Melting

The morning of my Halong Bay trip, I woke up before my alarm, as I often do when I know I need to wake up for something and am anticipating the alarm. I showered and had some time to watch a little TV before heading down for a quick breakfast of pho, or beef noodle soup, and waited for my pickup. In the lobby were two girls I hadn’t seen before, one having severe difficulty on the painfully slow guesthouse computer. I chatted with the other one, and we both realized we were all booked on the same Halong Bay trip, though I was only on for one night and two days, and they were on for two nights. Another couple came downstairs, and they were also checking out and going on our tour, and were also on the 2 night trip. Realizing this might be a chance to meet some people traveling in the same direction as me, I changed my trip to include the second night and paid the difference.Though we were told to be ready by 8, our pickup didn’t come until almost 9, a seemingly common occurence, as they tell everyone 8, but depending on where you are in the pickup, you might be last and almost an hour later. We grabbed our bags and set off with our guide to the bus parked a block away. Though it was early and we were all a bit tired, we chatted easily and were all clearly ready to get out of the city. [read on]

Exiting the train station in Lanzhou, I had only one thought on my mind, and that was how crappy I felt. I pushed this thought aside however, and managed to concentrate on the new task at hand. We needed to get to the bus station to head to our actual destination, Xiahe, and the next bus was leaving in about 15 minutes. Luckily, Chris and I had used our brains for once in Xi’an the night before, and had the girl at our hostel write down a key phrase for us in Chinese: south bus station. We quickly found a taxi driver and showed her the card, and she nodded, agreed on a price and we set off for the station. We arrived just as the bus was about to leave, and though there were touts trying to sell us tickets on that bus, we couldn’t think fast enough and walked past them inside the station. We both knew that we needed a bathroom and some water at the very least before our bus ride, and after easily buying tickets for the next bus an hour later, we took care of some basic needs while we waited to depart. Much to our dismay, we saw as we boarded the bus, there was very little leg room on our seats as well, and our legs ached just looking at them. Tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep on the bus, and mostly stared out the window at the rapidly changing landscapes outside. [read on]