In and Out on a Slow Train from Guangzhou

6/2

I checked out of the hostel today, while Yves moved into a dorm room once again.  We went to lunch at Coyote again (I know it seems ridiculous that I had nachos there three times in just over a week, but who knows when I'll get decent nachos again?) where they remembered my order with all my pain in the ass specifications (no olives, no jalapenos, salsa, sour cream and guacamoles on the side).  I helped Yves with his English C.V. and a cover letter for a job he wanted to apply to in Hong Kong (and it was great- he'd better get that job) and he bought me lunch.  We were both tired since our schedules were so off we'd accidentally stayed up until 5 a.m., watching Saving Private Ryan and drinking large Tsingtaos that morning.  We had a couple of Sol beers and then hugged, wished each other the best and headed our separate ways.

Leaving Hong Kong was sad, but it really was time for me to leave, you know how sometimes you just know?

I don't want to talk about the process of getting to Guangzhou because it was longer and more expensive than it should've been due to my stupidity and exhaustion.  On the other hand, once again, the visa guy had a hard time ascertaining my identity because my picture looks so different from me, so that made me happy.  Finding somewhere to stay was also very difficult and time consuming, so I just screwed around online for a while before crashing.

6/3

Today was a bit frustrating.  I checked out of my hotel, hoping to leave on the 6:11 train for Shanghai but a) one leaving at that time wasn't there and b) the trains for the day were full anyway, so I bought a ticket (the only one available was in a seat, not a bed) for the next day for 12:08 to Shanghai.

I tried to find one of the two hostels in my downloaded guide books Yves had given me for China and Mongolia.  Neither one seems to exist anymore and after about three hours of looking I ended up with another hotel in an area very close to the last one for the exact same price. 

In between, and for the rest of the day, I walked around a leather area with a market for leather goods, and an area for wholesale leather in large fabric roles.  Even the air smelled of leather.  I had a very good lunch of cabbage and slightly spicy beef knuckles (I think- beef attached to the bone in chunks) in sauce on a bed of rice in a mini cast iron pot inside a bamboo basket (about $1.50).  I rested at the hotel for a while before going out to get dinner, a large bowl of at least ten dumplings that were disappointing, for just under $1.  I bought a Pearl River beer, which was okay, a SIM card for my phone and a dragonfruit for tomorrow's breakfast.

6/4

Did you know they have oleanders in China?  I'm on the train to Shanghai and currently passing through trees reminiscent of Dr. Suess' Truffula trees from The Lorax, tall trunks without leaves until reaching a big ball of shrubbery right at the top, though sadly, they're not neon in real life.  China's rural interior is all this medium-dark green contrasted with dark red-orange dirt that's mirrored by the buildings built from bricks of the same earth.  The train has passed through a valley, by green mountains, rock formations, both in vertical red softly sculpted towers and gray groupings, lakes and of course, rice paddies, both flat and in tiers.

However, at this moment, I'm about 6.5 hours into this approximately 18 hour long train ride and regretting this decision and wishing I'd taken a bus instead.  Sleeping on a train, even in a seat, didn't seem like such a terrible idea, after all, I'd done it in Japan and it had been okay.  But, I'd forgotten to ask for a window seat and now I have an aisle seat.  And I hadn't counted on all the seats facing each other in groups of four, meaning that none of them could recline at all.  Nor had I realized that there would be no arm rests, only squat toilets, many people standing in the crowded train, a total acceptance of spitting on the floor, and smoking in an area on the end of each car.  I'd also been told that an attendant came through about every hour to collect trash and no one has so far at any point.  Lastly, from my reading online, I'd been led to believe that hot food was fairly readily available (as it was on the train in Thailand) and so far only one type of meal has been on offer and it looked bland and gross.  In short, I'm not thrilled.  It's also really loud.

That all said, everyone has been quite nice to me.  People do stare a lot, but it's just in a curious sort of way as there really aren't many foreigners around here, and none of it feels rude or lecherous.  I'm desperately hoping the couple across from me gets off a.s.a.p. so I can sit over there as I know the guy next to me is going to Shanghai and I don't know how I'll sleep otherwise.  One girl, Hualien, and her friend talked to me for quite a while.  Her English was quite good, though her accent was very strong.  She was very impressed when I told her of my plans and traveling.  Her friend had me try this candy that looked like a long, thin round stick of baloney.  It was actually dry candy/ appetite suppressant cut into slices about the thickness of Necco wafers that tasted kind of like Sweet Tarts, which are okay, but I'm not hugely fond of.  They liked looking at my passport and some photos I had from home and her friend gave me her cell phone charmed once I complimented her on it, which was very sweet.  Tellingly, perhaps, Hualien reacted strongly when I said that I'd visited Japan and asked if I was scared there.  I said no, that I'd really liked it, which surprised her greatly.  She told me she'd heard the Japanese were very cruel.  I mention all this because I think it was interesting to hear what she said about them, given past Sino-Japanese relations.

I have some bad news that's pretty irrelevant to you at the moment.  China has blocked Facebook and my blog because they think I'm a dangerous threat- how cool is that?  Okay, maybe they've just blocked Facebook in general, and maybe they've just blocked all blogs that are .blogspot.com.  If you're wondering what a blocked webpage looks like, it's just the page you get when it says "Firefox can't connect to Facebook" or "Not Lost, Just Late is not responding."

It sucks, and what's really weird is that my gmail and google are still working.  Apparently, about 10% of websites are blocked in China, including Wikipedia.  What this means, of course, is that I can't update this or respond to people on FB so everyone probably thinks I hate them.  I promise I don't, unless you're someone I really do hate, in which case, I do hate you.

So I kind of have a plan: Travel to Shanghai and spend a few days there, then take the train to Beijing.  From there, immediately catch the Trans-Siberian to Ulaanbatuur and travel around Mongolia for about a week (which is the one country where being American actually helps regarding visas as we don't need one and most other nationalities do), then return to Beijing and go on a package tour.

I've never really done a package tour, though I've done several cruises which I enjoyed very much, and in general, the idea doesn't appeal to me.  However, backpacking in China has so far been much more difficult than in any other country and is a totally different experience (especially compared to SE Asia).  Part of this is due to the language, but it's so much more than that.  China is heavily touristed, but mostly by the Chinese.  Thus, there's no backpacker network or beaten pack in that way and it's very difficult to find accommodation or other people to talk to/ travelers.

6/5

I wrote all that last night and since then the scenery changed a bit.  The dirt changed to a dusty pink, and the greenery is a bit lighter now.  The train took way longer than I'd expected and I ended up spending a total of 23 hours and fifteen minutes on the train to Shanghai which I was really, really not happy about.  Fortunately, my hostel (after an overpriced cab ride there) was much nicer than I'd expected and I even made it out to buy a pair of jeans that fit!  I've been walking around for the past several months with what appears to be a fairly massive erection, simply because my pants have fit so poorly, so I'm quite happy to appear female once again.

Leaving Lovely, Lazy Langkawi

3/24

Decided that I'll actually leave tomorrow, so I spent most of today writing, planning, organizing things, replying to emails, taking pictures, and a bit of beach time. I spent part of the afternoon talking to Matt because, again, he really is an interesting person to talk to.  It might seem strange but I was really impressed with his knowledge of football, simply because I don't have that depth of knowledge on any topic.  I get bored too easily and move onto something new so I have quite a wide breadth of knowledge, but it's fairly superficial in a way.

Anyway, I wanted a quiet night and I did not want to go to Sunbar again, so after dinner I went with Matt and a different Dutch girl, whose name I can't recall, to a fairly low key Irish bar for a pint of Guiness that tasted particularly delicious since I hadn't had one in a very long time.  We were all just hanging out and convinced the bartender to play more upbeat music instead of the vaguely depressing love songs he was listening to and then Lady Gaga came on.  I missed her, even though I have her album on my netbook, I hadn't played it in several days, so I was really excited when she came on.  I was so excited in fact that I got the bartender to play nearly her entire album.

We all went back to the hostel to hang out with the others and the newest new arrivals, but they were all going out to Sunbar later and I was not going to go (and they were drinking some disgusting booze and playing Kings without Never Have I Ever) so I went back to the Irish bar, and, somewhat ironically, considering that I was in Malaysia, met an Irish couple who I talked to until the bar closed.  It doesn't sound exciting but it was a nice, calm evening out that was exactly what I wanted then.

3/25

I finally made it off the island!  Woke up, packed, got some lunch and then split a cab with another woman who was leaving from the hostel to Kuah, the town on the island the ferries depart from.  I took an hour long ferry ride to Kuala Perlis, on which I spoke to a Malaysian woman, probably in her late 40s, who had studied in the U.S.  She'd been in New York City and said she'd had a great time there, but didn't wear her hijab at the time, which she was wearing now.  I asked if that was because she'd become more religious since returning home and she thought about it for a bit before replying that it wasn't that exactly, but that it made her more aware of (and I'm obviously paraphrasing here) who she was and standards she should live up to.  I'm afraid that I'm making it sound oppressive and sinister here, but the way she described it wasn't.  My understanding of it was more like something you wear to remind yourself to be a better person and remain true to yourself.

After disembarking from the ferry I had a maybe 50 minute (?) cab ride to Arau, then got on the overnight train to Bankok for RM 105 ($34 USD).  It was supposed to leave at 5:30 but didn't arrive at the station until 6- it was just like being on Amtrack!  Before we'd been on the train for even an hour we had to get off, go through immigration to get into Thailand, which was an absolute breeze, despite what I'd heard previously, get some food and get back on. 

I'd gotten a bunk on the lower level ocean side specifically so I might see a bit of the sea as the tracks run  nearby, but it got dark even earlier than I'd expected and I couldn't see anything.  I spent a bit of time talking to a group of Malaysian guys who seemed quite normal, and a Malaysian woman who was very nice and interested in my Indian bead loom work (I'm just trying to finish making a belt so I can stop lugging the damn thing around,) then went to bed.  The bed was fine, nothing special or impressive, fairly similar to overnight trains I'd taken in Europe.  All of this is to say: I'm still not impressed.  I don't know why but I think I just don't like trains.  Maybe it's the lack of control or that your path is already so set.  If an emergency ever happened on a bus, the driver would divert to a hospital.  On a train, all they can do is stop it. 

I also wanted to mention here how much I hate Islamic (squat) toilets but normally I don't complain too much or have much real trouble with them.  But squat toilets on a moving train is another issue altogether.  It was not fun and what made it worse was the later realization that they actually had Western toilets, just in another area of the train.

Sydney U.S. Consulate Office

Friday, March 5th, 2010

I am exhausted, and not in some existential sense, but just physically exhausted.  I was out until 4:15 a.m. last night/ this morning at the ivy pool club with Milja and then had to get up at 7 to make it to my stupid 8 a.m. appointment at the damn consulate office to get more visa pages.  I still had a few left but I know I'll fill those up on my trip and I don't want to have to deal with the consulates/ embassies in other countries while traveling.  I did learn a few things though: for whatever reason the security at the consulate is quite strict- I had to go through a metal detector and bag screen and then wasn't even allowed to take my purse in with me, but had to check it.  What's a little strange about that is that since it's in a large, main downtown building, if someone were interested in bombing the place, you could just go up or down a floor and set it off there, since the rest of it isn't secured.  The tight security also seemed strange because the only other consulate I've been to was the French consulate in L.A. and they didn't have any security at all, just signs warning against buying counterfeit Louis Vuitton phones that were so tacky it's hard to imagine that anyone would be interested in them anyway.  There probably should be more to this post about how I was tired and how strange most of the new pages look, but I've already written the next post and want to put up that one, which I can't do until I do this one.