Posted from Tai Mo Shan, New Territories, Hong Kong.
Lucky for us, we befriended Snake and Vincent from Hong Kong and Gayton and Morgan from France on the train. Snake and Vincent helped us when we got to Nanning since nobody could understand Chines and no signs were in English. It’s pretty daunting when just the simplest thing, like finding a public toilet becomes impossible. Anyway with our new friends help we were able to find our way to HK. We cued for 1 hr to find out the only train tickets were hard seats and no sleepers. Instead we found and booked a sleeper bus since we needed to travel overnight. (The whole thing was pretty funny as you sleep at about a 20 degree angle which is not so comfortable as I am a side sleeper. Oh well! We learned later that this was in fact a pretty good bus and we were lucky to have Chinese speakers that got us the right price on a good bus. Later we would get older buses, smaller beds, and no toilet. We spend the rest of the day being shown around Nanning and going to real Chinese restaurants.
We arrive in Sheng don early and with the continuing help of Snake and Vincent we got train tickets into Hong Kong, bought octopus passes (used for travel and small purchases)and got ourselves into Hong Kong . There is no English anywhere in China, and pretty much no one speaks it. We were becoming the masters of mime. Hongkong however was very different lots of English speakers.
We were immediately met by touts trying to sell us their accommodation, and the cheap accommodation in Hong Kong is expensive and tiny. We were going to see our friend Natalie, but wanted to make sure that Gayton and Morgan also got a good place to stay, so we stayed with the group hunting for a hotel room for 5 hours. We spent a long time camped in McDonalds, eating shitty hamburgers, drinking cokes, using their free internet to search for places then going in and out whilst someone minded the bags. Hong Kong is busy, hot and at the time raining so no one felt to drag their backpacks around whist we looked. 5 hours of looking and nothing appealed than Snake offered his parents family home for Morgan and Gayton and they went to stay with him. I was so thrilled as I knew now they would have a Hong Kong experience.
Nat was busy working and doing gym classes so we dropped our bags at her work, said a quick hello and then went out for a few hours to see Hong Kong. Nat met up with us just as the light show across the river started the light show was OK but the one in Singapore is the winner so far. We finally made our way to Nat’s lovely abode, 2 trains, a stop at the supermarket and then a taxi home. It was so lovely to finally catch up again and get updates on the last few years and soon it was like the good old times. It had been 5 years since we last saw Nat and it had been 10 years since we lived on the same property in Eureka.
Our Hong Kong experience was a mix of shopping, eating, boat rides and beaches. The beaches are nothing like Byron Bay but still heaps of fun. Nat and her friend Kitti took us to a place out of town where we ate heaps of seafood yum yum.Hong Kong is a beautiful sight at night
We left Hong Kong after 5 days ,sad to say good bye again to Nat. We were appreciative of its big city appeal, but happy to leave. It’s too damn crowded. Even the impressive underground, ferry, bus, tram and taxi service cannot cope with the fact that there are still 8 million odd people in such a small area.
Back to China, of course no trains available for at least a week, so we booked a sleeper bus to Yangzhou. This time, the beds were a mere 160cm long so we slept not only at a 20degree angle, but also at curled up in a ball. Most uncomfortable. Oh… and no toilet. There were many toilet stops…. but there are plenty of road side places where the toilet is merely a 25cm trench that runs the length of a 8-10 metre or so building.
• No cubicles over the trench. You do your business with your arse to the wind.
• Wee and poo everywhere on the edges so nowhere to stand without fouling your shoes.
• The trench itself, is flushed once an hour, or in some cases, once a day. So you are looking down at the results of peoples business for the previous appropritate time period. I think its rather worse, in the girls loos for reasons your imagination can fill in.
Needless so say wherever possible we held on, but sometimes it was just not possible(for me) so though I can’t claim to have truly mastered the communal, festy poo, but as a novice I can find my way in the world.
