Train Station Nightmare

Sorry - not so many pictures from today

As I still wasn’t feeling that great and wanted to visit a bit more with Jan, I decided to stay one more day in Changsha. After breakfast I went back to bed and had a little nap, and then by 2:00 we were up and at’em.

The first order of business of the day was arranging my train ticket out of Changsha. This only took three hours. First we went to the CAAC office because I thought that would be easier than standing in line at the train station. They didn’t sell train tickets though (only air). So then we went to CITS, after wandering around for a bit, only they didn’t sell train tickets their either. They were able to give me information about what train I wanted though, so that was good. I tried to make a complaint about the lack of heat on our boat down the Yangtze, but they only dealt with complains for the Hunan region.

So then we went to the station to buy the ticket and there was this huge mass of people. I showed my note from CITS to the information booth and they showed me where to stand (there were about 40 lines). Well when I got to the counter the woman kept saying no tickets. I was trying to look up hard sleeper (I wanted soft sleeper with 4 bunks in a room, but soft sleeper with rows of 3 bunks down the length of the car was also ok) in my phrase book, but the woman basically waved me away and started serviing the next customer.

So then Jan and I went across the road to a travel agent. I had decided at this point to skip Guilin because it didn’t seem worth it to just go there for one day. The travel agent gave me some info on trains to Gunagzhou, but all of these arrived in the middle of the night. I wasn’t too thrilled about that as a single female travellling. At one point, the difficulty in communicating with a crap phrase book (no one spoke English) and the lack of available trains finally got to me and I ended up crying like an idiot. Stress release.

The ticket agent wanted to charge 40 yuan for running across the street to buy the ticket for me and I wouldn’t even be able to pick it up until the next day (so wouldn’t know if I even had a ticket), so I just gave up with them and decided to try it again myself. So we dodged through the crazy traffic again and back into the busy ticket area or the train station.

I went back up the information booth and said, “Please help me”. I showed the two people there the information I had on trains (train number, time, date and destination all in Chinese) and they pointed back to the line I had already been in. At this point, Jan noticed that everyone in that line had luggage with them – like there were leaving that day. She suggested that I check to make sure that line wasn’t for same day departure (I wanted the next day). Turns out I needed to be in a different line! Now why couldn’t they have just read the paper properly in the first place??!!! It was written by a Chinese person in Chinese. The whole thing was so frustrating. Especially coming from my experience in Japan where people go out of their way to help you and show you where to go etc. It should not take three hours to buy a train ticket, especially when you have the information that you need written in Chinese.

Anyway, we finally got in the right line and I was able to buy a ticket to Guangzhou. It arrived at 4:30 in the morning, but I didn’t really have any other choice,. At least I got a ticket, and was able to book in soft sleeper.



So after that stressful experience, I said “I need ice cream!”, so we walked to a coffee shop near the station and ordered coffee. I also ordered the banana boat for us to share. It was really funny because when it came, it was actually made up to look like a boat!

After distressing with coffee and ice cream, we went to look at the embroidery shop. It was amazing! There were things on the wall that looked like pictures, but they were actually embroidery. I only bought a silk handkerchief because I don’t have anywhere to hang an embroidered picture. And while they were quite nice, out of context they may have just looked tacky.

By this point the restaurant that we wanted to try was hopping with people (we had stopped by before and it was dead) so we went for dinner. The restaurant is called The Fire Palace and it serves Hunanese food. I thought it would be a good place to try because the waitresses walk around with carts of different types of food on them, and you just pick and choose what you want. A great way to try several different dishes and actually see what it is before ordering!



Pretty much as soon as we sat down the carts started coming by and we got a whole bunch of food – chili pepper shrimp, chili pepper sliced potatos, chili pepper konnyaku noodles (can you see a theme here?), dim sum dumplings and stinky tofu. I took one bite of the stinky tofu and hated it. It had this really sour spice in it that you can smell everywhere in Changsha. The smell on the street makes me a bit nauseous, so eating it wasn’t much better. Jan ate a whole piece though! Go Jan! We also got fresh fruit juice. My orange one was good, but Jan got the watermelon one which totally rocked! I was trying to think of ways I could steal it from her!

After dinner we went for a long walk down the main strip. I think we walked halfway back to our hotel before we got a cab. (Too cold and needed to pee!). Back at the hotel we just relaxed, checked e-mail and masked. Jan got me these cool masks for Christmas. They make your skin really soft! Oh, and I had to do laundry as well – I’ve decided that washing your underwear in the sink sucks. Give me laundry machines any day!

To see the entire 8 pictures I took today, you can check out my photoblog.