China

China 7/11:

Our trip into China turned out to be shorter than we really had intended. On arrival to Hong Kong we sorted out our train tickets using the China Travel Service... long story short we couldn’t get seats for the date we wanted so we ended up staying put in Hong Kong for a couple of days longer than intended - tough I hear you cry!! Well the lure of electricity on demand, water and the swimming pool at the YMCA International weren’t too much of a hardship.
The day of our train across the border, we spent the morning posting stuff home (Ed: not saying what but it should be back for Christmas, the markets offered surprisingly good ideas in a Mr Kipling sort of way!!) and availing ourselves of the free wi-fi afforded at the local Arches to send a couple of mails too.

A short taxi ride and we arrive at the Hong Kong train terminus – the kids observed it was more like an airport departures lounge than a train station. We were all a little on edge following the last Indian train experience however we find our gate and one of our fellow passengers translated our tickets and directed us towards our carriage - All good!.

One of our seats in our allocation was broken, but without too much gesticulation we managed to move, 2 ½ hrs later we arrived at Guangzhou. Despite our worst fears there were a couple of signs here we were able to understand and again the station was more like an arrivals hall at the airport than a train station.

This was where our forward planning might have bitten us …, we hadn’t got our hotel details translated we only had the address in English and everything we had read told us to have key things translated for the taxi driver. Unperturbed and armed with our point it book we advanced on the exit (Exit being the only Cantonese characters we can recognise... well at least I can find our way out!)

Our luck was holding and the second taxi guy we spoke too had reasonable English and was able to translate our scribble and we head off. The journey was about 30 minutes, during which we’re told English tourist are the best, go Manchester United (!?) and had the directions for the central train station translated (now thinking ahead!) we arrive outside a The New Pearl River Hotel … China - Hah what were we worried about?!

The guy at reception had no record of us ….. I always get this sinking feeling when computer terminals are swapped as thou the first was defective!!! Turned out we were in the hotel not the apartments, where we were booked, not to worry the bell boy was called and we followed him across the courtyard out the back to the reception of the apartment block. All done and in our apartment (2 bedrooms / bathroom / sitting room etc US$40 a night) it’s getting dark and we need food, in short there is little in the way of food near the apartments and what there was didn’t have anything much in English. Our littlest traveller was on the hunt for food and the fact it’s in Cantonese didn’t put her off and in the distance she spotted the Pizza Hut logo with Cantonese below and let out a cry – dinner that night was pizza takeout.

We were booked on the train (only seats we could get!) the next evening, so having re-packed we hung around the apartment/courtyard which had a good playground till lunch time. Now in daylight we had a bit more of an explore for food, nothing much had changed since the night before. Now all quite hungry, since we had only found Chinese style breakfast in the apartments, and thinking this is going to be a long hungry train ride. We walked into a restaurant, ‘Point Book’ in hand to try and get some lunch. Result the 2nd waitress spoke some English as we were ushered into a private dining room – furtive looks at each other as we enter…. what have we managed to order?
Raw ingredients arrive along with personal chef, hot plate was fired up and 6 different dishes were cooked right there in front of us – tremendous and a great introduction to really great Chinese style food (we ate as though this was our final meal).

There no fresher lunch!;


Fortified we find a taxi and using our translated directions headed to the central train station – the station is huge and here China starts to bite if you don’t read/understand Cantonese. After a false start going to the local section (well I guess but who knows it wasn’t where we needed to be!) we made our way out, (as above we can do that in Cantonese!) and progressed further down the block and joined the queue that was developing at one of the doors.
After having our ticket checked, bags scanned and now standing in a large hall will a fantastic display board but nothing in English so still none the wiser we stopped a yellow sashed person and after a short game of charades we were deposited in the baby and mothers waiting room – now before 25 min ETD. So we sat, I tried to converse with the chap sitting next to me ‘Hello, Where are you going?’, that sort of thing and I think we made a connection and he wasn’t going to Nanning, I say this because following an announcement he was gesturing to us to put our bags on and go … but where to was the problem. We had several numbers on our tickets 3, 14 & 6 all could have been platform, carriage or just a number to confuse the confused (it was working) who knew?

I stopped another yellow sashed person who looked at our tickets and then gestured for us to follow a man in military uniform… well what do you do … you follow the man in uniform. So bags on and kids in hand we follow this man through the throng of people in the main concourse up an escalator, through some barriers presented our tickets to be checked again and then stood on an empty platform – the train arrives and he waves us off, not before however explaining we need to look for carriage 14 (the only number on our ticket we worked out the meaning of). By the door of carriage 14 was a steward, who took our tickets and presented us with our berth assignments for this leg of the trip – 2 x bottom and 2 x middle. One of our hard sleeper companions spoke some English and we spent the next few hours talking and sharing photos of ours trips etc. He was a law student from Peking (we asked ‘should it be Peking or Beijing?’ He said ‘either’ but called it Peking all the time) who was soon going to Germany to study but was on a tour of China himself, he was particularly amazed by the photos of elephants and camels on the streets in Jaipur. The train departed at 17:00hrs on schedule this was it now for 12 hours.

The train was fine following that, with various comings and goings etc and we got our obligatory 2-3hrs sleep. At one point however I thought I had really p*ssed Rachel off, as at one stop she jumped from the train having mugged me for the Yen I had on me. To return with warm beer and a large pot of noodles – warm beer and no way to chill it I ask you.

Not much to say about Nanning we arrived at 06:00hrs we found our hotel - The Phoenix - within walking distance from the station to find we weren’t booked in there but had been transferred to the 5 Star Nanning International a short cab ride away. We had to wait 1 ½ hrs before anything opened for breakfast and found a restaurant on the 7th floor we could get toast and boiled eggs. After some quick reconnaissance we decided to keep going and spend our extra time in Vietnam so booked our transit to Vietnam (7hr coach trip) sought out the Wal-Mart for provisions and settled in to watch a couple of videos and catch up on some sleep, as we needed to check out at 06:00hrs to go to the bus station and passage on.

So in conclusion, we thought the tiny bit of China we saw was very enticing, and we would love to see some more. But November is too chilly to see the northern sights for people who take pride in carrying only 1 fleece and the lightest Pac-a-Mac each! Sadie is really too little to enjoy much of the trekking, rafting and climbing we would want to do, and is too blond and cute to cope with more of the megastar attention she received in 3 short days! So in Arnie style ‘we’ll be back’, when the kids are bigger, and we are not so travel-tired from weeks in India. Besides Team Edmeads need to be somewhere where they sell baguettes…….

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Love Team Edmeads XXXXX