Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Day 2
Today started bright and early, with the alarm going off waaaaaay too early at 5am. There are 3 points on this trip which slightly concern me; ensuring that we get the HK-Guangzhou, Guangzhou-Beijing train, our crossing from Mongolia to Russia and holding on to the original visa for all 6 of us to cross Belarus. The Hung Hom station was deserted at 6am and we waited for over an hour before we were allowed to start boarding. This required leaving Hong Kong with our passport being scanned, all bags being x-rayed and a rush to board the train. Not sure why as the train wasn’t that full.
We got to see a lot of the New Territories section of HK and there is still some open land around it. Then we crossed over into China with all of us receiving a text message informing us to this fact. We arrived into Guangzhou station and had to go through immigration which required us to have a left hand, then a right hand, and finally both thumbs being scanned. All of this while being photographed. We passed through another security check and went downstairs to meet the local rep who took us across the Pearl River to catch our train north. Guangzhou is massive, with a population of 15 million. Seeing as we are ‘lucky’ enough to travel on the 8th day after China celebrates its ‘foundation’ we were expecting the road to be absolutely packed, however this wasn’t the case. We arrived at our destination early, which is just as well.....
The train station is HUGE. About 3 times the size of Paddington and I think we were the only white people there. Nothing was in English. If there was less than 1000 people there trying to get home I would be surprised. Through trial and error we managed to get through the security check ins (yes, plural) and then had 90 minutes to wait. We went upstairs to check out the food situation and found a Japanese takeaway restaurant. But.... no English. We managed to order by pointing at the menu with virtually no idea what was in each meal. Then, of course, they called our our number in Cantonese and it was only because one the other customers spoke English that we got our meal. A form of Katsu Curry which was quite nice.
We lined up for our next train which presently arrived. We were in Carriage 1 (at the END of the train) and travelling through China at about 310 km/h. The scenery is stunning! Lots of small pillar-like hills showing off the country’s karst landscape. Certainly a better way to travel than flying. We stopped about 14-15 times on the way to Beijing, arriving at 10:30pm. Of course, by the time we got to our hotel, checked in and had our passports copied, not a restaurant was open. Sigh. Looking forward to breakfast and The Great Wall tomorrow.
- comments