First impressions

I've been in China for 4 days now and it's quite honestly a blast. Before leaving the Philippines, everyone was telling me how difficult it would be to travel China, the language barrier, how rude and so on. Well, so far it's been the total opposite. Of course, it's another world: different culture, different way of seing things, and so on but Chinese people so far have been so friendly to me and open and trying to communicate. Seriously, troughout the hostel I've been, the staff is by far more friendly and open to communicate and it's nice to see. Even if they know very little about english there's still a smile and this feeling they want to have a conversation.

Finally I've been eating well. Quite well. Much noodles soup, a lot of amazing street food, tofu, a first for me, and just good stuff. Hooray!

I've had this crazy Chinese New year experience at the Shenzen train station. Shenzen, briefly, is the ity right across the border of Hong Kong and therefore, a city of many millions inhabitants that was created, built and now orking in the last 20 years. It's the point of entry for Hong Kong to China and China to the rest of the world. Anyway, from that we can understand that Shenzen was full pack of people wanting to go back home for new year. So I got stuck there trying to buy my ticket to Guilin for almost 2 hours. What a nightmare. Because when it come down to being patient, having your turn, wainting in line, being respectful, and so on, the Chinese person can be everything else but that. So imagine being in a train station with 20 counters open, people pushing each other, banging on the windows of the cashiers and spitting on the floor and having a looped message in a high pitch voice in some very bad & loud speakers, you've got yourself a very intense situation!

So it was finaly my turn and I arrived prepared, Train number, date, class, everything was there. But, of course the train was full. I wanted to be in Guilin for the 22nd at night for the party but obviously it wouldn't be the case. So i got myself a ticket for the 22nd train to Guilin (overnight) and it wasn't to bad until I discovered I had bought a hard seater. 13 hours of train in a bloody hard seater. I was doomed. I have to say that I've satyed in the Shenzhen Hi-Hostel where I've met these really nice people with whom I would take take train. So hard seater. For the first half hour, I'm trying to convience myself that it will be allright. Nightmare. I did prepared myself and grabbed two Cup-a-soup before leaving and therefore, no need to buy food on the train. so time goes by and the only thing I can think about is eating. About one hour and a half in the journey I decided it was time to eat. Again. So I've enjoyed every sip of that soup because I knew that after this delicious meal, there was nothing great that would happen for the next 12 hours. I tried t fall asleep aand kinda worked until, Jo woke me up. Wow I was glad to be waken up by a similar face. He got me into the dinning car where we drank together and spend the Chinese new year eve with the crew of the train. It as been quite interesting! Therefore, it wasn't too bad and sleeped in the dinning car which was better than the hard seat!  

Now, time to go and discover China!