Our Scenic Trip Back From Vacation

Melissa and I may have told you about this already, but I thought I might as well document this tale here as well. On the Saturday we were to return to RJW from Wulingyuan, fate decided that we would take the scenic route. We had planned on taking the minibus from Wulinyuan to Zhang Jia Jie, a bus to Changsha and yet another bus to RJW. However, we did not take the China-factor (nothing goes as planned here) into account. 

We woke up at 8:00 a.m., left the apartment by 8:30 a.m., took the town bus over to the bus station and left on the 9:00a.m. bus from Wulingyuan to Zhang Jia Jie. We arrived in the Zhang Jia Jie bus station at around 10:30 a.m. after an uncomfortable ride (the seat-back in front of Melissa was broken and the smelly passenger who sat there was basically lying in her lap). Mind you, it was raining constantly that day, which added about five bails of hay to our figurative camel's back. 

When we got to the ZJJ bus station I knew that we were on a very strict schedule, as the bus that we needed to catch from Changsha to RJW leaves at 4:00 p.m. I did my best to procure us two bus tickets at the earliest possible time, but my Chinese only went so far. I got the two tickets, but they we for the 1:00 p.m. bus. Upon realizing this, I went from agitated to upset, as I knew that we would have to wing it in Changsha.

We killed a few hours in an internet cafe, got on our bus, realized that we did not have seats together and I proceeded to mime my protests to the bus attendant. After a few minutes of pointing and acting like a baby, the attendant finally moved some people and I got to sit with Melissa on our four hour bus ride to Changsha. About halfway through our ride, we stopped at a rest stop and about half of the bus poured out to use the facilities. I thought it wise to wait a few minutes to let the fellow travellers clear out before I went in. I came out a few minutes later to find my bus driving away. I ran up to the bus, flagged it down and sat next to a terrified Melissa. Lesson learned.

We got into Changsha via the West bus station well after the last bus to RJW left, and Melissa dragged me kicking and screaming over to a noodle shop for some much-needed food. It was still pouring in Changsha, so hailing a taxi to get to the train station was extremely difficult. Melissa took charge of the situation and got us a taxi to the East bus station, which took longer than I think it should have. We got out and Melissa wanted to know where the trains were, and I angrily told her that the train station is not here (I assumed that she wanted to take a bus when she told the driver to go to the East station, but she didn't realize that the East bus station is completely separate from the train station). Not my proudest moment.

Melissa asked some bystanders where the bus to Yueyang is and they pointed to the nearest bus. She asked the bus driver if he was going to Yueyang, and he said, "blah, blah, blah, Yueyang, blah." That was good enough for us, so we boarded and took our seats, fuming at each other. The guy sitting next to me was talking on his cell phone, so I listened in to try to hear if he said Yueyang. Lo and behold, he said Yueyang. I felt much more comfortable at that point.

It wasn't until about an hour into the trip that we noticed something wrong. We saw mountains, and the road didn't look familiar. You see, Yueyang is a very flat area, but I thought that we must be coming in from another area, an area that I had not seen before. The bus stopped in a very dark, random back-alley bus station, and we found ourselves utterly lost. While we tried to figure out where to go, a crowd of people started to form around us. I kept asking them where Yueyang County No. 1 Middle School is in Mandarin, but the few people who seemed interested in helping us just looked at me like I was crazy. That's when it started to hit me. I pointed to the ground, said, "Yueyang", and the man pointed to the ground and said, "Liuyang". 

Melissa, rightly so, pulled me away from the crowd to find a taxi (thieves come out at night). We flagged one down, called up our Chinese liaison, and gave the phone to the driver. He talked with her for a minute, handed me the phone and she informed me that we had taken a bus to Liuyang, two hours in the wrong direction (Fun fact: Liuyang is the fireworks capital of the world). Melissa and I freaked out for about a half hour and weighed our options. We could have stayed that night with a volunteer who lives twenty miles outside the city, or go back to Changsha via taxi for 300 kuai. In the end, we decided to go back to Changsha, mostly due to my insistence that we just get this trip over with. It was a two hour ride back to Changsha, and it was already 8:00 p.m.

Our only transportation option in Changsha was the train, so we had the driver go there. He was actually supposed to come into the ticket office and buy our tickets for us, but we hit a traffic jam right outside the station, so he couldn't park. We jumped out of the cab, mid-traffic jam and headed for the ticket window. Luckily, we spotted a girl who looked as though she went to school (these people tend to speak English, if you can find them). We introduced ourselves to 'Lollipop', and asked her to help us buy the tickets. After that, she led us into the station and showed us where we needed to wait for our 11:30 p.m. train to Yueyang. It turned out that we had standing room only tickets. We said good-bye, and she left us to ourselves.

While waiting for the train, we were struck by the sheer amount of people in the station sitting, standing and sleeping on the floor. Among these people was a group of German-looking folk. They saw us and didn't seem interested in conversation, much to my relief (they looked weird). Later, while standing, an Iranian-looking fellow appeared to our left. I think that I thought he was Iranian because he was thin, had dark hair, had olive skin, was wearing a tunic-looking shirt and was peeling an orange with a switchblade. Well, my profile was way off, as it turns out that he is an Italian student backpacking around China. We got to talking, and it turned out that he had the same ticket as us. Yay! A new (temporary) friend!

In China, when trains come into the station, the people who are boarding line up, get their ticket checked and run like Hell to their train. They do this because most people buy standing room only tickets, but take a seat on the train. They do this in hopes that the seat has not been taken. If somebody with a ticket comes to the seat, that person then kicks the other person out of his/her seat.

However, when our train was called, a HUGE line formed, and when the line wasn't going fast enough, the people in the back of the line bum-rushed another entrance to the platform. Since we were in the back of the line, we thought, "What the heck. Why not?" and hurdled over the rows of seats in our way to get to the newly-opened gate. 

The train itself looks like it was pulled out of an old movie (think of the train from Young Frankenstein for inspiration). There were already hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the train, and not a seat could be found. Packed together like vertical sardines, we departed at 11:45 p.m. Take a look at the below picture (got from internet) for an idea of what the standing room only train is like, and realize that our train was much, much worse:

We did not have a convenient place to put our backpack, so we kept it with us. A few men about twenty feet away cleared a space above them for our pack, but we were not in the trusting mood. We stood all the way to Yueyang and got off our train at about 1:15 a.m. Probably the highlight of the trip, aside from meeting the friendly Italian, was the discovery of our liaison and her boyfriend waiting for us outside of the Yueyang train station. They had been waiting for us for about an hour, and intended to make sure that we did not get lost again. After saying good-bye to our Italian friend, they took us home via taxi (with a pit stop at the taxi gas station), and we arrived in RJW at about 2:30 a.m. I don't think we can ever thank Rock and William enough for helping us that day.

All in all, we travelled from Wulingyuan to Zhang Jia Jie to Changsha to Liuyang to Changsha to Yueyang to Rong Jia Won. The bolded city names in the previous sentence can be found on this map:

This experience almost ruined our vacation to Zhang Jia Jie National Park. However, whenever I got upset, Melissa tried her best to cheer me up and when she got upset, I tried my best to cheer her up. It was incredibly stressful, but there were many times when I actually enjoyed myself. If anything, we can look back on this experience and laugh.

Cullen