China Entry the Fifteenth: We Travel

And so, we wake up at the crack of dawn to make our way to Guilin. We wake up at the crack of dawn because the taxi driver who was Ho and Lisa's guide the first time we were in Dali is supposed to pick us up at 8:00am to catch our 9:10am express bus to Kunming, where we can then catch a flight to Guilin. Still with me?

Except that we begin the day behind already. The original driver can't make it that morning, so he sends his brother to drive us. Only his brother doesn't recognize us, nor do we recognize him, so we all stand in the lobby for fifteen minutes until we figure out what's supposed to be going on.

But there should still be lots of time to make the bus! After all, the bus doesn't leave until 9:10am!

But then there is confusion about which bus station we're supposed to be dropped off at. A phone call is made to the original driver -- who also arranged this bus ticket for us -- and Ho and the driver's brother both confer back and forth with the original cab driver. Suddenly, we make a quick turn-around and head to a bus station that's a entire town away.

In a country where the patented Pookie statement, "Traffic lanes, who needs them?" holds as true as it did in Peru and stop lights are a mere suggestion of who should drive and who should stop, we take aggressive driving to a whole new level.





We get to said bus station ... and none of the busses there are the bus that we're supposed to be on! What do do? Ho Lin saves the day and procures tickets for the next bus to Kunming. But don't stop reading. It can't be a simple as "And so we just bought tickets for a different bus and headed off."

This bus we're on? This is a nice bus. The seats are big and cushy. There is a real bathroom. It's a nice bus.

And we're settled in.

Comfy.

Suddenly, the original cab driver runs onto the bus and pulls us off. He is upset because his brother took us to the wrong bus station, so he has gotten our money back on the tickets for the new bus and is taking us to meet up with our original bus.

Lisa and I protest. "Nooooooo! We LOVE this bus! It's so comfortable, and this is a four hour bus ride. Let's just stay on this bus." But the consciences driver wants to be sure that we get on the original booked bus, so off we go in a mad dash Dali cab ride. Again.

We actually do catch the correct bus, and actually it's not a bad bus for a four hour ride. I listen to NPR downloads and Ho and Lisa watch Chinese comedies the whole way there. It turns out that, to her surprise, Lisa REALLY likes campy Chinese comedy. Go figure.

The issues again arise when the bus ride does not take four hours. Between 30 minutes for a forced rest stop and completely debilitating traffic outside of Kunming, the bus ride that was supposed to get us to Kunming four hours before our flight to Guilin actually gets us there with less than two hours to spare. We immediately grab a cab and hightail it to the airport.

Believe it or not, we make it to the aiport and get on our flight just fine. We arrive in Guilin around 7:00pm and get lucky again that our randomly selected cab driver is somebody whom Ho gets along with quite well. After booking a SOLID day and a half's worth of activities, we head to the hotel.

The hotel is dandy. I get to shower for the first time since Lijiang, which feels good. Ho heads out to dig up some food, but Lisa and I are exhausted and can't stand the thought of going back out into the rain storm, so we fall asleep to the long-lost sounds of English-speaking TV. The rest is key, because we have crack of dawn plans in the morning!