Bad Luck Travels with
Stevo
Your name
is Stevo and you get off a plane in Guangzhou (from London via Hong Kong) at
9.30 a.m. and are met by your trusty guide who gets you into a taxi to his
flat. Do you want a kip? No.
So you and
your trusty guide head out on the metro. You are not too well travelled, the
Mediterranean and North America - yes but the less western parts of the world –
no. You have seen on the way from the airport that Guangzhou (GZ) is a big,
modern city but you haven’t seen the commercial side. Lunch (with a couple of
San Miguels) is obviously a good idea to fortify you at the local Vietnamese
restaurant. You see an interesting looking building, wander a few back streets
where they are selling stuff – lots of stuff. In this case stuff is largely
tools, lights and electronic components. Stocks are ample – you can buy by the
hundred or thousand should you so wish.
However,
you then arrive at a real shopping place. Here they have seven floors of
complete and utter shit. If you can think of anything in your life that you
don’t need they have it. Or perhaps you need a glittering life-sized painted
plastic horse?
A reviver
at the local German bar (closed forever three weeks later – things move fast in
GZ), an examination of the wholesale shoe market (there are definitely less
than 1,000 shops there) and you are fit for a stroll to the BBR (Bar By the
River for the ignorant) – the best bar in the City? Country? World? (Soon to be
closed).
An incident
on the way. Your guide appears to bump into somebody and the man drops
something. Your guide apologises but the man starts to put his hands all over
the guide talking some shit about “Japanese Kungfu” or similar. Your guide
realises that he is a pickpocket and quickly puts his hands on his wallet and
phone. So the man transfers his attention to you and, not hearing your guides
warning (it was crowded and noisy) proceed to have your wallet lifted.
Welcome to
Guangzhou!
However,
you have a bit of luck and a local has spotted this and takes the wallet back
off the thief and returns it to you. Phew! Of course there is no attempt to
report this event to the police.
Into the
BBR where there is no San Miguel just some crap imitation German beer. However,
you do learn the dice game including the first few numbers in Chinese. It is a
pity that you never get chance to use this new found knowledge and skill again
on the whole trip.
We got up
fairly late and went to the airport. Obviously after I, the guide who has taken
a year to marry my pearls of wisdom with Stevo's photos and get it on the blog, had drunk the half bottle of champagne that had not been consumed the night
before. We had a 2.30 flight with China Southern, who I know to be shit.
There isn't
much to do at GZ airport so we went through into the waiting area and – waited.
2.30 came and went – it was still “Go to the gate”
By about
4.30 I was getting pretty annoyed and went off to investigate. Naturally I went
to the executive lounge to at least try and get a couple of free G&Ts. She was
having none of it so I went to the “Information Desk” I asked simple questions like “When will we
take off?” “Where is the plane?” etc. He just ignored me and talked to everyone
around me. I was getting properly annoyed and picked up his computer screen so
that he couldn't do anything else. He picked up a phone and dialed. Hmmm....
As most of you know I am a true coward and thought “He is phoning security” and
left.
At 7.30 the
status changes to “Flight Cancelled”. No apology, no instructions what to do –
nothing. I know my way around well enough to go and hassle and we duly get put
up in this rather grotty hotel.
Before
breakfast we checked at reception what was happening – no news. We went back
twenty minutes later at 8.20 to be told the bus was leaving at 8.20! It left at
8.45 but after that the flight worked. Don't fly China Southern.
When we
finally got to Guillin we found out what the problem had been – fog. Why we
couldn’t be told that in GZ is beyond me. This information was provided by our
guide - Sophia. I first went to the area in 2001 when I was cycling along and
suddenly I had a schoolgirl on either side of me offering guiding services. One of them had been Sophia. I hadn’t seen
her for 12 years and she had changed from a rather quiet schoolgirl into a
confident mother. Her odd cycling style hasn’t changed though and she hasn't grown.
.
Naturally
things didn’t go well. I wanted to show Steve water flowing up hill. Wrong time
of the year – it only happens when the river is flowing strongly – late summer
or autumn, not February. We went to check but Sophia had told us already.
We went for
a boat ride – just Steve and me. The
“boat” was eight bamboo poles bound together with the front ends bent up. We
had a double seat and the motive power was provided by a man with a pole - like
a punt. Steve and I have similar builds so the seat was cosy and when we came
to the first weir we got stuck. Poleman had to get off and push – tipping us
over the weir. There were loads of other
boats and occasionally we saw some other boats getting stuck on the weirs.
However we managed a “stuck rate” of well over 50%. The poleman had no
hesitation in accepting a beer when we had a pause. Actually it was a very
pleasant trip.
We went for
a walk round a cave. Plenty of concrete, broken stalactites and coloured lights
but too many people (this is China) and too much artificiality with retail
opportunities in the cave itself. Steve tried his luck at throwing balls
through holes – probably the highlight!
Cycling
round for a couple of days was actually quite good. Steve saw some of the rural
conditions, how Sophia lives and picked oranges on her farm.
One thing that we
did and enjoyed (and I hadn’t done before) was cormorant fishing. At night you
go out on the river and the fishermen let the cormorants out to go fishing.
When they catch a fish they come back to the boat and the fisherman forces the
bird to cough it up to show the tourists. That is the theory – the cormorants
were much more interested in shagging than fishing. As far as we could work out
one particular specimen was so randy that he tried to have his way with all the
others – irrespective of their apparent sex. I do apologise for being in the
photos, Steve’s photos are better than mine. Once a cormorant had caught a fish
and the photo opportunities had been taken (Stevo and I were the only ones who
would do it on our trip) the fisherman dropped us off and went fishing
properly. No tip given or expected.
The flights
after that worked quite well. Back to GZ and the following day to Beijing.
Naturally
things went badly. The Temple of Heaven (my favourite building in China) was
extremely busy, the Forbidden City was as boring as ever and, despite hours of
searching, I couldn’t find the “rotten salmon” restaurant.
Hire a car
for the day to go to the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. Fog. Visibility on the Wall was about ten
metres. It also snowed a bit and some of
the people were inadequately shod. The slipperiness of the snow gave Steve (in
walking boots) the chance to play the hero rescuing the girls on the slippery
slopes. I had better explain. The Wall is level almost nowhere – there are
steps, many of them very steep in many places - up to 60 degrees - coming down I went backwards down a few, with slopes everywhere else so a
covering of snow can get very slippery.
A year
previously Matt had taken many photographs of the sunset round the Summer
Palace. With Stevo still fog. There is some interest in the Summer Palace but
all the buildings are relatively modern because the British spent three days
sacking the place towards the end of the nineteenth century. They wanted to
punish the emperor for being uppity so they destroyed his home rather than sack
Beijing. The stone boat is quite interesting though although you can't go on it. That is what the whole naval budget went on one year.It is the setting that makes the place.
On to
Qingdao (or Tsingtao). One of the things I insist on when I get visitors is that
we go somewhere that I haven’t been to before. Qingdao is in Shandong province
– a new one for me – there are only 3 of 36 provinces plus Taiwan at the time that I had not been to. (
The main
interest is that Tsingtao is China’s leading beer and I wanted to go round the
brewery. Naturally we could only go round the museum, not the brewery. It was
reasonably interesting but not the real thing.
Guangzhou
has areas of modern buildings and areas of old parts of the city. Qingdao
doesn’t do that; you get old buildings right next to the modern ones. So lunch in a very old backstreet café and
dinner in the yatch basin with Alice. Alice is a local who is one of my student
friends in GZ.
We went for
a stroll up the coast which was quite pleasant and remarkably peaceful. We
realised afterwards that the reason it was so peaceful was that we were walking
through an army base – not something I expect in China.
Back to GZ
and Stevo was off to Hong Kong to meet her indoors.
It is a
good job Stevo is a very patient man.
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