the bathroom.


We get the airport bus JUST IN TIME and take our $3 seats. Stacey sits near the front to avoid upchucking. The ride is HILARIOUS and I feel like we’ve been transported into a game of frogger. Around the bicycles, over the cones in the road and through the road barriers, horn ablaze. Stacey is SHOCKED.

In Guilin city we have to transfer from this bus station to another bus station for our journey to Yangshuo. Mind you, Yangshuo is actually PAST the airport in the opposite direction but to keep a long chain of commerce alive you MUST go from the airport to Guilin, transfer in-city to a different bus station then backtrack plus some to Yangshuo. Brilliant. We meet Vivian en route, who works in Yangshuo. She offers to share a taxi to the other bus station and talks us through the entire change. I just observe. It has been awhile.

Our second bus is the express and we resume our game of frogger, this time adding in people walking (where, I have no idea) and a Yangshuo original tractor car thing whose outboard motor propels it forward at no more than five miles an hour. I’m secretly wishing I was on board.


We arrive in Yangshuo and immediately everyone wants to sell us bamboo rafting trips, nights at a hostel, dinner, jewelry and artwork. I text our hostel owner and he arrives ten minutes later to “pick us up.” We follow him outside and find his wife standing next to two electric scooters. Where on earth will our backpacks go? I’ve clearly been away too long, completely forgetting the Chinese ability to carry anything and everything on any form of transportation. Big pack goes on the floor, little pack goes on my back, I straddle the owner. Stacey is simul-straddling his wife. We’re off.

Five minutes later we de-bike and are whisked inside for dinner. It’s now exactly 6pm. Twelve hours, a thousand miles and every form of transportation later, we have arrive and I am on cloud nine.

--

Kyle Taylor

Rain Rain Go Away...

It has not rained in weeks in Shanghai and it hardly every rains in Yangshuo. Alas, we were delayed by a massive thunderstorm in Shanghai and it appears the rain followed us down South in what the papers are calling “the worst rain Southern China has ever seen.” Undaunted by said horror stories, we board our mini bus from Guilin to Yangshuo, bound and determined to have a nice holiday, rain or no rain.


Arrival and navigating this charming backpacker haven couldn’t have been easier. We located our hostel of choice (Thank you Let’s Go) dropped our bags, had a delicious western sandwich on West Street (this plays loves the foreigners) and planned our next few days. We would start – in the rain – with a cruise from Xingping to Yiyang on the Li River. This stretch is supposed to be the most beautiful and therefore, it will be so. It’s still pouring and I have this bright idea that ponchos will be better than umbrellas. “But I think,” Lianne starts. “No no, we’ll be more mobile this way,” I say. Mobile and soaking wet, that is. Just as we leave the restaurant the rain really starts in. Our guide to the bus has no umbrella or poncho and is all but running a 100-yard dash to the bus. I’m struggling to keep up and Lianne is falling behind in her flip-flops. This is slowly becoming the longest, most miserable walk of my life thanks to this brilliant poncho plan. Mine now has a gaping whole in the cap and the left side of my head is soaked. Lianne’s front buttons have popped open and her entire front side is sopping wet. Water is running into our eyes and to top it all off, we’re sweating buckets because ponchos – shockingly - don’t breathe at all.


We finally get to our bus to find that there are no seats. “No problem,” the ticket lady says to me in Chinese. “Right here. Right here. Right here,” pointing to the wood casing over the engine. Perfect. We pay our 50 cents each for the 1-hour ride and plop down. There is an older Icelandic couple (I’m not certain they were from Iceland but they just had this whole Iceland thing about them) sitting next to us and we exchange that “look” you exchange with other foreigners when you both find yourselves in situations you would never have even considered in your home country. This looks says, “yeah, woo, sitting on an engine. Lets hope it doesn’t blow up.” [awkward] laugh and [awkward] smile.


It’s a bumpy ride full of a lot of horn honking and pot holes. Thankfully, the A/C is on and we’re drying out. Soon enough we’re exiting into a sea of tour guides who are doing their best to shuffle all the foreigners together in one corner. From there it’s onto the back of a took took which takes us only as far as bridge. Then it’s a 15-minute walk through a tiny little village, down a collection of rocks that I would loosely refer to as stairs and onto a boat that is lined with house-like windows and floating just inches above the surface of the water. And it’s still pouring rain. Oh god.


Fortunately, the clouds gave the entire cruise a sort-of “ah-ah-ah-ah-ah” mysterious feeling to the point where I think sunshine may have ruined it (at least, that’s what Lianne and I are telling ourselves). Massive peaks plunging out of the water, ox fording their way across, farmers working their rice fields with pushcarts and hand-made tools. It was like stepping back in time 100 years.


The cruise ended the way it began – up some rocks, walk for a while, took took to the bus station, bus to Yangshuo, walk in the rain to hostel. That was followed by a delicious Chinese food dinner, some night market shopping and an ice cream. What. A. Day.

--

Kyle Taylor

This One Time, At The Airport…

Or should I say, seemingly every time at the airport something goes wrong. While I was more hopeful for my trip to Guilin and Yanghshuo with Lianne, alas, it would not be so. It all began at lunch. The storm, that is. The thunderstorm that chucked 5 inches of water down in about three hours. It was complemented by thunder and lighting unlike any thunder and lighting I have ever seen, and that includes the wild thunderstorms in DC and torrential rains of monsoon in India. I mean, it was raining!

We called to check out 7:20pm departure and the agency said we were “on time, good to go.” So we grabbed a cab, hopeful of a swift departure. We were two hours early (I have a constant, innate fear of something going terribly wrong with my flight. I do believe I have a trip around the World with United to thank for that fear).

Just in time for the first incident to occur. There are absolutely NO liquids allowed on domestic flights in China. NONE AT ALL. Lianne and I had spent all day resorting luggage and slimming our necessities so we could avoid checking luggage. Alas, not so. We puttered over to the luggage zone and checked our tiny backpacks. Mine weighed all of 8 pounds. Who checks 8 pounds of luggage?

Security line goes fine (you can keep your shoes on and leave your laptop in your bag here but you can’t bring an ounce of contact solution. Go figure) and now we’re searching for our gate. “Gate 9. Gate 9,” I’m saying as we walk past Gate 7 then Gate 8 before arriving at Gate 10. Hmm…Our eyes are reading everything in site for a clue as to where Gate 9 may have gone. “Mobile Phone Electizing.” No, that’s not it. “”If to over on, under and above.” No, that’s not it either. Finally Lianne notices a piece of A4 paper taped to a pole that reads only “9” with a hand-drawn arrow pointing down an auxiliary staircase. Super. Apparently Gate 9 leads to a path that allows you to walk to Guilin.

We leave the perfect temperature and calm atmosphere of the main terminal and descend into the depths of Chinese travel madness. This auxiliary terminal and hot and sweaty. Every seat is taken. Announcements are running constantly over the PA, repeating the same message again and again and again. There is no place to buy water but there is a luxury jeweler. A man stands up and we wedge ourselves onto one chair. A little girl in a pink skirt is doing donuts around our row of seats screaming and poking at people. She stops in front of us each time, looks at us as if we are aliens, sticks out her tongue, bites it, does some lamas breathing and scurries away. Donut. Tongue. Bite. Lamas. Donut. Tongue. Bite. Lamas. I am emtranced. The parents are nowhere to be found.


We watch the status screen as the word “Delayed” appears next to our flight. We’re now departing at 7:50pm, thirty minutes late. “Not too bad,” I concede. Lianne nods in agreement. We get to chatting in between lamas breaths and before we know it it’s 8:15pm. We’re still sitting in the waiting area. The announcer comes on. “For flight to Guilin, please wait a moment.” Will do. She makes this same announcement every minute on the dot for the next 15 minutes.

8:30pm rolls around and the woman mixes it up by announcing boarding. Then, all at once, as if there were fewer seats on the plane than there were people with assigned seats, every single Chinese traveler stands up and charges the gate. Pandemonium ensues. Pushing. Shoving. Wedging. Lianne and I linger back a while until the crowd dissipates. We then pass through and board the bus. I’m wondering to myself, “did we by plane tickets or bus tickets?” I can see planes all around us and I’m hoping this is just a shuttle to our aircraft. Hey, it’s China, you never know.


Our bus pulls up next to a plane sitting all alone out on the tarmac. Doors open and people run for the stairs, still not convinced that there are actually enough seats for every person. But wait, what’s this? There’s a hold-up! A woman at the stairs is rechecking every single ticket and passport, as if we could have somehow snuck out onto the tarmac, just dying to steal someone’s seat and offset the entire balance of this flight. Lianne and I linger again. The buses pull away and I begin to notice that we are literally alone out in the middle of the tarmac with nobody watching us or guiding us. We could easily turn and run in any direction. In fact, that littler girl in pink is doing just that. Donuts around the plane. Another flight takes off 50 feet to our right. I can’t help but wonder, “no contact solution but I can wander freely around the open tarmac?


Finally everyone else boards and we approach the ticket woman. She looks like she has been attacked by a pack of dogs. “Xie xie,” I say. Thank you. Shocked, she smiles in bewilderment. We take our seats and the waiting game begins. It’s now 9pm. The captain comes on. “Please wait for a moment.” Will do captain. Will do. The storm is firing back up and it appears that we have missed our window. Five minutes later they pop in a movie and I can smell food being cooked. The Captain returns to the airwaves: “Please wait a moment and enjoy some noshery.” Will do captain. Will do. The flight attendants proceed to serve dinner to us sitting on a plane in the middle of the tarmac. We’re approaching 10pm. We left the house at 5, which means we’ve been “traveling” for 5 hours and have made it a whopping 15 miles from the apartment to this airplane.


Post dinner Lianne and I nod off. Our plane finally takes off at 11pm after tow hours of sitting on board. We arrive in Guilin about 1am and our thankfully, so do our bags. Lianne’s is pristine. Mine looks like it was dragged through the mud for a few hours. We share a taxi with a French guy who was also on our much-delayed flight. We chit-chat while our driver spends the entire 40-minute drive talking – no screaming – on his cell phone, only to arrive at our hostel to discover that they have lost our reservation. Of course, there is no way of knowing what exactly that means, as there is no computer behind the desk to store reservation numbers. Just a giant paper ledger with a lot of boxes and lines on it. “You have reservation number,” She asks. “Let me get it,” I tell her. “I need reservation number,” she asks again. “I’m getting it. Just a second,” I say, a bit more insistent this time. “I have to have your reservation number,” she says again and again and again. “LISTEN LADY, HE’S GETTING IT. CALM DOWN,” Lianne says from behind me. She giggles. We look at each other, totally confused.

I pull it up on my computer and they look at me as if I have doctored some online confirmation email. “Do you not have any rooms,” I ask. “Is that the problem?”
“Oh no,” she says. “We have plenty of rooms. Only two people staying.” I’m thinking to myself, then why are you creating an international crisis if the hostel is empty? Out of nowhere she says, “Oh yes, here it is,” while pointing to an empty box on her giant pad. No clue.

All we knew is that it meant keys, which meant sleep. Which was exactly what we needed.

--

Kyle Taylor