Entry #5

After such a relaxing time in Yangshuo, it's notable that our overnight bus ride to Shenzhen was probably our most uncomfortable experience in all of China. It was only a 10-hour ride, leaving at 9 pm, which started out bad and got worse. After stowing our bags beneath the bus, we boarded removed our shoes, and saw the three rows of bunks in two levels down the length of a very long bus. We had lower level beds, which we expected to be better than the upper. The bunks were angled up at the back so that each person's feet were tucked in neatly behind the back of the person in front of them. A good setup, in theory. A bit cramped, we were able to settle in well enough. Just as the bus got moving, a chubby Chinese guy in his 20's grabbed my blanket to use as a pillow as he lay down in the narrow aisle between my cousin and me. On Jenny's left, a taller Chinese guy with three-quarter inch long fingernails on his left hand (just for fashion, we're told) settled in. Looking behind me down the long aisle, I could see it was packed to the gills, with people lined up in all the bunks and filling the aisles all the way to the back. At one point, about 30 minutes into the journey, we made a stop and the aisles seemed to empty out completely. Thinking they would be with us the whole way to Shenzhen, we were quite relieved when everyone left. Unfortunately, at another stop not 20 minutes later, they all reappeared from somewhere. Again, the chubby Chinese guy stole my blanket, and he also snatched the pillow right out from under the head of the woman in front of me. It was a sleepless night: he bossed Jennifer around, and tucked his arm into my berth. We eventually arrived in Shenzhen where Jen removed her backpack from under the bus to find that it had been sitting in water draining from boxes of lotus roots for about 9 hours.

We shared a cab with a British couple to the ferry terminal. The ferry to Kowloon in Hong Kong was short and uneventful, and after dim sum with the British couple, we made our way to the hotel to wait for my sister. Thankfully, the hotel allowed us to go into our room, even though the reservation was under Emily's name and she wouldn't be arriving for at least 6 hours. We took showers and naps and waited for her in the lobby.

Hong Kong was great. The city is remarkable in its differences from mainland China's big cities. Traffic laws are obeyed, spitting is forbidden, and bicycles are fewer and more far between. Being in a clean city in a nice hotel room (thanks Emily!) for a few days was a nice break from our hectic traveling schedule in China. We took a tram to the top of Hong Kong's peak, took a bus to see a monastery and giant Buddha, ate well, took a ferry to Macau (a small country of Portuguese influence), and were even able to talk with our family before catching our flight to Hanoi on July 24.