Goodbye Guilin and more train tales.
Trip Start
Apr 08, 2010
1
16
Trip End
Jul 16, 2011
Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang, China
Thursday, April 28, 2011
After dragging ourselves out of bed it was time to pack [AGAIN!] to check out and ready ourselves for the next leg…we were leaving Guilin and the autonomous region of Guanxi and we were heading to the city of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province and situated in the far south west of China.
No matter how many times I unpack and repack, I don't appear to get any better at it. In fact I seem to get worse, considerably worse as I lose patience and end up using my backpacks as stuff bags rather than neatly rolling all my bits to save space and lay them in my pack accordingly…never gonna happen.
We left our packs behind reception and ventured into Guilin for another wander and then sat on a street corner and had an intriguing rice dish. It was cooked in an individual clay pot and was ready when all the water had evaporated and then you could top off with whatever you fancied.
It is a nice city and enjoyable to walk around and certainly has an air of a holiday town about it. There wasn't much evidence of older architecture in the city centre even though the city dates back to 300BC, it felt really modern. An enjoyable place with a positive feel about it nonetheless – and set in amongst some amazing scenery of course!
Train time.
We hitched a 70p taxi down to Guilin train station in the early afternoon, our bags were hanging out of the boot in typically Chinese fashion. All fun and games at all times! At the station we bumped into one of the girls that we had met on the train a few days earlier who was heading to Nanning…what are the chances!! Tried to have a conversation to explain how random it was but the language proved a bit of a stumbling block…she didn’t look as surprised as we were.
The train configuration was a little strange due to what tickets we could get hold of at the station. We were setting off at 4.30pm and it was 14hrs to Kunming [270rmb/£27]. For the first 4 hours we’d be sat together on seats and then around 8pm, when we reached Liuzhou, we’d sorted 2 hard sleepers and one seat. So we’d decided to work it in 4 hour shifts; I’d take the seat from 7.30pm-12am and then have the sleeper until 8am.
We were truly prepped for our train ride and had gone mental in the station shop for £10. Beers, water, noodles, crisps, nuts, biscuits, crackers and other variables. The first 4 hours were a great laugh, we seem to attract Chinese attention and brought our section together[!!]; plenty of good chats with everyone that surrounded us.
The train got mentally busy at Liuzhou and was filled with all walks of life, it felt like there should be a chicken flapping its way down the aisle to complete the crammed and crazy scenes but sadly there wasn’t. Standing room only, and that was at a push. At least I had a numbered seat.
Dave [good guy] came and found me at midnight and relieved me from my seat so that I could battle my way into the sleeping coach. I know people think that this isn’t possible [I’ve read it on other blogs, problem pages etc.] but as long as you have the sleeping ticket/card with you the staff will let you walk in-between all the carriages and classes. It’s when you have sitting or standing tickets that things get sticky.
Anyway, it was time to get my 8 hours in so I clambered up to bunk number 3 [I always seems to have the little top bunk!].
