Holiday in Thailand

“Chunyun refers to the extremely high traffic load of transportation in China around the time of Chinese New Year. The high traffic load usually begins 15 days before the Lunar New Year, and lasts for around 40 days. This period is also called Spring Festival travel season, or Chunyun period. The number of passengers during the Chunyun period has exceeded the population of China, hitting the 2-billion mark in 2006.”

(This blog started as an email Jesse was writing to our Chinese friends, but once it reached two pages I suggested that it was a bit much to ask them to read it. So we sent an abbreviated version and I edited this one for your enjoyment. All the first person stuff is by Jesse. For some frustrating and unknown reason, our previous blog at Realtravel.com will no longer let us update it, but you can still see it here. ~Carrie)

We are sitting in a hotel in Shenzhen right now waiting on our flight to Bangkok, Thailand. We have had quite the adventure trying to get out of Yongzhou. Every plan we made was ruined as the winter weather caused roads to close and trains to be delayed. Everyone kept joking about how lucky we were to be in Hunan for the worst winter in 50 years. You may have gotten some idea of how bad it is from the international news- many people have died in train and bus crashes, milllions have been living without electricity, water, or heat, and millions have been stranded at train and bus stations unable to make it home for the holidays. For many migrant workers, Spring Festival is the only time they see their families all year. We felt really bad for these workers as we experienced only a small portion of their difficulties.

We had reserved seats on a February 25th bus to Shenzhen but to our knowledge that bus has STILL not returned to Yongzhou from its last trip out. Then we tried to get train tickets to Shenzhen, but they were all sold out. So we started looking for ways to get to Guangzhou, which is near Shenzhen and has much warmer weather, so we thought that getting from there to our final China destination would be no problem. We were surprised to learn that our city has a working civilian airport that has flights to Changsha and Guangzhou nearly every day for a low cost. Unfortunately, all flights in Hunan had been cancelled due to weather. So we bought train tickets to Guangzhou. The tickets were technically for boarding the train at a station 30 minutes past Yongzhou, since the tickets for our station were sold out, but we were told that we were being granted a special favor as foreign guests! All of these travel negotiations were only accomplished though the help of our fantastic Chinese friends, and we are eternally grateful to them.

So the night of the 26th, we headed to the train station. Our friend Gary has been very busy lately and we haven’t seen much of him (he runs a private English school), so he said he wanted to ride with us to the train station to say goodbye. We were SO lucky to have him with us. Now we suspect that he knew how crazy the train station would be due to Chunyun and didn’t just come to hang out with us, but to save us from disaster. Through his translations we learned that our train was delayed. Then delayed by 23 hours. Then cancelled. Thinking quickly, Gary got us our money back and we bought a ticket to Guilin on the hunch that the weather wasn't as bad there, and being a bigger city we had more options for escape. Well our train to Guilin was delayed by 2 hours and we were growing increasingly anxious. But after a stop in an internet bar (wang3ba1) to confirm the weather in Guilin and check prices for Guilin to Shenzhen flights, we returned to the train station. Gary stuck with us late into the night despite the fact that the roads were getting icier every minute and that he would have a hard time getting home.

Back at the train station we ran into Mr. Pong, head of #4 Middle School security and a very funny guy to drink with. He was there waiting for his daughter, communicating with her by text message. She happened to be on our train and so from him we learned that the train was leaving Qiyang county. I started breathing normally again. If we could get to Guilin we would still have to find a flight to Shenzhen but we would be out of Hunan's evil winter. Well the train finally arrived and said our goodbyes to Gary and filed on. This was our first experience on a sleeper train and I stood in the dark for 5 minutes debating on whether or not I should take off my shoes before climbing up. Each tiny compartment had six tiny beds, and mine was the middle bunk on the right. I decided not to and a steward came by and asked me to take them off as soon as I had scaled the beds to mine. Feeling embarrassed, I laid in bed and tried to fall asleep. However an elderly couple and their granddaughter had decided that 2 a.m. was the best time to have a snack and happily shout at each other for 45 minutes. I would have asked them to be quiet, but you all know how limited my Chinese is. Besides I did not want to be rude to an old woman. They finally quieted down about the time the train stopped for 2 hours in the middle of nowhere. The rocking of the moving train had almost lulled me to sleep. But the very second we stopped the two old men on the bunks below me started having a contest to see who could make the most noise while they were sleeping. Are you familiar with the expression "necessity is the mother of invention"? After 30 minutes of tossing and turning I remembered that I had a pair of unused disposable socks from the bowling alley. I took them out of my pocket and fashioned them into some make-shift earplugs. Once they were in place I was able to doze for a few minutes at a time.

We arrived in Guilin at about 6 am. The sun was trying to come up behind the rain clouds and light layer of ice was on the sidewalks, but as the sun continued to rise it melted before our eyes. That's when we met "Mike". An older Chinese man approached us as we looked through our guidebook and started speaking English. I was a little suspicious at first. I have been in the Guilin train station before and been taken advantage of by salesmen for buses and tours. But the more we talked to Mike the easier I felt. He said that he was a teacher in English and Chinese at a middle school and he wanted to practice his English. He told us that the ticket agencies for flights were still closed so we asked him to take us to an internet bar. He happily walked us there, got us the local price for computer usage and said goodbye. We sat around reading our e-mails listlessly, so tired that we felt crazy. We really didn't know what to do next but 45 minutes later Mike came back and told the ticket office was open and led us there. I was once again a little suspicious, mainly because no American would go so far out of their way to help a stranger. I kept thinking "what does he want"? Well we got our tickets to Shenzhen and Mike suggested we take a boat tour of the Li river. "Ah, here it is," I thought. But having nothing else to do we said sure. Well as it turns out our guidebook says you can expect to pay 500 rmb for a tour and being as it was off season Mike got us a tour for 200 rmb. He got us to the tour bus, gave us his number in case we had a problem and we said a fond goodbye. Perhaps he got a cut of our tour price but who cares, he was so helpful and we would have been lost without him.

The tour was in Chinese only but Carrie sat next to a nice student from Beijing named Wang WenFei from who translated for us. We had a good time chatting with him. The Guilin/Yangshuo area is beautiful in any weather and we got some fantastic photos. When it was over, we ate some dinner then headed to the airport. When we first arrived in Guilin from the US back in August we thought the airport was a dump. Apparently it was then under construction and now looks fabulous. Of course, our flight to Shenzhen was delayed, and we were still harboring fears that we would miss our flight to Thailand and be stuck in China forever and ever. But eventually we made it, and have been enjoying a very nice hotel room and looking forward to fun in the sun.

Itinerary: Bangkok 1/30-2/2/08, Chiang Mai 2/3-2/9, Sukothai 2/10-2/12, Cha-Am 2/13-2/18, Phetburi 2/19-2/20, Bangkok 2/21-2/22