“No mummy this trip wasn’t a good idea, it was an AMAZING idea,” said an emboldened Ben as we boarded Train K3 Beijing to Moscow.
We’re halfway through our Long Trip Home now, and all three children seem to have grown up so much in this short space of time.
Train K3: Beijing to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian
Guangzhou skyline
HAU-MASH? Hau-mash? The taxi driver watched my face keenly. His leering smile was at violent odds to the look in his wide-set eyes.
“Put the meter on,” I replied from the front of the VW Passat, two of our nine bags balanced on my lap.
“Hau-mash?” he insisted, gesturing at the bags, at the Shines in the back of the car, all the time fixing me with those stony eyes and that leer.
“Meter. Meee-tuuuur?” I countered, pointing at the little roll of paper affixed to his dashboard.
Mrs S had had enough of this. “Just turn the meter on,” she said with a tone of finality.
Leering-Boy, or Guangzhou Taxi Driver Service Qualification Certificate No. 202584, reluctantly flicked his For Hire sign down which activated his meter, threw us a disgusted look and set off towards Guangzhou Railway Station South.
No.202584 come in please, your time is up…
The rain lashed down and he drove like a lunatic, inventing lanes that didn’t exist and leaning on his horn seemingly at random. He can’t have seen anything coming from his right the entire drive because he refused to even glance in my direction as his radio blared.
We joined then left a series of six-lane highways and eventually approached a vast complex with a wavy, curved roof — Guangzhou Railway Station South.
Guangzhou Taxi Driver Service Qualification Certificate No. 202584 simply stopped his car and waited, looking at his ceiling, drumming his fingers on his wheel as we struggled to haul the bags out of his boot in the rain.
“How much?” I said, amused by the irony of the question. “HAU MASH???” This time it was his turn to refuse to cooperate.
A Mexican standoff with a Cantonese cabby.
In the end I reached into his cab, ripped the receipt from his clackety little roll of paper. 69 RMB it read. The easy thing would have been to hand him 100, given that we were in a hurry, but instead I rifled though my pockets for small note and change so I could find exactly 70 yuan which I dropped on the passenger seat.
why do I always get the cranks?
He looked disgusted again, this time with some justification.
I’d noticed a similar look of disgust cross the face of a young woman begging late last night, once she’d realized we weren’t going to be intimidated into handing over money.
Having travelled through Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to get here, we’ve witnessed some real poverty and so it was a little disarming that the first begger to have targeted us on this trip was this well-dressed, healthy looking girl of around 20-year-old, carrying a clean, expensive-looking rucksack.
“Hungry, hungry,” her well-nourished face told us. “I have no money,” she went on gesturing to her mouth with her fingers. “Hungry, hungry.” We walked on, waving her away, but she persisted, walking in our footsteps, close to the children, pointing at us and telling us how she had no money. She did not relent until we stopped again, turned to her and told her clearly to go away.
It was a strange incident, given her well-off appearance. Still, though, Guangzhou felt a safe and friendly city, with singers belting out cheesy tunes on street corners, and hawkers selling everything from tissues to socks to iPhone chargers from stretched out blankets on the pavement late at night.
Day 16 had begun in bizarre fashion as Mrs S, Jasper and Ben set their alarms for 0630 to squeeze in a swim at the Sofitel pool. While Kitty and I continued to snooze, the three early-birds skipped off to seventh floor for a bracing splash in the plush surroundings.
“You want to swim?” the attendant asked, instantly vaulting herself into an odds-on favourite for the unnecessary question of the year award given the three were dressed in swimming costumes.
“Yes.”
“Do you have caps?”
“No”
Pretty soon, though, the three were in the pool standing out like three Swan Vesta matchsticks, Mrs S with a bright pink hire hat and the boys with blue bonces.
Their swim was followed by a dip in a hi-tech Jacuzzi before a
swift fly-by of the breakfast room, where the Shinettes bagged some croissants for me while I paid the bill and lined up China’s greatest ambassador/taxi driver to take us to the bullet-train.
Somehow the weight of our bags, actually my bag, has increased to a staggering degree. I suspect all the jade, whistles, key rings and fridge magnets from our odyssey so far are hidden away among my things. So too are the bottles of wine we stocked up on in Hong Kong for the six-day Trans-Siberian adventure — although I don’t resent that cargo nearly so much.
The train station is a shimmering steel and glass palace. No expense has been spared in its construction, as China shows of its wealth to the world. Like at the Sofitel, there are a noticeable number of Africans in the station — a sure sign of the increasing business links between China and African nations.
Our G80 train is scheduled to leave at 10:00 from Gate A17; and there is much excitement as the clock ticks down. We are told we can begin to queue at 09:40, but by then there must be 200 or so passengers pushing, shoving, shouting and, in some cases, conducting screaming rows with their neighbours.
What appears to be a school orchestra is sharing our train, and chattering children queue up chewing gum and carrying violins, violas, bassoons and clarinets… I made the mistake of getting up from my seat to take a photograph and before I had even straightened my legs a young woman had darted behind me and into my chair, nestled among our bags and family, and was sitting looking very pleased with her acquisition.
Just then our rail crew marched past in starched uniform, each in-step like a Pyeongyang marching band.
the chaos of the queue…
The morass of squabbling humanity parted briefly to let them through and then resumed their pushing in, shoving and scolding.
Once on our sleek steel cigar tube we quickly found our seats — row 5 in carriage 1 — and settled down for an 8-hour journey; iPads fully charged, colouring books and paper replenished.
Guangzhou’s outskirts and environs flew past… grey industrial sprawl, broken up by scrubland, before finally ceding way to proper countryside, the China of paddy fields and pointed mountains.
Mrs S is thrilled to be back in China for the first time since 1989 but recognises little of old country in the modern economic superpower of today.
Everybody settles down for the long journey. Some put slippers on, some pile suitcases high to make a card table for Tsingtao-fuelled card games, while others read or watch handheld screens.
The boy in front, meanwhile, eats. Prodigiously.
The Little Emperor
A little emperor, pandered to by his doting mother, Pig-Boy polishes off a Dove chocolate bar, a bottle of coke and a canister of Menthos fruit chews before the lunch cart has arrived. He then inhales an entire tray of beef, duck, vegetables, noodles, century egg, rice, vegetables, potatoes, curry and pickles. He does all this at breakneck speed before squeezing his fat toes into sandals and waddling off to the loo, presumably to make room for round two.
As he lurches unsteadily to the back of the train, the man in the row opposite heralds Pig-Boy’s departure with a long, loud and resonant belch, eliciting grins and looks of delight from the Shine boys.
Soon he is back, though, and he gives me a long, steady look as he eyes a pot of nuts on my table, as though he were weighing up the option of fighting me for the snack, but then he passes and turns his attention to another Dove chocolate bar and his iPhone.
The train settles into its rhythm and its inhabitants start to spill out from their seats and reveal their characters. Some are noisy, some quiet, some smile, some scowl, some curl up, others sprawl over their seats, their legs and arms spilling onto adjacent positions.
There is a restaurant carriage halfway down the train, past the card-playing drinkers and the sleepers and snoozers, but the menus are entirely in Chinese and no packet or package bears resemblance to any food I can identify.
Pigsy in action…
“It looks like the aisle in the supermarket where you don’t know what anything is,” smiled Mrs S. “The drinks selection looked to me like olive oil, rice wine vinegar and soya bean juice. I haven’t a clue what anything is.”
Eventually having said ‘Water’ a dozen times, fruitlessly, I lean over the counter and scoop up a plastic bottle of water. It is only when I get back to my seat and slake my thirst that I realise I am drinking aspartame-charged peach-flavoured “water drink”…
Still we rattle through rural China, Beijing-bound. But any real hope of seeing a slice of life from our high-speed train as we rocket past fields villages was once again scuppered by the triumphant blind-pullers, who block out all reality to better see their phone screens and laptops.
Pigsy pulls his blind down, gives up on headphones (too tight, perhaps) and turns the volume of his iPhone up to full before flooding the carriage with noises of parrots screeching and elephants trumpeting as he marauds around the jungle killing Big Game on his screen.
And still the tinny music vies with iPhone sound effects, and still the food trolley travels up and down doling out pot noodles sweetened water.
Pigsy reaches in for his third Dove bar and by this stage his feet are twitching and he’s waggling his head – this is one little emperor super-charged on sugar.
We fizz along at 300km/h or so, only stopping every two hours at stations that look brand new and hi-tech. The view, when not obscured by white canvas blinds, is of cloudless blue skies and agricultural land broken up by low-rise settlements.
Almost unannounced we pull into Beijing and at once the sheer scale of everything about the place makes us feel very small.
We have one night in this great city before catching the Trans-Siberian bound for Moscow.
Five things I learnt tonight.
* Every shopping mall, noodle shop, butchers, barbers and bakers kicks out at 10pm sharp in Guangzhou.
* Consequently, at 10pm in Guangzhou, there are NO taxis.
* It is a waste of time, in Guangzhou, to try to hail a taxi.
* It is a waste of time, in Guangzhou, to try to get a taxi at a hotel.
* If you do try to get a taxi at a hotel in Guangzhou, you would be wasting your time asking a concierge for help. They wear uniforms and pill-box hats and stride about officiously, but only giggle if you ask them to get you a taxi.
Another thing I learnt is that marching across Guangzhou’s enormous street crossings at 11pm with a floppy, asleep 2-year-old in your arms is *easily* as taxing as that bit in the World’s Strongest Man where enormous Estonians in leotards struggle up runways with massive barrels slipping from their grips. Easily!
Welcome to Guangzhou and to mainland China and a taste of what we have in store for the next couple of days before we clamber aboard the Trans-Siberian Train No. 3.
But first we had to wave goodbye to Hong Kong. And that was no easy feat.
I suppose that having been presented with the world’s best shortbread the moment we arrived should have given us a clue as to what lay ahead, but still we were truly bowled over by the hospitality and generosity shown by the Prestons… Cat, Sim, Jake, Josh and Hana really pulled out all the stops to make our stay in Hong Kong truly memorable.
We only spent one full day on our whistlestop tour of Hong Kong, but it seemed much longer as Cat showed us around The Peak, central and Kowloon side. We ate dim sum at Maxim’s Palace, we rode the iconic Star Ferry, plus Cat clearly figured we weren’t traveling on enough trains this trip, so took us on the Mickey Mouse Express — complete with mouse ears over the windows — to Disneyland.
Adrenaline seekers Jasper and Josh hung out in Space Mountain — where I treated a little Chinese girl sitting next to me to a blood-curdling scream as we shot through the darkness — and Ben almost squeezed my arm off as we rattled around a prospector’s roller coaster. Cat and Hana joined us on the grizzly what’s it after which Hana announced she was NEVER going to go on a ride like that again. Cat’s startled appearance suggested she was of a similar mind.
The children were inseparable, Sim and Cat invited us to stay at their home instead of our hotel, we ate like kings and ticked every box on our trip through Hong Kong, from pushing dollar bills into the hands of bemused traders at the Jade Market to gagging at the stench of dried fish mingling with the aroma of over-ripe jackfruit at a Kowloon market. Thanks again for everything, guys. We look forward to repaying the favour in England one day soon.
Oh, and there was more of that shortbread!
After another fascinating guided tour of Hong Kong by the Preston’s amazing driver Alan — a retired Hong Kong policeman — we manhandled our ever growing baggage onto T180 in Kowloon headed for Guangzhou.
The growing haul of nicknacks and tat isn’t helping our load, but the main culprit is the supplies Mrs S bought for us in a supermarket in preparation for the Trans-Siberian. Either that, or she is secretly moving us to Wolverhampton when we get back, because in addition to our clothes and essentials, we are now carrying a holdall crammed with crisps, biscuits and pot noodles…
We checked into the very chichi Sofitel in GZ and, with only one evening to spend here, instantly headed out for some Cantonese food.
Among the chicken’s feet, fish maw and ducks’ tongues there were some really delicious offerings the boys enjoyed and Ben was able to display his impeccable table manners.
Kitty went one better and fell asleep before the food even arrived…
We were a little surprised to be the pnly people left in the restaurant at 9:45 but swiftly paid up and left which is when the taxi fiasco began.
In the end, though, our schlep was a nice twist. We got to walk through some of central Guangzhou; we got to see the singers on the street corners belting out cheesy hits into their cranked up amps, we got to speak to a policeman riding a silly little Raleigh Shopper and we got to walk off the fish maw and frog anus soup we guzzled at supper…
Beijing tomorrow where the ante will be upped again, It took me a long time to get this posting up — WordPress is banned in China, so I need to circumvent. Posts may be a little tighter and there are likely to be fewer pictures, but bear with me…
Night, night
…at Maxim’s Palace with Cat, Hana and Josh. Not a spare seat to be had by 0930…
AND SO our last day in Southeast Asia is almost over. Tomorrow we go to Hong Kong and from there into mainland China, Russia, Scandinavia, Germany, France and then home, back to the UK.
The day came and went for me without too much to mark it out, but Mrs S is mourning our departure, sad to be leaving the culture, the climate, the people and the places.
Seeing our three little Shines rolling around in the Hanoi Metropole’s pool today, I knew exactly what she meant. Things will be very different back home after eight years in Southeast Asia. Not worse by any means, just different.
Fun in the sun
We kicked the day off with a hearty breakfast at the Metropole, Kitty ensuring all the major food groups were ticked off with her feast of pancakes, bread, eggs and hot chocolate.
Only chips were missing from her current list of culinary favourites yummy breakfast.
From there we hired a taxi to take us on a round trip to Bát Tràng ceramics village, a spot around 30 kilometres outside Hanoi.
Once we’d left the left the leafy boulevards behind at the city limits, and crossed the Red River, it was a very different Vietnam we encountered — poorer and scruffier.
Bát Tràng was an experience. We’d been led to believe it was a kind of Vietnamese Emma Bridgewater affair, offering pottery painting, demonstrations, kids classes and the like.
I have to say that in the event, there seemed to be a certain degree of alarm when we let ourselves into the ceramics warehouse, walked up four flights of stairs into a workshop and asked to be allowed to join in.
Fire up the kiln, the experts are here…
Two women were painting intricate ivy shapes on platters while a man was at a potter’s wheel adding painted rings round the lips of some cups.
There was smiling, and nodding, and shrugging and more smiling, but not much comprehension from either side. In the end the children sat with the women working on the ivy designs and started painting some pots.
After half an hour of so, some European tourists came in to observe, but rather tellingly nobody else attempted to join in…
The exertion of our pottery painting meant a rest by the pool was a necessity come lunchtime. Mrs S took Kitty off for a nap leaving me with the boys poolside, taking in the soap opera-esque characters at play.
I could tell you about the long-haired Salvador Dali lookalike, the Frenchman in dazzlingly orange shorts who preened and inspected himself incessantly; or purple-haired Sonia from Canberra who’s kids are 11 and 15 and who enjoys New Zealand fruit wines. Or Darren from the U.S. who couldn’t be bothered to talk to his sad-eyed daughter and the pair sat staring at their own electronic devices instead. Darren’s wife showed up after a short while but they didn’t talk to each other either. I could tell about all these things but it might not be very interesting, and it might be a little weird.
Dali-man, orange-man, sulky-man, purple woman, look-at-me woman…
Kitty and Mrs S came down after an hour and a half and rescued me from this modern morality play, and we elected to pursue our new hobby of causing cruelty to geriatrics by once again paying some old men to cycle our western carcasses around — this time around Hanoi’s Old Town. (previous shameful displays)
Even though Ben fell asleep on my lap almost at once, that was testament to his swimming antics not the legitimacy of the tour, for Hanoi’s Old Town really is a remarkable place for a number of reasons, not least its curious array of specialist shops.
In fact, the make-up of the twisty streets in the old centre is the precise opposite of the theory behind supermarkets. There are entire streets dedicated to the selling of specific products. And I’m not talking cars, or industrial lighting — that’s not so unusual, I guess.
But zips? Yes, central Hanoi has a road dedicated to zips and zip sellers hawk red zips, green zips, yellow zips and purple zips.
Hanoi Old Town by cyclo
***
OF THE WORLD’S great mysteries, I guess the correct spelling of the word kagool barely rates a mention. Regardless, though, it is something that has bothered me over the years, and I have swung from ‘K’ to ‘C’ to ‘K’ to ‘C’ and back again, adding and dropping rogue Us and Es along the way.
Initially I decided Kagool was cool, and Cagoule plain weird. Worse still was Pack-a-Mac which sounded like something you’d eat at break-time rather than don against the elements.
Ask a dozen people of the correct spelling – cagoule, cagoul, kagoule or kagool – and you’d probably get, well, maybe four answers.
ANYWAY… my point is, it is a bit of a mystery. But it turns out that the greater mystery is, however, how come AT LEAST 95 percent of the world’s kagool/cagoule supply has ended up in Vietnam…
It doesn’t strike me as a place crying out for the kagool any more than any other Asian city, yet everywhere you turn women are wearing them. And they are not just any common-of-garden cagoule — they are flowery cagoules with arms tailored to fit an Orang-utan… these things really are all over the place, their sleeves and hoods flapping in the wind as scooters weave to their destinations.
Kagools, Cagouls, Kagoules, Cagoules… they are EVERYWHERE
She isn’t wearing a kagool… but I’ll bet she’s reading about them…
“I’m not a girl, I’m a pink boy” – Kitty Shine, 2.
SE4 – our home for the next 15 hours…
…and us…
Danang railway station…
WOODLANDS TO WATERLOO 