I was planning to go from Hong Kong to Shantou in Guangzhou province on 25th March, but had forgotten it was the Easter holiday period. When I went to book a bus ticket at the China Travel Services in Tsim Sha Tsui, I was told all tickets to Shantou were sold out for that weekend.

Okay, change of plan. Hong Kong is a fantastic city, but I was not going to spend another few days there. Enquired again and yes, bus tickets to Xiamen were still available. Will leave Hong Kong at 6.30 pm and arrive at Xiamen train station at 3 am.

It's not too bad. I can arrive at my destination bright and early (maybe not so bright), wait for 3 hours till daybreak and then get into town to look for accommodation. This would give me the rest of the day to explore the place. Right, I'll buy that sleeper berth for HK$308.

At the specified day and time, I arrived at the pick-up point and boarded a large bus with a few other passengers. It's a normal bus with reclining seats, none of the "sleeper berth" stuff. "Well, at least the bus is only half full" I thought.

Turns out that there were two other pick-up points, and by the third one, the bus was fully packed. In addition, there was some over-booking and confusion at the last pick-up point, and by the time everything was sorted out, we had been delayed for an hour.

At the Hong Kong - Shenzhen border, clearing both Hong Kong and China immigrations was relatively straightforward. However, after coming out of the China immigration, I found that I was to board another bus. This would be the bus that would take me to Xiamen.

The bus's interior had an unusual configeration. Instead of seats, there were three rows of sleeping berths, each divided into upper and lower bunks. Each berth is 1.7 metres long, and I imagine a tall person would have trouble squeezing into it. A blanket and a bottle of mineral water was provided for each passenger. I counted about 30 berths, and all had passengers in it. Before boarding, passengers were told to take off their shoes and put them into black plastic bags so as not to dirty the bedsheets.

From another passenger, I found out that the bus is going to Quanzhou, another city further north in Fujian province. It would stop at Xiamen to drop off passengers before cotinuing to its final destination.

The bus eventually started, but no sooner had we done so when we were caught in a massive traffic jam for another 90 minutes. Well, nothing much to do except watch the MTV clips, entertainment and movie that was shown on the ceiling-mounted TV.

I soon dozed off at about midnight, waking up an hour later to use the toilet at the back of the vehicle. The toilet is the size of a closet and dimly lit. When using it, I had to place one hand against the wall, another against the door (there was no lock) while the bus was travelling at a hundred kilometres per hour. By this time, there was a strong odour from the "misses" of previous users.

I woke up again when I felt the bus stopping. My watch showed 3 o'clock. "Finally we're in Xiamen" I thought. But no. We were at a restaurant's parking lot. "We will stop here for 30 minutes to have some food" the driver announced.

Food at 3 in the morning? And not just some bread and drinks either. Upon entering the restaurant, we found soup. rice and porridge plus 7 or 8 dishes of fish, eggs, vegetables, pork and beans on the table. A feast in the middle of the night.

After filling ourselves, we were in our way again. The driver announced that due to the earlier delays, we would be arriving late in Xiamen. "No problem" I thought as I started to doze off. "The later we arrive, the less time I have to wait till daybreak."

The next time the bus stopped, I knew I had arrived. The three passengers who were going to Xiamen alighted. We were trasferred into a taxi that would take us to the train station.

Hpwever, once we were in the taxi, the driver said he could drive us to our final destinations for a small fee. We agreed after some bargaining. At about 6 am, I found myself at the Xiamen ferry terminal waiting for the ferry to Gulangyu Island.