At the beginning of this blog I said death was possibly the worst outcome of my trip. It turns out deportation is a pretty close second. Or being in a separate country from the person you are travelling with. But let us not get ahead of ourselves.
In the second week of our trip we ventured to Hong Kong which although is now part of China is it still considered separate to the "mainland". Entering Hong Kong resembled airport immigration with a health check and another stamp in the passport.
Hong Kong itself seems to be a conglomeration of immigrants from the various Chinese ethnic groups to African, Middle Eastern and a whole host of European expats. All have landed on these tiny islands and been forced to practically live on top of one another. This was no more evident than in our accommodation. The "Paris Guesthouse" looked very nice and clean on the website with free tea and coffee available. The latter alone convinced me. Unfortunately this "guesthouse" was housed in the infamous Chungking Mansions. Anyone who has tried to stay in Hong Kong on a budget will have heard of this apartment blocks and will either look at you with disgust or fear. We experienced both. The massive apartment block is home to mostly curry houses and mobile phone vendors on the ground floor and then hostels and flats reaching 14 floors. We found the reception with the help of a tout who worked there and directed us to our room.
To describe the room... It had two beds and a window and air-conditioning. It also had stains (they resembled blood) splashed over one wall, a questionable stain on the sheets and a communal bathroom that I feared held endless ecoli. Oh yes, and a meat cleaver under the bed. I dropped my purse went to pick it up and facing me was a 10 inch long meat knife. For the rest of our stay (unbelievably we stayed) I checked to see if it was still there. I didn't know whether it being there made me feel safer or not but I knew it's disappearance would definitely cause panic.
The only benefit to these hideous lodgings was that we had no inclination to stay in our rooms longer than necessary. The city itself was spectacular and bizarre fusing all that was recognisable in the west (there were countless Starbucks, H&Ms, Pizza Expresses, a Marks and Spencer and everyone spoke good english) with Chinese culture. It did seem though that Hong Kong was far more inclined to hold on to its western roots than embrace the motherland. The Cantonese culture was there but it seemed overshadowed by the rest of the city.
We enjoyed our time in Hong Kong but were looking forward to getting out of the city and onto the greener, smaller city of Guilin. This meant travelling to the economic centre Shenzhen just outside the Hong Kong district to catch a bus onto Guilin. We left plenty of time and had at least two hours when we arrived at Shenzhen train station before we had to get our bus.
We once again went through the rigorous Chinese customs. In hindsight it was a blessing that Lizzie went through customs first or goodness knows what we would have done. Lizzie handed over her passport, the woman flicked through it and handed it back saying she needs to go to the visa office. But we have visas? "One entry" the woman replies. I look at mine and it says next to the box "Entries""2". Lizzie's reads "Entries: 1". Despite being part of China once more entering Hong Kong means leaving mainland China (where our visa was valid) and despite using the same visa company and filling out identical forms, Lizzie could not return to the "mainland" with her current visa. The shit had hit the fan. We were forced into a visa office and the people there didn't really speak english but from what we could make out Lizzie could buy a visa today for the bargain price of fifty pounds but this would only be valid for Shenzhen. She had to come back the following day to get a passport for the rest of China. Safe to say we didn't get our bus to Guilin that day. We stayed in a delightful youth hostel in the art district of Shenzhen and vowed to rise early the next morning to return to the visa office to make Lizzie a legal citizen again.
That didn't happen. We arrived back at the train station and were told we couldn't enter the train station without a ticket. We tried to explain that we didn't want to go anywhere but to get to the visa office to which we were answered only with blank stares. I will admit that we did the truly awful foreigner abroad thing where when someone doesn't understand you you point more emphatically and say it louder. After almost an hour of being passed on from one official to another we found a passerby who spoke english. He explained our situation to a guard and they explained we couldn't go in because we'd be crossing the border. We finally understood that the visa office was on the Hong Kong side and we couldn't cross it. When the visa office had said come back tomorrow they had either presumed we would return to Hong Kong or they were just trying to get rid of us. The english speaking chinese man directed us up some stairs and said to find a help desk for travel. We went up the stairs and found no such desk. Eventually we came across an airline desk and begged for their help. A nice man called "Tim" said to return the following day at nine am where Lizzie could be taken to Hong Kong to renew her visa for a further one hundred pounds.
Now those more astute readers among you may have noticed a fundamental flaw in our plan. Lizzie could go back through to Hong Kong because she was getting a new visa to re-enter China anyway, I had already used the two entries on my visa. Contrary to everything we had promised our family and friends before our trip we were going to have to spend the day apart. In different countries.
The following morning's journey to the train station was a little tense to say the least. These were the list of things that I had begun to worry about-
1. Lizzie would not be able to get a new visa.
2. She would be forced to fly back to the UK and I would be alone in China.
3. With both our backpacks.
4. That "Tim" would not be there and the other travel agents would have no idea what we were talking about.
5. That when we returned to the travel desk it would have disappeared with just a small, old chinese man in its place.
Thankfully Lizzie crossed the border with little difficulty and returned to our hostel nine hours later with a new visa valid for a further three months.
We finally left Shenzhen and although it had been a nice area being forced to stay anywhere against your will will always mar one's view of a place.
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