Up early and anxious to see two things: the forbidden city & tianamen square. We found out, via two english tourists, that beijing has a well functioning subway system which runs through all the places of interest. More convenient than that was finding out that the nearest subway station was 50 metres away from our hostel. So, we all took the Beijing subway to Tianamen Square, anxious to climb the steps and be in a place entirely alien to all of us. As the sunlight filtered into our view i was shocked first of all by the sheer size of Tianamen Square (they say it is the largest square in the world... no shit !). Directly infront of us was a majestic red building with a huge painting of Mao hung above a large oval doorway. We found out, via a Chinese policeman, that this was the entrance into the Forbidden City. Without a seconds hesitation we all piled in, excited like children going to a party. What we saw that day cannot and will not be described in words... the sheer magnitude of the buildings, the layout of the temples, the narrow alleys to either side, the giant scale of the whole place, it truly was a forbidden city.
We spent the best part of the day wandering through this amazing collection of royal relics, each of us gasping at every turn when faced with something even more beautiful or amazing. Half way through the kingdom we settled down to eat some "fast food" chinese style. After eating what turned out to be a good meal we ran into the man who was going to rescue us, the person who china would not have been china without: enter Mike with his friend froggy. Mike is a Canadian who had been working in Harbin up north for a time and was now on his way down south, to malaysia where he was going for a well deserved rest. We started talking immediately and we walked through the remaining half with him, getting to know him and smoking cigarettes while the guards were not looking. About three quarters of the way through the last half, mike took off to go find the famous 9 dragon wall.....(or was it 8?)... we stumbled upon a STARBUCKS in the middle of the forbidden kingdom....?!... well.. after bitching about it for half an hour all of us decided we hated the fact that it stood there.. but an americano on this cold afternoon sounded enticing so we all went in and drank the blood of commercialism.
After seeing all that we thought was left to see of this majestic place we exited through the back and went into the park there which stretched up onto a hill holding a large temple in the centre and two pagodas on either side. The walk up the hill was amazing, so lush and colourful and when we reached the top the view of the forbidden city took our breath away !
We then left to go find food in the crawling markets to the right of the forbidden kingdom (right if you face it from Tianamen). We walked for almost one hour, contemplating snake, scorpion, baby birds, silk worm and so on, and then settled for a small shitty place in a sidestreet. We ordered chicken with peanuts and chilli piled on top of huge amounts of rice, chinese beer to wash the heat down with, and then settled in to be gluttons. Another great meal again, and we were off... trying for almost one hour to find an ATM that took visa as well as mastercard. It seems to me like china is mastercard friendly and visa fiendly.
Back at the Youth Hostel we met Mike once again and talked. Then we sat with icecreams and watched cheesy american sit-coms before getting so lethargic we opted for sleep.
We set out pretty early, found the railway station, booked our tickets to Taishan the next evening, mike was there also, then went to the subway, mike split from us, up onto Tianamen Square once again. We wandered along and across the entire square, watching the guards and tourists, taking stupid photos until we reached the other end where shops sprung up and curled into small side streets with markets and more restaurants. We spent some time there, purchased the worst cigarettes we have ever tried, then made our way to the bus stops to catch one that went out to the summer palace of the emperor. It took about one hour to find the right bus, after asking lots of people who gave us the wrong instructions. We finally boarded the right bus, at around 3:30 pm, found out that the journey was about one and a half hour by bus and the palace closes its grounds at 6:30. We were all a little disappointed at the outcome, knowing that today was the only day we could do this since tomorrow we would be going to the Great Wall, but we bit the bullet and accepted that this would have to be the rushed tour.
Upon walking in the gates of the summer palace an immense rush of wonder and excitement washes over you. I felt like i was able to see and smell and feel for the first time in my life... all the treasures waiting to be uncovered were behind these majestic walls.. and we had to hurry. We spent maybe 30 minutes running like ants through all the small alleyways, through the temples, up and down strange staircases, even running through a toll booth (since that area had closed but we wanted to see it) and ending up with the women chasing us, but not being able to keep up with us in our ascent the the top of a beautiful temple which offered us a view of the whole compound. It was amazing.
We then climbed down, and spent more than one hour walking around the lake that sits in the middle of the palace garden like a mirror banished to the ground. This was my favourite part of the day, watching the sun sink his face beneath the gentle ripples caused by the lazy wind. The sun treated us that night, turning into so many shades and colours that we simply sat there gasping at the changes every minute or two. I smoked a cigarette and wrote the following poem while sitting on a rock at the lakes edge, where the willows fell over my shoulder and slept on the surface of the water.
as the trees rested in the waters reflection i looked
inside, and found peace. the mountains looked serene
as the sun passed them to his bedside abode, the swans
graced the lake, frozen in slow motion when i closed
my eyes. all around the wind spoke to me, in the
trees, through the rocks.. through the smoke of my
cigarette, reminding me that i was not alone, but more
complete than i had ever been, more loved in this
beautiful desolation than i had ever been in the
company of friends, more understood by the waters
murmurings than by the empathy of shared souls, more
at peace with the sunset than i had ever been gazing
into her eyes.. it was here that i was true, in this
painting of blue cast across a golden sky.
By the time we walked around half of the lake the sun had already set and we walked the rest in darkness, staring up at the stars of China. We made it back to the entrance where we met up with fredde ( he split up at the beginning to take his own tour) and walked to the bus stop. We arrived back in Beijing late and decided to go looking in the markets behind Tianamen. We ended up buying lots of souveniers, chinese silk...etc.. things we would be proud of bringing back but hated carrying the rest of the trip on our backs. We ate at a small cosy restuarant beside the road, listening to the drunks insulting each other in strange tongues. On our exit from the restaurant a couple of men in the bar opposite waved us in to play some drinking games but we were far too exhausted. We almost got lost on the way home, but eventually found our way to the subway. Due to what can only be explained as tiredness we got on the subway in the wrong direction (this is virtually impossible if you have any sense at all) and had to retrace our steps and return at the next stop. We finally got home, the others headed for bed, i sat and watched TV for a while with Mike and listened to his stories about a night out with a friend which ended in far too much beer. I then went to sleep.
The day finally came for the highly anticipated visit to The Great Wall !!! We awoke no earlier than normal, with vague directions of a place we could definately catch a bus out to the wall. We had talked with Mike and he too came along since he had not seen the wall during his stay in Beijing. We set out by subway, to the station where we had directions from, and emerged to a glorious day.. sunny and clear. We then spent over one and a half hour walking back and forth trying to find this elusive bus stop. We were starting to panic as the clock was ticking and we would have to move off soon.. it was atleast a 2 hour ride to the wall and we were pushing on 11:30. Finally we engaged two taxis who drove insanely through the Beijing traffic paying little heed to the pedestrians or other cars. They both were intent that they knew where we needed to be dropped off, but our suspicions arose when they stopped to ask for directions more than once. We finally made it so somewhere that resembled the name of the place we were headed for and payed the drivers. We then looked around and saw a bus station in the distance. Upon reaching there we were told that no more buses went to the wall today, it had just gone 12 o’clock.
What happened next was one hour spent in the streets arguing with a bus driver to take us all in his 15 seater. His main negotiator was an evil old woman who looked like a witch, and she kept us much higher than we wanted to go but in the end it was the question: do you want to see the wall or not? and obviously all of us did. So, we took the van, told them we did not want to go to Badaling but somewhere less commercial. We ended up being taken to Mutianyu which was rather commercialised but...... not for long.
However, the greatest mix up happened when we told our driver that we would come back to the van at around 5 p.m. They told us they would only wait for one hour. We told them " one hour on the Great Wall of China !!" they replied that we had to pay them the money and they would expect us back in one hour. The old demon woman then proceeded to block the exit door of the van, thinking we would try to run away from the cost. Me and jan and sarah managed to force our way out but poor mike was physically man-handled (or women-handled) and almost hit for trying to get out the van. He then tried to jump out of the window but the little fiery bitch pulled him back in with the help of her driver. They then argued for a few minutes, mike telling them the whole time they would get no money unless they let him out... finally they did, he paid half and told them we would pay the rest when we got back to Beijing, and they were almost satisfied. The old lady still followed us all the way up the hill telling the passers by that we were trying to rip them off, and that we had to be back in one hour. We finally made it to the gate where she could no longer follow us, proceeded to obtain student discounts for showing our danish medical cards, or blockbuster video cards, and started up.
The ascent up to the wall was enough to almost paralyse us... we were not in the greatest shape, but the astounding beauty and the exhileration that we were on the Great Wall of China was enough to dispel any tiredness. We spent almost 4 hours roaming along the wall... until we reached the end of the upkept part, to the left of the entrance. There was a big sign saying it was dangerous to go any further, but the day before we had heard from two dutch men that the best part of the wall was when you went to the left at Mutianyu and continued past the danger signs. They told us it was very rough and the wall was crumbling in many places, but the scenery was breathtaking. So, while sarah stayed on the wall, sitting in the sunshine, us boys went scrambling up past the safety sign, onto unchartered territory. The sights that came our way after leaving the path are undescribable.. the sheer wildness of the wall.. the bushes covering four fifths of the path, the crumbling wall to both sides, the weeds grown higher than us in many places... it all seemed like we were exploring a hidden kingdom, until we saw candy wrappers and some coke cans. Nevertheless, the scenery was amazing, so serene and majestic. We stood on the path and picked a point we would walk to before turning back, but every time we reached our point it looked prettier beyond. So we continued walking for hours, just soaking up the sun and the views and stopping now and then for the occasional cigarette. We finally made our stop where it got too wild to walk any more, and sat for a while, placing small objects in a tower to see if they would be there next time we came back. We then started the descent back to sarah, who had been sitting patiently on the tower below the sign. As we reached the tower we decided it time to go back, so we started the LONG walk back along the wall to where the path led down. On our way back we noticed that there was a tubogan that ran down the hill to the car park, so we all dug into our pockets and decided to be tourists for once and do something commercial. It was a riot... we went shooting down so fast, wondering the whole time if this chinese construction would hold us. It did. Sarah came down ten minutes later having reached maximum speeds of up to seven miles per hour.
upon returning to the van we found our "drivers" rather agitated... anxious to get back to beijing. We were too. Before the dropped us off the old lady got off, obviously at her village, with the biggest smile on her face.. we knew we had payed far too much, but they also knew how desperate we were to see the wall, and up the price went. We reached Tianamen Square and were about to exit the bus when episode 2 happened, this time the driver would not let us out before we payed the money. We argued with him for a good while before he moved out of the way and we payed him his cash on the side of the street. Poor bastard, must have been ripped off alot before to be so paranoid.
We reached the hostel, packed our things and went to the train station with Mike. We boarded a train to Taishan, and lay back to imagine what would greet our eyes the next morning.
We arrived pretty early in Taishan, and as soon as we emptied out of the station we could see the holy mountain infront of us. It had a mysterious glow in the morning light, and seemed all the more enchanting. We decided on renting a shitty hotel room for a day just to keep all our things in, and then go to the mountain. We found a real shithole and parked our things. The we managed to find a taxi that would take us all the way to the beginning of the 6000 steps that led up taishan, for a good price. The excitement grew.
Reaching the entrance Jan suddenly got a sharp pain in one of his knees which was so bad that he had to give up on climbing the mountain and stayed at the bottom. We all felt totally bummed about it, but we were here only for the day so we said our goodbyes and started climbing. It went pretty well for the first half hour, lots of easy steps with trees all over and small brooks driving their way downhill. None of us had eaten anything that day, so after about an hour we stopped at a small shack and had some noodles. This refreshed us, so we continued on... intent on making it to the top.
The climb was hell. Never in my mind could I imagine how many steps 6000 were when all piled together, steeply and without having eaten anything of substance, but the tiredness started hitting at perhaps the 1000th step. There were no signs as to how far we had climbed, so we continued on, making stops now and then and regrouping. Mike wandered up ahead while fredde and I took turns in being last since we were the most unfit (and remember we had climbed the great wall for many hours the day before... but so had mike...) After claiming that we were about to have heart-attacks more times than i can remember we reached the half way point. Neither fredde, mike or myself could understand how it was only half way, we had been climbing for hours and were absolutely drained. We then looked in the distance and saw the top of the mountain and fear gripped us. The half way point had been the "easy" part, what lay ahead of us was thousands of steps going straight up a mountain face, with virtually no level parts as we had come to appreciate on the way up here.
Since fredde had been feeling sick the night on the train he decided that half way was enough, but mike and I wanted to taste the air ontop of the mountain. So, we left... worn out and without the faintest clue if we would make it.
The most discouraging thing while climbing Taishan is watching all the people descending, those who have already been where you are aching to go, and also the amount of old people coming down shook our pride and made us hold in our gasps for air as we passed them. We then decided that this was obtainable and we actually quickened our pace and fell into a good, steady rhythm.
I cannot remember how long it took us to reach the top, but we did.. after many stops to drink red bull, and many breaks to look behind us at the amazing nature that paved its way down the mountain. It is indeed a holy place, perhaps not because of the temple ontop but simply because of the beauty that has been enstowed upon its path up. Upon reaching the top we looked at each other with triumphant smiles, only to find there was another path leading to the right which added another couple hundred steps onto our tally. The top was actually not where we thought it had been. We stood for a good half hour looking at the view from the mountain top and talking to some tourists, before we decided to go and have a chinese beer to celebrate. We found a small bar and proceeded to drown a bottle or two, on almost empty stomachs. We felt warm and even happier.
The restaurant became pretty cold and we decided it time to return, since jan would be bored to death if we had stayed up there any longer. We felt a great sense of accomplishment and pride being the ones on the way down now, smiling at all of those toiling on their way up, briefly telling other tourists that the top is not where they think it is but to the side, enjoying ourselves and drinking more red bull. We literally ended up running down the mountain, which was scary and insanely fun at the same time.. a slip could be the end of you, but the exhileration of running on those steep, narrow steps was too much to miss. We made it back to the half way point only to encounter fredde and sarah. Sarah had stayed at the bottom with Jan, but later had decided to walk up and try to catch us. She had made it half way really quick because she met fredde just after we had left to the summit. They had both gone up a path to another temple which sat up in the hills beside the half way point and both said that it was beautiful. We were happy to see them and started blabbing about the top and how glorious it was. After a while they decided to take the bus down, and asked us to join them but we both had climbed all the way up, so we surely wanted to make it all the way down also. They left on the bus and mike and I slugged a quick beer at the roadside, and started.
Again, we ended up running down the mountain, enjoying the views and stopping to drink or rest once in a while. As we drew closer to the gates at the entrance i remember feeling sad, knowing that all those views and experiences were now behind us, and only left to camera and memory.
At the bottom we met up with Jan and the gang and went to eat somewhere. We then returned to the hotel and collected our things in time to board the train for Xi’ an.
Due to the late booking that we made we were only able to secure hard seaters for the 17 hour trip. We thought nothing of it until we actually boarded the train and saw where we would be sitting for the next day. The hard seater compartment contains 4 seats in one booth, two people facing two people with a table inbetween. The table however is so close to the seats that people with long legs (myself, mike and sarah) were doomed to suffer a most uncomfortable night. Also, the chair backs rose straight up, with no lean at all.. so sleeping or leaning back was an impossibility. We spent the next 17 hours of our lives in this crowded compartment with shouting and screaming the whole night, conductors coming through to re-arrange all the baggage to his own symetrical liking. It was an experience.
As i look back on it i remember nothing about the uncomfort of the ride, only the fun..like walking to the food cart and eating noodles and drinking beer.. and just sitting and laughing at all the drama around us. As the sun fell, i popped a sleeping pill and i was gone, pretty much for the whole night, except for waking up to position my head better on the table where 3 other heads were fighting for space. Later on we learned from the lonely planet that there is a section written about hard seaters, it says: only really experienced backpackers can handle the hard seater for up to 5 hours. We did 17, thanks lonely planet for making us look cool....!! hehe
About 12 months prior to this trip I was sitting in a restaurant in Goa talking to a backpacker who was describing his trip to China. He went on an on about the Forbidden city in Beijing, the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the mountain of Taishan... and finally the Terracotta Army of Xi’ an.
I sat there thinking of all the places he was describing and felt a pang of jealousy. Sure enough I have travelled alot in my life, more than most people, but these places he made sound so amazing, so full of mystique and charm, i decided then that I had to visit china, and then one year later, totally unplanned, i was in china and had already seen all but one of the places he had described. So, it was with immense excitement that I exited the train in Xi’ an.
We thankfully found a left-luggage stand at the train station and dumped all our bags there before wandering off into the streets to eat at KFC ?? god knows why?
This time we managed to figure out the bus system, and made our way out to the site where they had dug up the soldiers. We spent the remainder of the day looking at the different areas where they had uncovered this vast army, it was a spectacular sight, although I must admit that the things we had seen prior to Xi’ an made it fade in comparison
On our way out of the area we succumbed to every tourists weakness and bought lots of small figures resembling the warriors before boarding the last bus back to Xi’an. We were to travel down to Quelin that night but the trains did not run as expected and we found out that we were forced to spend the night in Xi’an.
After an hour of contemplating different restaurants mike had the great idea of heading to the muslim district to eat kebab meat. This sounded like an exciting meal, so we headed to the muslim district and found a street vendor with some stools on the sidewalk and a table. We sat down on the sidewalk and ordered lamb and beef grilled on bicycle spokes over coals. The meat was the most amazing food we had ever had, the flavours and aromas sent all of us into a frenzy, we simply could not get enough of it. We washed all of it down with beer and ended up counting about 60-70 sticks at the end of the night. It was the best meal i had eaten for a long time, and we ate the meat with large round breads heated over the same coals and laden with lots of spices. Delicious.
The night was to be spent in Xi’an and we had no clue where to sleep, so we ended up staying out pretty late, going to markets and such, until we found an ATM booth which was on where you slide your card outside and then get let into a large room with many machines. Well, after a moment of deliberation we all decided it was a good enough place to sleep, so we all piled in and lay down on the marble floor. It was the coldest night of my life, since we had left all our backpacks at the station and were only wearing t-shirts. Morning could not have come a second too fast, and when it did we all raced to the station, got our bags back and started piling on the clothes.
The next hour was spent on the station steps drinking red bull and smoking cigarettes waiting for the train to Quelin. The journey was approximately 30 hours but we had managed to reserve sleepers so the journey went by without a moment of discomfort. I spent most of the time looking out of the train window at the amazing nature. Darkness crept in and we all fell asleep to the rocking of the train.
Sometime in the afternoon we arrived in Quelin. We were hungry, as we had only eaten noodles on the train, so we decided to book our bus tickets to Yungshao and head off to eat. We found tickets for a bus that was leaving in an hour. In a small side street we found a restaurant with an average prices menu. On our way in we spotted three snakes in a basket coiled ontop of each other... a shiver of excitement ran through us. Inside we simply could not overcome the urge to order snake, none of us had ever had snake before and we all wanted to. So, we went outside, picked our snake, the cook then beheaded the little serpant infront of us, ripped out its intestines and took it into the kitchen to boil it in a soup. We all sat around the table, anxious to try it and also sick at seeing the thing killed a few minutes before. The snake came, a few anxious looks into the soup bowl and we were in... all of us slowly pulling out our piece and raising it to our mouths while searching the faces of the other on the table to see their reactions. It tasted bloooooody good. Infact we ended up arguing over the last few pieces since all of us liked the taste so much, it was a mixture between chicken and fish but had such a tender consistency that we found ourselves scraping it of the bone.
We had also ordered other dishes which rested on the side until the snake was in our stomachs and we realised we were still hungry. So, the meal passed and we found ourselves on a bus to yungshou... off to see what movies had captured in widescreen, but we were about to see these amazing hills with our own eyes.
The ride was one of the most perfect bus rides i have ever experienced. The nature outside was immensely beautiful, and suddenly these green hills started appearing all over the landscape. I had always thought that there would be perhaps a few of them clustered together, but they stretched on and on as far as the eye could see. We eventually ended up in Yungshou, just a little after sunset so that the light of dusk was still in the air. We found a hotel immediately, opposite the bus stand, it was called something like the good companion holiday hotel. The rooms were great and cheap, so we crashed for a while and then set out to find somewhere to eat dinner.
Drifters became our spot during our two days in Yungshou... they had amazing food and a great atmosphere, but most of all: belgian beers !! Jan and I could not believe it when we walked in there to see Hoegarden and Leffe lined up along the wall. We ate all our meals there, and the first night was fantastic, we ordered chinese chicken curry which was some of the best food we could remember.
Morning came, along with the first truly warm shower we had experienced since Beijing.. what a great feeling to come out of it and feel truly clean ! Then i walked down to the restaurant street, ate a great breakfast, drank lots of coffee, and took a trip around the town walking down sidestreets and market alleys. Yungshou is an amazing place, a sort of mecca for backpackers and yet even though it contains alot of places aimed at the tourist it takes only one street corner before you are in "real china" with busy markets and street vendours making squid on sticks. I spent the whole day by myself which was an amazing feeling after having been together with everyone the past few weeks. I also stumbled upon two cd stores where they sold awesome cds for a dollar a piece. I must have bought eleven or twelve... and they even had the jesus and mary chain !! (in china??)..
Evening came and we all met up again after doing email and some laundry and returned to drifters. Dinner was great, so was sleeping afterwards.
The next day fredde and I set out early, rented bicycles and went off to see Moon Hill. We had read about it in mikes lonely planet and it was the only thing we really wanted to see since we had the bikes for a day. It took about 45 minutes riding there, and we partnered up with some English girls who also were on the way to see it. The ride was perfect, small huts with yellow fields surrounding them and deep green hills in the background. We made it to Moon Hill quite early and started climbing (more steps !!) with the girls behind. We were followed by some guide women who we made it clear to at the beginning were neither needed or going to be paid afterwards if they intended to follow us regardless. We reached the top and sat down to drink some water and admire the sheer beauty of this viewpoint. On all sides were mountains of greenery dropping into valleys spread with houses and yellow fields carpeting it all. We sat there for a long time, soaking in all that we had before us, and then decided to go back to the hotel and rest. On the way down though, the insane tour guide women started shouting at us to pay them for their services, we refused and told them we didn’t ask them to come anyway, but they persisted. Fredde and I looked at each other and just shouted "run"... and we were off... thrashing down the hill with 4 small chinese women trying to keep up with us, we rad all the way down moon hill at a frenetic pace, and at the bottom we quickly unlocked our bikes, jumped on, and as we were leaving we turned around to see the women reach the bottom, out of breath and sweating buckets !! comedy.
Back in town I went back with Jan to the cd store to buy some more, and then we went to drifters to have a hoegarden.
The next day would spell our departure from Mike. Jan, Sarah, Fredde and I were hoping to go west and reach Vietnam, mike was heading to Hong Kong before flying to Malaysia on holiday. We all headed down to drifters for a final supper. We ate, and drank until we were far more than merry and then danced home to sleep the beer away and awake to a fresh new day.
The day erupted upon us, knowing that we were forced to go to the police station in town to try and obtain visas to Vietnam which we had heard was possible. We reached there around midday, the cops were all smoking and did nothing to help us, just wave us from office to office and finally wave us away. We went back to town and had a crisis meeting where it was decided that we would go to Guangzhou since the chances for obtaining visas was secure there and also there were many options when it came to travel routes.
So, our seperation from Mike was short lived.. and we ended up taking the same bus to Guangzhou. We first had to return to Quelin and catch a bus from there, so we all boarded.. and after twenty minutes sarah stopped the bus and ran out to releive herself... it was comedy.... then we reached Quelin and the real headache started.
We had booked tickets with a scout and we sure enough picked them up, and they sent one of their receptionist girls to show us the way to the bus.The confusion surrounding which bus it was turned out to be a major headache. We stood around waiting for the travel agent to appear (she had told us to wait by a bus and ran off to try and find out where ours went from) when the time for the buses departure had already gone. She came, running, waving her hands and telling us all to follow her. We ended up at the side of the road, awaiting a bus that was delayed and had time to eat. Noodles was about as good as it got at the bus station, so we all sat down with our bowls on the sidewalk and ate. Our bus came, we boarded, it was a sleeper bus, comfortable, direct to Guangzhou so we lay back and watched the green mountains disappear into the darkness of the skies breath. All seemed so serene up until sarah decided she needed a toilet break (again), 30 minutes after the bus left. She asked the driver and he absolutely refused to stop, and so the moments went by, her face agitated and worried about when the bus would finally stop. Mike even attempted a few times to ask, but he got the same reply. What must have been an hour passed and finally the driver stopped, she rushed out and into a small toilet. There was a bus behind us so our bus moved forward a few meters and parked. What we saw next was classic comedy, sarah running out of the toilet, waving her hands in exctacy, and jumping onto the wrong bus !!! We all died laughing in the back seats and watched her come out of the first bus totally confused, look up the road and see our smiling faces waving at her.
The next drama happened when for some reason the driver turned off the road in the middle of the night, switched the lights on, and suddenly hundreds of boxes of oranges were being packed ontop of the bus AND inside, all around us. Our bags were pressed to the side by these village workers who wanted to squeeze in as many boxes as possible, this took atleast one hour. We then noticed the great side-effect of that... cockroaches started appearing around our beds.. we just shut our eyes, ignored it all, and tried to sleep.
Let me start by saying that no city in the world has made such a fast impression on me as Guangzhou did. I positively hated the city before even getting off the bus. The terminal was a depressing concrete structure, leaking from the ceiling, smelly and filthy, the streets all looked black and bleak through the rain.. the buildings all looked industrial and grey. I hated being here.. it was like the buildings poured into my mind and made me feel like they looked. We sat in the bus terminal a long while waiting for the rain to pass.. we all drank a few red bulls and smoked a few cigarettes. Finally the rain broke... and we walked out into what turned out to be a city that mirrored my first impressions.
We wandered around for the best part of the morning, trying to find the visa office that would grant us passage into Vietnam, since we had heard from a backpacker who had just been there that it was possible in Guangzhou. So, we engaged two taxis and sped around the town trying to find the visa offices. First of all the address which was written in the lonely planet was wrong, and we found out that the office had moved to the other side of town. Now, since we had split up in the taxis and only fredde and I received directions for the next place we spent the ride wondering how jan and sarah and mike would find us when they reached the old address and found no offive there. Thankfully they also asked someone the directions to the new office and we all met up a few minutes later. We were there 10 minutes before the office closed and managed to start filling out the forms before all of us realised the cost that it would chew out of our wallets. There and then we all decided to skip Vietnam for this trip and go to hong kong to look for tickets to either india or thailand. The ultimatum was that if we did not find any solutions we could fly back to Beijing since our return tickets were from beijing to pakistan, and home.
We then started our journey to find the bus that went to Hong Kong. First of all we ended up back near where we started, and we all went into a travel agent. We checked on prices to beijing and while the others were doing that i got into a frenzy that my backpack was too hevy so i took out the blanket that i stole from PIA on the way here and started shouting outside the door that there was a market on. Immediately I has a crowd of people around me wondering what this insane white guy was doing. I sold it within 2 minutes, for 10 yaun, and went to buy a red bull with the money.
After that excitement we sat down and read the lonely planet guide which said that a bus went from the Mariott Hotel to Hong Kong many times a day.
We slowly made our way there, dragging our bags along ... sweating...hungry and grumpy.
The tickets were booked, and we went to a nearby restaurant to eat the worst meal that we had experienced while in china. Sarah sent hers back and told the cook it was vomit, I struggled to eat half of mine and decided it better to go outside and smoke instead. I found a place where they offered free internet, and all of us checked our mail before returning to the hotel to catch our bus.
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