The Never-ending Journey Part 2

I should probably mention something that I haven’t yet told you. As we were on an overnight train and we were crossing the border from Vietnam into China, we would need to get off the train and go through passport control and security, just like at any other border crossing. This was to take place at 2:00am. Yeah, exactly!

So by the time we had settled in and got off to sleep it was almost time to wake up again! The bang at the door jolted us awake and we fumbled with our belongings and the door before jumping off the train and going into the passport control office. Inside we handed over our documents and waited whilst the guards sifted through them all, checking visas and passport particulars. Once we had been given the all-clear we collected them and clambered back on the train. We would have another hour or so whilst the train trundled through no-mans-land and got the Chinese border. Once we got there we were herded out one coach at a time and through security.

Home sweet home! 

We were all a bit bleary-eyed and half asleep, but I soon woke up when I realised that there were 3 border guards checking through everyones bags, by hand. Everything out and everything checked so it was taking a looooong time to get through. There was nothing illegal in my bag. Well, only a small plastic bag taped closed that contain about half a kilo of white powder. But that was washing powder to do my laundry, nothing else. But would this raise suspicions with the security guards? James had previously dumped his “stash” in Singapore for fear of being held “out back” and potentially body searched, but it was only washing powder…surely one sniff of it would confirm it?

Can I go back to sleep yet?

Thankfully there was no problem. Mainly because my bag was packed so tightly, and in a manner that took about 15 minutes of planning and pushing, that the guard had a quick feel around inside and then sent me on my way. I don’t think he could be bothered repacking everything. And nor could I for that matter! So once we were all through security we got back on board the train and went straight back to sleep until it rattled in to Nanning station at half 10 in the morning.

Just arrived in Nanning

We said goodbye to Nina and set about assessing the next steps of our journey. We needed train tickets to Guangzhou. But to get them we needed money. And to get money we needed a Construction Bank of China as they gave the best withdrawl rates. We made base inside the station and I left James with the bags while I set off into the streets of Nanning with Google Maps in my hand and my raincoat in the other. It was a mad dash through the streets as it was much larger than I thought – 6 million people live in Nanning, and I thought it was just a “connection town” between Hong Kong and Vietnam! It was definitely an experience though as hardly anything was written in English (obviously) and I was pretty much the only non-Chinese person I saw on that hour-long run round the streets. I managed to get the required cash and met James back at the station.

Nanning in bloom

We had been prepared for a lack of English in some places, and as our Cantonese wasn’t exactly up to scratch we hoped for the best when we sidled up to the ticket counter. We needed two tickets for the soft sleeper (ideally, but hard sleeper tickets would be acceptable) train to Guangzhou, just outside Hong Kong. We couldn’t book these in advance so we just had to hope that there were some available for us, otherwise the alternative was to get whatever ticket we could and go overnight on a seat, much like on a coach, which we had done a lot in the US and Australia but we had hoped we had left those days behind. When James relayed our requirements to the chap behind the glass and gestured that we wanted “sleeper” (by doing the internationally-recognised symbol for “sleep” by clasping both hands together under his 45-degree-angled head) he shook his head and pointed to the chair-back behind him. Oh dear.

There's nothing in Nanning......apart from the train station

OK, so we didn’t get our first choice, or second for that matter, but we were on the train later that day and that was all that mattered. All we had to do was waste a couple of hours in the meantime, but that was no problem for the Gray boys. I needed to get some supplies in for the journey so I popped my head into a small supermarket nearby. It was certainly an experience. I was reduced to searching for food simply by looking at the pictures on the box, so the items I bought for lunch, dinner and breakfast were a gamble and could have been anything for all I knew. At 5:00pm the gates were opened in Waiting Room 3 and the mad dash for the train began. Even though we already had allotted seats. So we took our time. Coach 10, seats 25 and 26, shouldn’t be a problem.

Oh dear, this could be a loooooong night

There was a BIG problem. As we stepped aboard the train we realised that the seating situation wasn’t 2 x 2 in neat little lines like you would get on a bus, it was vertical-sided, back-to-back seats facing each other over a tiny little table. We would be looking our “bunk-mates” right in the eye as we went to sleep that night. And it got worse. Oh so worse. James’s seat was at the window (via the rota for train seats, as mine was the last one from Bangkok to Chiang Mai) and mine was next to him, which was fine, you might think. But oh no, there was another seat/number next to mine, so I was to be sat in-between James and a little old Chinese lady, with 3 other chaps in front of us, all fighting for leg-room. This was going to be a nightmare. We tried our best to cram our huge backpacks under the seats as everyone on the train had bags, sacks of rice, trolleys, prams, you name it. As we settled in for an uncomfortable night the chap next to the window opposite James got up and wandered off behind us. After a few minutes he returned and collected his bag from the overhead storage. There was a seat free by the window.

I gestured to the guy opposite me that I would like to take the seat by the window, if the other chap wasn’t coming back. Again the language barrier proved troublesome, but it seemed like he didn’t have eyes on it himself so I jumped into it before anyone else (the guy behind who had been eying it up) had the chance. So with a window seat each we passed the time playing cards on the small table (an act that drew a small audience on the train), reading our books, listening to some tunes and trying to get sleep as best we could. One of the problems was that the seats were so vertical that you just couldn’t rest against anything, even the wall or the window, so the best place to get some proper sleep was sprawled out on the table. But as the table was only small we had to take it in un-communicated turns between us, sometimes on there at two at-a-time, which was a scary situation when you woke up and there was a stranger a few inches away from your face who wasn’t there when your eyes closed last.

The shuffler and the peeker