Sleepless Travels Reloaded

Shenzhen - View from train station

Beijing - OUtside the train station

Grumpy!Ray

Note: this is a long waffly entry, and barely organised. Those of you who get bored easily, screw you. This is a recollection of ALL my memories of this period. Nothing is left out. I want my memories to be recorded for myself, and before they fade away entirely.

Since deciding to go to Hong Kong, one of the main things on our travel “to-do” list was to travel to China. How could we not have a China trip when we were so close? It would have been such a waste!

Plannning the trip
However being the lazy procratinatey students we were, we didn’t actually finalise our plans to go until only a few weeks before we actually did go.

In the end the final group to go was Alice (American exchange student), Ray and I. David (local HK student) only decided to come after much persuasion :@. Kate, who is from Beijing and is studying in HK as a local student, would also be travelling with us.

We were going to fly to Beijing, but it was peak season and it would have cost an inordinate amount of money. Then we thought, “Train! why not!? It’s an old fashioned mode of transport that is very quaint and will allow us to see a lot of the countryside! It will be an experience!”

We had a look at the cost of train fares. The sleepers (you get your own cabin and a bed) were a reasonble amount. However, we all decided that spending less was better (starving students that we were). Ray and I were also running out of cash in our HK bank accounts and transferring over money from overseas would have been painful. Alice was just running low on her bank account full stop!

So we thought, let’s try the hard seats! The hard seats are basically…cattle class. Lowest class ever. The train carriage is divided up into sections where about 5 seats face each other, 2 on one side and 3 on the other. In the middle is a smallish table. It’s very compact. The train ride would be about 25 hours long. 25 hours, on seats, in cattle class. O_O

What were we thinking?! Oh well, the money we saved was worth it. And the experience was….memorable. It costs RMB 280 by train, on hard seats, from Shenzhen to Beijing. Well compare that to ~HKD1500+ by plane! (In hindsight I’d take the plane. But everyone should try the train still! SUFFER! :@)

Travelling to Shenzhen
On the day itself, we had to wake up REALLY early to get to Shenzhen in time for the train.

[Boring Sidestory]:
The night before we decided to go out and party. Or something. I think I just ate dinner somewhere with Ray and his Starr Hall cronies. Possibly it was at that French restaurant in TST? Then after that we were wandering around the CWB area trying to find rice dumplings because it was rice dumplings season and I wanted to experience the tate of HK dumplings at least once…because by the time we returned there would be no more T_T. Anyway we finally found some (thank you Ivan!! Your efforts were really appreciated :). But by then I was really full so I decided to eat them the next day.

I had ordered my iPod only just a few days before, and even though the iPod had arrived, my dock hadn’t :@
The address it was being sent to was my old hall - St John’s College. But by then I had moved out and into my Aunt’s nearby condominium. I was worried that if I didn’t receive it before I left for China, the dock would somehow be lost and I wouldn’t be able to retrieve it! Anyway, I dropped by at STJ which was on the way to Starr Hall (Ray/Dave/Alice lived there). And it had arrived only just that day! Yay!

Too bad I didn’t even have time to play with it though - I had to just drop it off in Ray’s dorm. And then I nicked off to their kitchenette area to microwave my rice dumplings Yummy brekkie~~
[/Boring Sidestory]

We took the KCR from Tsim Sha Tsui KCR station all the way to Shenzhen. We passed through immigration with no no issues. The Shenzhen train station is actually a separate building from KCR station complex. Still, it took us a while to figure out where it actually was. And it was HOT and HUMID!

Shenzhen

We found the train station, but there was no airconditioning there and it was terribly crowded. So we snuck over to the nearby fancy ?Sheraton hotel that was opposite. Aaah…nice and cool in the lobby. We tried not to look like Chinese peasants/poor backpackers - otherwise we’d be kicked out. Nooooo! Airconditioning! >.< ~~~~~~ - So we tried to be as discreet as possible. And talked in English! XD

We were pretty early so we had to wait there for some time. I think David even fell asleep XD.

Before going back we stopped by at some kiosks near the train station to stock up on bottled water and lots of bowl instant noodles :D. They did sell food on the train but it would be overpriced and not very nice. Thank goodness they had lots of free hot water though.

The departures hall was really big and crowded. Somehow, we found Kate there (she didn't travel with us from HK as she was in Shenzhen already for a conference). It was a bit of a relief seeing her because she was our guide of sorts - she knew how the trains worked and what we had to do...she also had our train tickets.

When they announced that our train had arrived, a gate opened at the far corner and everyone CHIONG'd towards it. The gate was actually a stairway leading down towards the train platforms that were on the ground floor.

When we finally found our carriage we found a whole crowd of people already jostling for space to get on to the train. How could so many people fit into the one carriage? Well they don't call it cattle class for nothing! I squished on, narrowly avoiding a towering stack of cargo that was being carried on by another passenger (no weight restriction - so they use this as a cheap sort of cargo transport :@@@@). Thank goodness we only had large knapsacks to carry (thanks for lending me your backpack David)...if it was anything bigger I would have died.

Everyone had warned us about carrying valuables in these sorts of crowded places as there were lots of undesirable elements that hung out at train stations. So I didn't get to take many photos at all.

The train trip
There wasn’t much legspace at all for us once we put the backpacks on the floor. It was really cramped >_<

People were STILL boarding the train. Even the aisles were getting so packed that it was hard to move! Standing for 25 hours to get to Beijing? Didn't these people buy tickets, and get assigned to seats beforehand? Well it turns out that you don't have to - there was a ticket collecting/purchasing booth a bit behind us. Even if you bought a ticket maybe you won't get a seat too - as evidenced by the frustrated man who yelled at the conductor at the start of our trip.

Well it turned out that the train actually stopped at many stations along the way to drop/pick up passengers, so not everyone was going to stay on the train for 25 hours - that must have been the case for the standing passengers.

The scenary along the way wasn't that impressive actually. There were a few interesting sights but nothing really stays in my mind to this day. It was quite dull on average, just...drab scrub.

Whenever the train stopped at a station, there would be people there with little beverage carts selling bottled drinks, bowl instant noodles (they also had vacuum flasks with hot water for the noodles) and other snacks. They would board the train and sell their goods, then hop off again.

Actually, it was probably the only time when I really felt "This Is China™". Being surrounded with people of much lower living standards...unfamiliar language...different behaviour...(spitting!!)...everything was so different! Cultural immersion ~. Well, for 25 hours anyway.

To survive the boredom we ate sunflower seeds. Kate bought a big packet. I tried to learn how to eat them with one hand only but I couldn't do it >.< I have to use 2 hands to prise apart the shells. Alice was a master at it...trained from young >

After awhile though I had to stop eating the sunflower seeds, fun as it was. They were making me thirsty and though we had lots of water I didn’t want to drink as I didn’t want to go to the toilet >_< None of us did! the toilet was a squatting one. And it was really dirty! The toilet is slippery (and not with water. I suppose people can't aim properly on the rattling train.), and there was a high risk of slipping and falling onto the floor. Eww. In the end I did go, but only after perhaps 21 hours and I made sure to complete the task only when the train was stopped at the station (no rocking = won't slip).

The instant noodles we bought was a standard sort of brand that 90% of the people in the carriage also bought. On the whole the flavours weren't too bad. One of the flavours I bought was this weird beef thingy. It came with a packet of what I can only assume was meat. I don't like eating instant noodles with "real meat". It's just weird. You expect dried up shrivelled stuff to come with instant noodles, basically stuff that keeps for ages, not meat that would normally have gone off by now. Sidestory - There is a brand of instant noodles that one can purchase from Wellcome in HK. It comes with a vacuum sealed tea egg. I tried it once, but never had it again. It's too weird >_< - an egg is not supposed to keep for so long >_<

As there were smokers smoking in the bits in between the carriages, it was quite uncomfortable, but I guess we got used to it. I hate smoke. Seriously just one person will discomfort the whole carriage >.< What was also disgusting was the people who kept spitting >.<. And they would do it on the floor in between the carriages too. Erk. At least they keep it to one location >_>

There was also a sink of sorts but by the end of the night it was clogged with discarded noodles from the bowl instant noodles that everyone was eating. Quite yucky. Thank goodness for wet towels, as they are a good invention.

Someway through the trip, a were left with an empty seat next to Alice (5 seater section - only 4 of us). A friendly man who had surprisingly good English swooped into it. He seemed pretty interesting. He was actually a Korean from the Northen provinces of China. He’s a Chinese national. After overhearing us talking in English he wanted to get to know us more as I guess it’s pretty rare to meet overseas people. Unfortunately we were so paranoid (we had 4 digital cameras with us and 2 iPods) that we didn’t want to have a conversation with him our give away any information. I really quite regret it now. He was pretty talkative though and as he was sitting next to Alice she had to put up with it. I felt kind of sorry for her, and I really should have asked if she wanted to swap seats - that would have been the fair thing to do. I’m sorry Alice >_< !! I've failed you!!

We didn't want people to know we were from Australia and ESPECIALLY America, as Western country = rich people = okay to rob. So our story was this: Kate was from Beijing and the rest of us were from Hong Kong. Kate didn't know how to speak Cantonese (she actually knows, learnt it in HK) and the rest of us couldn't really speak Mandarin ...so we spoke in English. Yeah. Totally believable, right? >_>

In hindsight I should have said that we wanted to practice our English? >_<

When I got up to get hot water for my bowl noodles I thoughtlessly said "excuse me" to get past the crowd. And the same Korean man was there (didn't notice him at first, geez these peasants all look the same) and said "you actually know how to speak Mandarin?". "Yeah, but it's not very good" - was my very lame excuse. Anyway, it was the truth!

As the night wore on the Korean man took out a package of meat to eat. It was a sort of preserved meat I think. It looked like, and had a texture not unlike pink plasticine. He sliced off chunks to eat with his pocket knife. Actually it was a bit like cheese. Pink cheese? Hmm. I like trying out new foods, so I asked him about it, what was the taste, etc. He very generously offered to all of us and I was sorely tempted to try a little bit (yeah I like to hurt myself yongfook style) but Ray refused to let me try it ._.

He also had a bottle of colourless spirits - Chinese rice wine I guess. He profered it to all of us but we politely declined. I don't think any of us really liked alcohol. Also, it looked dodgy. The guy in hindsight was really nice. He may have had ulterior motives (rob us in our sleep)? But in any event I don't think there was a chance of it happening as I was awake pretty much all night =_=

We linked all of the straps on our bags together and used all our locks on the openings. If anyone tried to steal a bag, everything else would move as well and we would be alerted. David told us to do it as he had done it before on a train trip once, and that actually prevented a theft.

Another thing we did to fight boredom was maaaaany rounds of Big 2. We used David's cards which were branded with images of his alma mater - St John’s Joseph’s College. I wish I had MGS our Concordia College-brand cards ._.

That got old pretty quickly and Alice started reading her pirated copy of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. I started reading a book David brought along. It had a conspiracy theme - like a Da Vinci Code copycat. But it was quite terrible. I ended up spending the whole night and morning reading it. And when I finished, I felt distinctly unsatisfied. “So THAT’S what they were fighting over? That’s stupid!”, I thought sleepily. I think I probably had a short doze after the others woke up.

As the train neared Beijing, we could feel the end of our ordeal drawing near. The light at the end of the tunnel is nigh! We kept checking our watches as we counted down towards the 25 hour mark.

Beijing

When the train pulled into Beijing train station we drew a big sigh of relief - we had reached our destination at last! Unrobbed and unharmed!

Even the jostling of the ****heads stupid people with the oversized luggage didn’t deter us! I skipped onto the platform, joyous that I could use my legs again!

It was mid afternoon - perhaps 3pm - when we arrived.

We got out to the front of the station, which is huge, and wondered how to locate Kate’s father who was picking us up. We didn’t wait for all too long I think, but the heat was pretty stifling and we were tired after the long trip.

I got so hungry at the end of it that I bought some plain bread buns to eat - and I don’t normally like eating bread >_<
Oh yeah I think it's because I had about 20 yuan in cash. -didn't have enough money to change into yuan-

We also had to walk around to find the train ticketing booth...we needed to purchase a return ticket for Alice, who was only going to be with us in Beijing - she couldn't change her flight back to America to later >_<

Kate’s father was a really nice man! After meeting us we hunted for the bus stop that would go to our hostel (no one had any real idea where anything was exactly).

The Beijing train station is really big. Argh. Walking with heavy bag after 25 hours sitting down with minimal sleep in the humid heat is not fun.

The bus ride to our hostel was quite an eye opener for me. Beijing is BIG. The main thoroughways are super huge. The streets seemed about 10 lanes wide Chan An Lu. All along the street were massive buildings. The buildings were generally cuboid in shapes with maybe a little Chinese-style roof tiles for the roof. But basically cuboids. The only thing interesting about them was their size. They housed entire bookstores, or government departments, etc. Everything was to a massive scale - very Communist style I imagine, where a show of might and power is so important.

We finally reached our destination bustop after a brief bus change in the middle. Still, as we didn’t know exactly where the hostel was we wandered around for a bit (ARGH) but we finally got there. After we checked in we said goodbye to Kate and her father~~

We left HK on the 10th of June 2005. Now it was the 11th.
Aah! Beijing at last!