Travelling to China

Travelling to China

Reminder to self. Never catch a midnight flight, because what seemed a good idea (sleeping on the flight) was of course impossible. The plane was delayed for 1½ hours, in Melbourne which meant we arrived in Hong Kong at 7am exhausted.

But what a place Hong Kong is! I hadn’t paid much attention to people’s travels to Hong Kong. Not quite exotic enough for my taste. So I was quite taken aback. The hills surrounding the city and the bay. The pencil thin skyscrapers clustered in groups wherever you looked. The sheer energy of the place. Busy shops and stylish people. And this was just at 9 am in the morning. Tim, Camille and I will be back. I’m sure of that.

Leaving Hong Kong by train means crossing the border into China. So that meant going through customs, quarantine and immigration at the train stations. Again.

The train was clean and modern and the trip to Guangzhou took about 2 hours. Tall apartments and factories lined the route. So many people crammed into this part of the world. From time to time there were banana plantations and small market gardens, part of the old China. I hadn’t expected the vegetation to be so lush.

Due to our delayed flight we missed the 9:15 train to Guangzhou. Our guide in Guangzhou was supposed to be picking us up. We had a number but we couldn’t connect. Finally someone told us that we were missing the country and area code, so we were able to contact Crystal to meet us on the following train. Lucky we did. It was the equivalent of 4:00pm Melbourne time. We were tired and hungry. But we had finally arrived…….. The White Swan here we come.