29th May - First Day in China

I'm here! :-)


I needed a lie in after very little sleep for the last few days and so slept until 10. I then frantically tried to get a VPN working on my computer so that I will be able to use Blogger and Facebook in China. My brain did not work yesterday and so I could not do it then. It was 12 by the time I checked out and had managed to do the internet stuff. Helen headed off to catch the train to China and I caught the shuttle bus from down town to the hotel where I I had stayed with Jacob which was storing my bike and other things.

It took me a couple of hours to put my bike back together again. Toooo much technical stuff today (computers and bikes!) for a little girly head. I had to put the pedals and handle bars back on, put together my new pump and pump up the wheels, fit a new saddle, fit a new mount for my phone with GPS on my handle bars, tune the breaks and gears and repack all of my things so that they are organised for biking again.

I hate taking my bike on a plane. It really does require so much faffing at either end. Each time I have to take everything all apart and also organise everything to reduce the checked on weight. Why is the world not more designed for bike touring?

My bike still needs some more tuning but I can do that when I get on the road again. As I have new cleats I have to faff to get these in the right place so that it does not hurt my knees. I have to play with my new saddle to get it more comfortable and adjust the gears as they are not well tuned right now. The bike has been banged around so much on this last flight.


By the time I had done all of this I realised that I had just missed the train at 2.50 so I decided to head for a run to Mong Kok to take a silly photo of a hotel called "Virginia" which advertises rooms by the hour. I thought that it was funny to see this on a major street in HK. I had seen it a few days ago but I did not have my camera handy.

I was running for about 2 hours as on the way to Mong Kong I also went in to every single book shop to try and find a Chinese Road Atlas in English as well as Chinese (and failed for the 10th time - so far I have spent about 5 hours going to different book shops in HK trying to do this) and I also popped into many camera shops to try and find a replacement clip to fit my Go-Pro Camera to either my helmet or handle bars (again I failed). Oh well.

It was 17.00 by the time I got back to my old hotel in Hong Hum and then biked with everything to the station to get a ticket to China.


I caught the train at 19.50. I now know the secrets about the best way to get a train to China with a bike:

• They do sell drinks and basic food on board and they give you a free bottle of water (so you don't need to buy water at the crazy prices at the station as I did).
  
• You don't need to put all your bags on as luggage with the bike as there is plenty of space to store it on the train. It just means that you have to be willing to cart them round through customs etc on the Chinese side.
• The cost of the train was 190 HKD.
  
• I then had to pay another 75HKD for my bike and 75HKD for my luggage. They did it based on weight.
• Do not change money before checking in your bike. I made the mistake of changing all of my HKD to CYN before checking my bike on as I did not realise that I would need to pay. They accepted CYN as well as HKD but charged the same number of dollars i.e. it is much cheaper to pay in HKD due to the exchange rate.
  
• You have to check in about 30 minutes before the train leaves in order to have enough time to check on the bike etc and then base through HK customs.
• Race off the train as quickly as possible or else you get to the end of the queue going through customs and it takes forever!
• There is no point putting all of your bags on your bike straight away at the place where your bike is delivered as you just have to take everything off again round the corner when your items are scanned at customs.
• There is wireless on board for £2 for the whole journey.

Although the train arrived about 8 it literally took me 1 and a half hours to find my hotel 5 minutes down the road. I had agreed with Helen to meet up and share a room in Guongzhou. She had gone online and booked a place. I normally do not do this when traveling on my own as most of the time I have no idea where I will be that evening and also whether the hotel/lodge/hostel will be bike friendly etc. However, I thought it would be nice to go out to dinner in a new country with a friend.


As it was 20:30 by the time I got though customs it was dark and it took a while to even find the way out of the station. All of the lifts were hidden from view and all that I could find was escalators which I could not get my bike down. Having eventually found the lifts I then had to back up again - and this time only stairs were available. I do not have the strength to carry my bike fully laden with all of my bags up stairs on my own and so I had to wait for some people to help me.

Once I got on to the street I tired to get a taxi but none of them would take my bike. I asked about 20 people for directions using the hotel address Helen had written in English on a scrpa piece of paper. One man gave me directions which I followed but then got lost again and so tried to find some other people that spoke English to get further directions. I walked in totally the wrong direction for ages untill I saw a 5* Ramada hotel on the other side of the road and decided to pop in there for some help. It took 10 minutes to get there as I had to carry on walking in the wrong direction for a while before I could cross the busy motorway.
The staff at the Ramada were very helpful and converted the address into Chinese for me and gave me a map of the area so that I could ask along the way and I set off back the way I had come from. After some help from a passing Chinese man on a bike and then another man on foot I eventually arrived about 9.30/10 (by which point Helen was getting rather worried).

At least during my 2 hour wonder I got a good look at the city. My first sight as I left the station and glanced upon China proper was McDonalds and a load of sky-skrapers. Not what I was expecting. It is very much more like HK than I was expecting and really wealthy with really good quality roads. If it were not for all the Chinese people I could have been in a European city anywhere. I found out later that this city is one of the most wealthy in China and not representative of the rest of the country. Although it was late at night and dark I did not feel particularly unsafe (as I would have done in an Indian big city) and people really tried to help me. The guy on the bike in particular spent about 15 minutes going out of his way to make sure I got to the hotel safely.





Neither Helen nor I had eaten anything for lunch or dinner and so we went out straight away to get something to eat. We ordered loads from the photos in the menu. Most of the dishes were great expect the chicken which just seemed to contain chopped up bones and skin. One of the waiters spoke some English and asked to have his photo taken with him. This is a rather blurry copy.

It was actually very exciting to be in a new country again. I loved the tea that you automatically get with the meal. It is dried flowers which they then pour water on and it tastes sweet and lovely. You have to drink from the cup with the lid slightly off to let out the liquid but not the flowers.