great firewall of china part 6: "murder" on the orient express

I really like the chinese people. They are so friendly and smiley and
always saying hello. They are also so helpful, and even when they
don't speak english, they really try to help you. For example, in
tunkou when I was trying to find my guesthouse, I went into a china
mobile office. THe girl there knew a small amount of english, but
couldn't help, so she called over another gal to help. SHe also
couldn't help, so she went next door to get someone that knew better
english. She still couldn't quite understand, so she called on her
mobile a friend that knew great english and in that way I was able to
get help. And when I am on busses or hiking or whatever, if there is
a chinese that knows english, you can be assured that they will try to
talk to me and be my new friend (and take a picture with me).
Sometime I get really annoyed when they spit or whatnot on the trains,
but then they smile and try to communicate with me and I can no longer
be annoyed with them.


9/3-9/4 Got up bright and early to catch the bus from tonkou to
nanchang. On a whim for some reason, I went to the internet cafe
early in the morning to see if I could find an english chinese train
schedule. I found one and saw that if my bus really took 8 hours like
they said it would to reach nanchang, I would only have 1/2 and hour
to get a train. I looked up wuhan, another option and saw that they
had two later options, but a 12:40 am option. So I decided to switch
this as I didn't want to miss a connection and waste a day in some big
chinese city. Well it was a good thing I did bc the bus to wuhan
(also supposed to take 8 hours) took 12. On the bus their happened to
be two germans (thomas and kirsten) who were quite nice and made the
fact that we were going to be late a bit more bearable, bc they were
at least fun to laugh about the problems of chinese transport with.
We stopped for lunch at this roadside, house, basically. You walk
into the kitchen, open the fridge, point to what meat and veggies you
want, and then they cook it up. Quite funny, considering the whole
bus did this. On the bus I also met two chinese students (can't
remember their chinese names) from Wuhan. After it was apparent I
wouldn't catch the early connecting trains, they said it may be
possible to catch a bus.

Well, once we got into wuhan we were the 2nd car behind an accident,
so we had to wait for a while, and then there was a massive traffic
jam. When we finally got to wuhan at about 8:20pm, we found out that
the sleeper bus to guilin had left at 8pm. In my frenzy to get off
the bus I left my CU hat on the bus. Not the best omen for the
upcoming CU/CSU game, the 2nd most important game of the season (if
you don't know what the 1st is, then you don't know me at all).

Sometimes during my travel I have met people that I am sure must be
angels helping me. My favorite angel was a woman with the kindest
face at the bus station in marakech morocco who helped to soothe me
when I was sure I was going to miss my flight from marrakesh back to
NYC (I ended up arriving at the airport for that international flight
1 hour before take off and bording the plan just before it pulled out
of the gates). Well, I felt like these two students were angels of
sorts. It was pouring rain in wuhan, so no place you want to be
wondering around in lost. They took me straight to the train station
where they convinced everyone that the foreigner needed to cut the
line and helped me to buy tickets to guilin. The tickets were sold
out for the 12:40 am train, but they were able to get me the standing
room only tickets.

Since we had some time to killl before the train, they took me out to
eat (and treated me against my protestations) at their favorite noodle
place. They also had a very unique rice wine with rice still in it.

I borded the train, which was 30 minutes late. I figured it would be
a long ride. It was the typical crowded hard-seat train, except this
time I was standing. About 3 hours into it and about 4 in the
morning, when I was having trouble staying awake and reading, even
while standing, a seat opened up and I was able to get a seat. But
even then I had some trouble sleeping as the seats are extremely
uncomfortable, you are always playing footwars with the person across
from you and the air con was turned up to freezing. Even with my
sweatshirt I was so cold. It was your typical chinese 3rd class train
too with people spitting into the aisle, blowing their nose into the
aisle, etc, etc. The toilet (asian squat toilets) had clogged, so it
was overflowing, so the toilet was nasty and of course everyone was
walking around the train with toilet stuff on their shoes. Some
people who didn't have seats laid out newspapers to sleep on the
floor. I was not about to do that even if I hadn't gotten a seat,
though I had been thinking about putting my backpack on the floor and
sitting on it. But like I said, I luckily got a seat after a few
hours. It didn't help things that I was reading agatha christie's
murder on the orient express about a murder on a gorgeous train where
everyone has private rooms and nice beds and all that. Kept dreaming
I was on that one. To tell you how long the day was, me a slow
reader, read the entire 350 page novel from the time I left tunkou
until I arrived in guilin.

Once I got to guilin, I took a bus to yangshuo. When I got there I
was tired, hungry and there was the threat of rain, so I wasn't my
normal good self about looking for a good place to stay. Instead I
took the option of the first tout I came across. The room was
actually pretty good (8 bucks for my own room with ensuite bathroom
and a fan) but it was in a chinese hotel and there were no other
people to meet up with to do things here. At the internet cafe that
afternoon, I got an email from Leon (i hung out with in ulan baatar)
that he was staying at this cool hostel. So the next day, I broke my
contract at the place I was staying with (didn't feel too bad bc the
guy was kind of a liar and scammer and I had to pay a bit of a fine
for breaking it anyways) and went over to the other hostel. It was a
great move since the dorms there were $3.50, had air con, had free
water, free laundry, nice employees, bike rentals for 1/2 the price,
american dvd's on a flat screen at night (movie nights can be fun),
great and cheap food, and big beers for under 1 dollar (unusual at
tourist hostels). And best of all there were plenty of people to
meet. Thank goodness for Leon!

I walked around yangshuo a bit that night. It's a gorgeous old style
chinese town set amongst beautiful karst peaks and along the li river.
The town was hopping with tons of chinese tourists and the main
pedestrian streets were quite interesting to walk through with all the
clubs, eateries, and other tourist places. That night I also took a
tour to see the commorant fishing, where fishermen use these commerant
birds to catch fish for them. They tie something around their necks
and then the birds swim underwater alongside the boat catching fish.
The fisherman pulls them out and empties their mouth of fish.