More Travel Troubles
Trip Start
Jul 08, 2008
1
15
25
Trip End
Aug 15, 2008
Dali,
Yunnan,
China
Saturday, July 26, 2008
I waited in line about 40 minutes (quick for a Chinese train station). When I finally got to the front, the clerk told me that everything but hard seat had sold out for the 22 hour train ride to Guilin on the 29th. They had just gone on sale that morning. I grunted, "Ta ma de" - Chinese for damn it or fuck - and the clerk laughed and scolded me. "Why are you cursing? Even a foreigner knows how to curse like this? You shouldn't do that." Apparently, she had never ridden a hard seat overnight. I did that once. I do not want to do it again.
Jen and I hurried through the pouring rain the two blocks to the bus station. We discussed our options - fly or bus - while a gang of child beggars hovered around us asking for money. These are little kids who are organized into gangs by beggar pimps who send them out to ask for money and then take most of it from them. Their parents usually sell them into the situation. Anyway, I tried to tell Jen that I'd much rather fly despite the cost ($150 US or so). It buys us another day in Guilin, and 24 HOUR BUS RIDE!? Jen was stil thinking it would be ok.
After the overnight bus to Dali, we quickly bought plane tickets. Our bus left Kunming 2.5 hours late. We waited in the bunks as gangsters loaded cargo onto the bus. They hopped into a van, and we got a local police escort of a half dozen motorcycles out of the city. After we'd passed the search at the highway checkpoint, we pulled over at a gas station where the gangsters got back on the bus. We woke up at 5am to the sounds of unloading and the headlights of expensive cars coming and going to pick up. We watched packets of probably money exchange hands. Jen was disturbed. Mostly, I was just upset because they kept waking me up.
