Yan-Shih and I woke up, well, actually she woke me up. We walked out and got some breakfast, then finished packing, said goodbye to everybody, and left to catch our train. While downtown we exchanged a little more money, ate lunch at a Macao Portugal place, and bought out tickets to Guangzhou.
Two interesting events happened at breakfast. The first event is when we finished eating, and the lady was like "two kuai for the tissues" -- you are charging us two bucks for the freaking tissues? Please! Considering our dinner was under 20 yuan, yeesh! Besides that, another interesting observation I made was the fact that we weren't harassed by anybody while walking back to the train station. Alone I was asked by like 10 people, in this order: "Hello, hotel! Nice hotel! You want hotel? Massage? Beautiful girl? Pussy. Pussy." I mean, c'mon!
We arrived at the train station and bought our tickets. 70 yuan to Guangzhou (this is pretty expensive, but the only seats available between the cities). We frantically found the gate, went through "security" and boarded the train.
The ticket person unfortunately didn't put us next to each other, as a result we had to rearrange some seats with people.
The train ride between Shenzhen and Guangzhou is quite interesting, especially considering the fact that it was hard to tell when we actually left Shenzhen and when we actually entered Guangzhou (supposedly a two hour train ride away). Everything looked the same, tall buildings dotting the horizon the entire way. Back in the States it seems almost all of our stuff is labeled "made in China" -- there is a consequence to all of this, and that consequence is readily apparent on this train ride. But I will elaborate more shortly.
Finally we reached Guangzhou, and our intentions were to only stay a few hours, then jump onto the nearest train to Shanghai. We arrived at the train station, ran outside, and tried to purchase a ticket up to Shanghai -- unfortunately, even though the train didn't leave for five hours, it was already sold out. Crap. We debated what do do, and opted for purchasing a ticket the next day and staying in Guangzhou. Yan-Shih, like a superstar, somehow had the address of the YHA in Guangzhou. We jumped on the subway and went that direction.
China is big, most people know that. Something like what, 1.3 billion people? And where do all those people live? We encountered the intensity at the old Guangzhou Train Station, trying to find the hostel. The numbering is quite insane, and the four police officers we asked were all but useless. Actually, I would say they are worse than useless, as they kept giving us wrong directions. The amount of people around is almost unfathomable -- and I've seen a lot of packed places. I would venture to say that the blocks surrounding the old train station are the most dense, chaotic blocks I have ever seen in my life. Yan-Shih was even a little intimidated. After walking around for quite some time, we finally found our hostel. Compared with the cleanliness and charm of the previous place I had stayed, this place was quite, well, not nice. We asked if they had any rooms, but alas, they said they only had "nicer" rooms. We went upstairs to the hostel rooms, looked around, and asked a different person. She said that they had some rooms in the hostel section left, which we decided to take. The stay was about $15, total, so not too bad. We went up to our room, unpacked a little, then went out to see if Guangzhou had anything really interesting. Yan-Shih somehow knew a place, and we jumped on the subway and went. As would be expected, the place she had in mind was a huge night market. We got into the street, and both feeling more at home, started to worry less about various calamities that might happen. Our first purchase was 12 egg biscuit yummy things, which I fully love. We continued walking down the street, and ate a little meal at a bright yellow place. The food was ok, and we each had a smoothie for desert.
Before coming home we had one last desert at a little desert place. Yan-Shih asked, "do you like sesame?" I said, "sure". What I didn't realize is that a dark pudding was ordered, the pudding with huge rice balls filled with peanut butter. The sight is quite amazing, unique certainly, and the taste is surprisingly good.
Finally we made our way back to our hostel, took showers in the rather gross bathroom, and went to bed.
This entry is from my journal and was written on Dec. 29, 2006. There have been 0 comments so far.
@depping Tweeting while flying, that's almost ironic. (about 10 hours ago)