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Before we had even arrived in China we had heard many opinions of driving in China, mostly negative; they are first generation drivers, no one has any idea of road rules, are you crazy? And so forth… Even the custom official at the border told Fintan and Thomas, very seriously, that they have to drive carefully in China, everyone is a bad driver! When we received our temporary license number and drivers licenses the dates for exit were 4 days after the planned tour ended. I asked why and was told "in case of any accident - we had a tour group in August, their car is still in Chengdu! They had an accident and totalled the car, and flew out from Chengdu home, so please drive carefully". We have to keep our drivers licenses to hand, we got stopped once leaving Pingyao. It was a bit of a worry at first - I was driving, so obviously something had to go wrong! The traffic police took my license and my passport and then were very confused. They had a chat with the guide… Apparently my license states I am a man! Excellent! I literally cannot think of any other mistakes the tour company could have possibly made at every stage of this process! Luckily, the traffic police were looking for explosives, and not incorrect documentation. The officer took the license around and showed everyone and they all had a good laugh, then we were sent on our way!
Of course, we always drive carefully, not in the dark, not hungover or tired… but here we have to make the kilometres and it is stressful. Most of the driving we are doing is motorway, which is great - the roads are amazing and the engineering feats are incredible; bridges, tunnels - we drove through a tunnel 18km long! It even had sections with trees and shrubs, although we think they must've been fake!
Where we have to divert because of road works it inevitably adds hours of very stressful manoeuvring though small towns with pot holed roads, too much traffic, pedestrians, motorbikes and trucks. We even had to go through a track covered with cabbage to get to the main road at one point!
In the cities, the traffic is non-stop, literally! People don't stop. They slow down, but stopping will let someone else take your space, and that just won't do. Our guide is constantly saying "Go, go, go, just go!" It's very annoying! Pedestrians walk out without looking, cars pull out without looking. Then when they see us, they look and look and don't look at the road or other traffic. It's a worry!
The speed limit does not seem to be policed at all, so no one pays any attention to it, except us of course! On the highway and motorway we may be overtaken and undertaken at the same time! Then have to put on the brakes because the people overtaking/undertaking have slowed down to have a good look at us meaning we cannot pass the truck that we're coming up quickly to! But then we are in a foreign car, we are "big noses", the steering wheel is on the wrong side, and half the time it's a "lady driver" as our guide calls me! Whenever we swap over for me to drive he says "Time for Lady driver!"
We seem to be fascinating to people! On the road, at the service station, in town… people stare, a lot! So we wave and smile, roll the window down and say "Ni hao" And they get embarrassed/shy/giggle! It is amusing and annoying in equal parts I think! I thought I was saying everything wrong because everyone laughs when I say something, you know the tones in Chinese are so hard for English to get right, but the guide just said people think it's so funny to see a foreigner speaking Chinese! This is in the out of the way places, obviously in the big cities there are lots of ex-pats and foreigners.
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mum So glad to get all these blogs at once. 18 km tunnel could be claustrophobic.