What we did: Xingping to Guilin for overnight train ride to Guangzhou
Budget: $75 or 450 Yuan; Spent: $36.17 or 217 Yuan
Patty here.
We took our time getting up this morning since we didn’t have much to do around Xingping except pack our bags, eat, checkout of the hostel, eat again, and then head to Guilin to catch our overnight train ride to Guangzhou. Much like it sounds, it was a pretty uneventful day for the most part. We caught up with Mrs. Valdivia on Skype before going for breakfast. What a wonderful invention Skype is, and what a difference it makes to see each other face to face when talking. After saying goodbye, we packed up as best we could and headed to the hostel café for another wonderful breakfast of eggs, toast, and bacon. We laughed because no matter how many times we order the same thing, it feels like you’re eating it for the first time. Nothing beats that combo first thing in the morning!! Another several Chinese tourists snapped pictures of us eating breakfast. What a strange thing it is get your picture taken by strangers. It gives you a bit of a glimpse into the lives of celebrities! Not sure if we mentioned this, but we had a huge taste of this treatment in Beijing while there. It was so odd, having people come up to you asking to take pictures with you. Then, on a bus in Beijing, I was standing and a girl about my age was sitting down on the bus, and the bus attendant actually had her get up so that I could take her seat! Now, that was awkward! I felt pretty bad, but what’s weirder is the girl was happy to give me her seat!
We checked out of our hostel and made sure we got clear directions on how to get to the train station from the bus station in Guilin. Unfortunately we forgot to ask which train station in Guangzhou we would be arriving at. But, we are definitely making huge progress with asking good questions to the hostel people when we have the chance. It reduces so much of the stress of finding your way around a foreign country, and not having to rely on kind people that are willing to help and listen long enough to understand you.
Anyways, we spent most of the afternoon in our hostel reading up on our next stops, including Vietnam and India. Speaking of which, we still need to book our flight to Delhi!! We are meeting Mintoo and his family in Delhi on December 15 and will be attending his cousin’s wedding. What an experience that will be. Can’t thank Mintoo and his family enough for coordinating this for us, and including us on that day. Our friend Chandu said that an Indian wedding is an experience you will never forget. They are often incredibly elaborate, and festive, and can last as long as a week. Not sure if this wedding will be that extensive. We are just so excited for the experience!
We headed to the hostel café with all our stuff in tow for our last meal in Xingping. It would also be our last real meal of the day. It was the busiest we had ever seen the restaurant and we were told it would be 30 minutes before we would get our food. They were exactly right, 30 minutes later we were eating. It was another great meal.
Our bus was leaving at 3:25pm for Guilin, and we made it to the station with 5 mins to spare. We hopped on for another extremely bumpy ride between Xingping and Yangshuo. The road, between the two towns is a gravel road, and it’s not in good condition. A ride that should take about 20 minutes under normal conditions, takes about an hour. But, it gets you to and from the towns with relatively no issues aside from the wear and tear it must have on the bus itself. So to clarify, Yangshuo is the town between Xingping and Guilin. We stopped there to pick up more people and on we went to Guilin, which is about another hour and a half away. Jeff and I have both decided the buses in China are perhaps the most irritating forms of transport here. They are dirty, people smoke and spit on them, and to top it all off, they play these very odd movies/songs the whole way there and loudly!! It doesn’t help that we don’t understand a word they are saying, but the slap stick humour and artistic steps outside the box are always overdone and completely exaggerated especially their acting and singing. But, I guess that’s just two people’s opinions. Maybe if you ask the locals they would disagree? But probably not…
Once we arrived in Guilin, we had no issues finding the train station and even managed to walk there from the bus station and it only took us about 10 mins. We stopped along the way to grab some snacks for the train. We grabbed some strawberry crème Oreo cookies, mandarins for the next day, and a Pepsi. The lady we bought the mandarins from, kind of annoyed us cause after we paid for the mandarins, which was no doubt much more than the locals pay, she took a mandarin out of the bag and back onto her basket! A small gesture, but a very very annoying one in my books. We’re getting much better at letting things roll off us though. This is probably more of a self-preservation thing, because if we didn’t adapt in this way, we would go absolutely insane, or probably head home... haha.
We arrived at the train station at 6:30pm, 2 and ½ hours before our train departure. We lazed around eating snacks, and soups, and waited for the train to leave. Jeff was still in an irritable mood following the bus trip’s annoying movie playing. But, we got some food in him, and we laughed about it and it was all good. As per the norm, people flooded to the departure gate for the train once it started boarding. We got on, and went to bed pretty much right away.
And that was our day.
Patty
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