So I awoke at the crack of dawn to get the train from Hong Kong over to mainland China.

To fly would have cost £130 and the train would be £21. Although I knew my way to the airport, I knew how to get through customs, I knew I could sleep safely on the plane, I knew the hostel the other end had a free transfer service, I decided to brave the train and save the money for a rainy day (as it turns out though it was pouring with rain in Guilin so maybe that day was today but never mind!).

 
I first had to make my way to Lok Ma Chau on the border using the subway. Which I needed to get a bus to first. In rush hour. But that was fine. I could cope.

I arrived (finally) at Lok Ma Chau, got through immigration fine and entered no mans land. I still had to get through to Shenzhen and through immigration and customs there. I managed that fine without any speaking, by following the crowd. Happy days.

The problem came when I had to buy a ticket from the border in Shenzhen to Shenzhen north where the train to Guilin left from. Although the machine said there was an English option, it lied. In the end a very nice lady asked if I needed help and bought my ticket for me. I say nice, she was probably too fed up of waiting behind me.

That ticket in hand I got another metro to the next station. To pick up my train ticket I had the instructions written in a handy piece of paper. I had come prepared. I handed that over in silence and the unfriendly lady printed the ticket without a smile. I began to wonder whether being unfriendly was a requirement of selling tickets in China; her, the machine in Shenzhen and the lady in Hong Kong. I kept that thought to myself.

I found my way to the correct platform and started to queue. The Chinese love a good queue. The train wasn’t leaving for an hour yet!

Unfortunately for me I ended up in a queue that ran parallel to a Chinese tour group. You can guess what happened there. One guy insisted on taking photos of me and my massive backpack. At first they were subtle. That quickly stopped as he began to angle it so that he could compare me to the poor 4ft lady in front who definitely could have fit in my bag.

I got on the train hoping I would finally be away from it all. But no. My luck had taken me to their carriage. And I ended up in the seat next to Mr Camera Man himself. Which the tour group found very amusing. Me, not so much.

I couldn’t help but laugh however as they keep talking to me in Chinese and I understood none of it. They clearly we’re loving life as they inspected my backpack and tried to lift it.

As the train pulled out of Shenzhen, they pulled out their lunch which consisted of a large bag of monkey nuts, a bag of dried prawns and a tub of an unidentified meat object. At first they offered some and I said no which they obviously didn’t understand as Mr Camera Man poured a large pile of prawns and monkey nuts on my tray. Tasty.

 

He then showed me pictures of his family and videos of his house which was fun. He was actually really friendly.

Through the tour of his photos I forgot to look out of the window. We were beginning to see the start of the bizarre Guilin landscape. The mountains are known as Karst Mountains and in the current weather they looked really eerie.

3 hrs and 41 minutes later I finally arrived at Guilin. I just had to get myself through the rain to the hostel!