I caught the 2 hour express train from Hong Kong?s Hung Hom KCR Terminal to Guangzhou in China?s Guangdong province. Guangzhou?s east terminal and new subway system are modern transport facilities but once you step foot in the main train terminal, traveler?s receive a real look at Chinese lifestyle. Monuments of inefficiency (an old Chili?s slogan?) with passengers sitting on the floor, itself dirty and laced with spit from sunflower seeds. Assuming you speak Cantonese buying a train ticket can take hours as patient Chinese queue in long lines?if you only speak English your shit out of luck.
China doesn?t have the backpacker infrastructure that many more traveled destinations poses. Almost all the signs are written in Chinese characters and very few people speak English. In sharp contrast, Vietnam has a highly developed tourism industry which makes travel simpler than many parts of Western Europe. I wanted to catch an overnight train to Nanning (on the border route to Vietnam) and luck must have really been on my side because I managed to find a rail employee who spoke English, cut the queue, and purchase my ticket. I purchased a hard sleeper which I?m going to compare to 2nd class sleeper train travel in Europe with 6 berths in a section stacked 3 high. The toilets were squat but other than that the train ride was in everyway similar to its European counterparts.
In Nanning $10/night bought me a private room with a/c, hot water, TV, and in-room Internet access (and it was fast)! I could have done without the prostitutes calling every half hour but other than that, the room was ten times better than Chungking Mansions. Nanning is actually a large city in China with several high-rise buildings. Many parts are modern with a newly built riverside park but the old rundown wood boat houses that float along the river create a sharp contrast between yesterday and today. I enjoyed Nanning a lot but I left the next day on the morning train to cross the Vietnamese boarder.