Every year since I was born I was taken up on long (often arduous) car journeys to Scotland to visit relatives etc. These on would often take between 7-8 hours depending on traffic, vomiting siblings or the unpredictable weather that hits as soon as you get to the Midlands. This I felt had made me quite good at the act of travelling by giving me the required patience such journeys. I obviously wasn't expecting to travel to China and Southeast Asia in my lifetime.
It had started so well when we decided to leave Xingping, a small town we visited outside of Yangshuo, to get onto Kunming. We were to get back to Guilin by bus and then a train onto Kunming which our guide told us was an eight hour trip. We would be there by 11.30pm and therefore thought it was pointless to pay more for a sleeper carriage and went for the cheap "hard" seats.
We thought since we were getting in so late at night that we should book a hostel in advance. I called our chosen hostel and said that we were coming from Guilin and would be with them that evening. On the other end of the phone the girl sounded a little confused, "You want to book tonight? Are you on the train?"
"No we're just about to get on it but yes we'd like to book two beds for this evening".
"I think you will be arriving tomorrow"
"No the journey only takes eight hours we will be there at 11.30 tonight so could we book for tonight"
"If you're coming from Guilin it will take 18 hours I think"
"18 hours!"
I suddenly had a horrible flashback to buying the tickets at the station a few days before when the man pointed to the screen at the arrival time "11.30" not "23.30". I came off the phone and explained to Lizzie our current situation. She was unamused. But at this point we could do little else but plough on hoping that no one else would be stupid enough to book hard seats for such a long journey and our carriage would be empty.
Despite leaving plenty of time for the bus we still managed to be running for our train and found that our carriage heaving with people and also that a mother and her young children were in our seats. We couldn't ask them to move so we found some spare seats and sat tight.
About two hours into the journey a man walked up to us and began pointing at his tickets and the seat number. We had to move because we were in his seat. With no other seats now available and still 16 hours to go on the train we had to ask the family to move. We could feel the rest of the carriage turn against us.
Sleep was near impossible. There was nothing to lean against and my neck pillow was little help. I tried to lie face down on it on my lap like on a masseur's bed but this left my back hurting and lines on my face.
It was 3am Lizzie and I had had about 3 hours sleep between us and were becoming tetchy. The only thing to placate us was a few women, all with very small babies, who were irresistibly cute sitting around us. They kept us thoroughly entertained for at least a few hours. I soon lost interest though when the mother sitting next to me with her baby half on my lap quickly lifted him up and squatted him over a bin in the aisle.
*Quick cultural note: Small children in China wear hundreds of layers but have a slit all the way through their trousers so that they can be held over drains in the street (or bins on a train) by their parents and do their business.*
Being sleep deprived I was not immediately sure what had happened. It was only when the mother began wiping the yellowy-brown stain on her trousers that I realised the child had shat itself. The only small mercy was that it wasn't on me. Or not that I noticed.
By the time we got into Kunming I was ready to never get on a train again but I thought buses were still safe.
It was after a few days in the laid back city of Kunming with it's shopping, cool nightlife and beautiful parks that we decided to head to the renowned YuanYuang rice terraces for a night.
The journey started fine. There were two women in front of us wearing brightly coloured, patterned clothing and beautiful bits of material swathed around their heads. We guessed these were Hani women who lived in more rural areas of the Yunan province. The Hani people are a small ethnic group who originated from Tibet and now occupy smaller villages and towns in South West China.
Their allure was somewhat diminished when they began being violently sick into plastic bags less than an hour into the journey and didn't seem to stop for the subsequent 7 hours.
Prone to heaving myself I was relieved when the bus arrived in Xinjie in the Yuanyuang area. We managed to then buy bus tickets back to Kunming for the next evening and settle down for the night in our hostel.
To see the gorgeous rice fields in one day it is imperative to get up before dawn head over to the top of the valley and watch the sun rise over the famous terraces. Or so a tour operator told us. We rose at 5.30am to get a tuk-tuk, that smelt of petrol and was incredibly bumpy, over to a viewing point. It was worth it though and made what happened over the rest of the day worthwhile to have seen this sight if only briefly.
By the time the sun had fully risen and we had taken all the pictures we wanted it was only 8.30am and we were ready to go. On the way down the driver kept stopping and suggesting more sites for photo opportunities. This was thoughtful on the part of the driver but we stopped almost twelve times and it was hot and we were hungry and we no longer cared that what we were seeing was practically a masterpiece in irrigation. Two hours later we were returned to our hostel.
Later in the afternoon we decided to go and see a small Hani Village it was quite hot by now so we thought we'd treat ourselves to a tuk-tuk up the mountain slope.
While it may have treated my feet the journey did not treat my arse so kindly. Lizzie, being tall, could wedge herself between the benches lining either side. Being short, I could not. I was thrown all over the place and very nearly fell out the back. It didn't help that I had my camera in one hand that I foolishly thought I could take scenic pictures as we were ascending up the hill. The fact that I was holding on one handed and didn't fall out the back was quite an achievement in retrospect. It didn't help when, to turn a corner, the driver had to reverse towards the cliff edge. By this point I thought death by falling off a cliff might be preferable to the rest of the journey. Lizzie however had already informed me how to escape from a vehicle that is careering off the side of a cliff. Who knows what gems of information are held in that head.
When we reached the top we were battered and bruised but still had time to admire the beautiful views and see a few farmyard animals running around before descending (by foot) to catch our bus.
To top off our the day we hadn't noticed that the lady at the bus station had given us tickets for a bus that morning not the one in the evening as we'd asked. Much more finger pointing, raised voices and the like ensued but resulted in us having to buy new tickets.
After these few days of travelling disasters a 26 hour bus journey from Kunming to Luang Prabang in Laos was really not that bad. This includes dealing with Chinese officials, getting across the border, getting a new visa and remaining sane.
I am now in Luang Prabang and think that opening a nice little cafe here might be quite nice if it meant I never had to ride a train, bus, car, tuk-tuk ever, ever again.
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