18/8/25
Monday morning in Hong Kong was amusingly similar to being in London on a weekday morning. Our walk to Admiralty station had us marching against the flow of commuters whose faces were beset by drudgery. Not a scene we’d been exposed to in a while.
Train leaving at 10:04am, we headed straight to West Kowloon station. Dollars still to spend, we splashed out on stupidly overpriced Starbucks. Oh how we longed for the cheapness of mainland China again. Exit procedures were an effortless passport scan. We had been slightly anxious about entering China, and whether they would be querying us on our means of leaving.
They didn’t give two monkeys. Though we did have to complete an arrival card, it was merely scanned in, then the screen flashed up our last exit date: another 3 months. Half an hour to go before our train left, we sat in the cleverly designed waiting area. The design had managed to incorporate the strictness of the mainlands segregation with the openness of Hong Kong. Above us, arrivals at the station looked down on us.
Another 8 hours of rail riding ahead of us we settled into our seats. More disaster porn played on the screens above us. We were still completely unsure how showing rail passengers such videos helped anyone.
We rocketed through the countryside, skipping through places we’d have loved to stop and visit. As we tunnelled through famous Guilin we caught glimpses of the karsts. Meh, we’d seen enough of those to last a lifetime. Suddenly rain poured down. Covering multiple provinces in hours, eventually it became perfectly sunny and we could tell the heat was radiating outside.
Hard not to notice, onboard police officers regularly traversed the carriages. Along with the staff. Cleaners mopped the floor and toilets as we moved. Deliveries were made to peoples seats. Trains are done properly in China. No matter their annoying passport controls, lessons could be learned from their pride in rail travel.
Taxis were expensive from Chengdudong station. So we walked. Fortunately the heat was a few degrees lower. It wasn’t quite so awful as before. Back at the same hotel as last time we had dinner at the same place too. Takeaway barbecue and a massive durian that cost ¥180. We kept telling ourselves than durian would soon be a thing of the past to forgive the cost.
