We had a fairly early start and were on our bus and heading for Guilin well before 07:00. In the busy morning traffic our local bus driver was frighteningly aggressive in his overtaking manoeuvres, honking his horn and pulling out to pass even on blind hilltops and corners. When other cars or motorbikes were encountered, everyone simply moved to create three lanes on a two-lane road. In road tunnels, which are common in China an alarming number of vehicles drive through without lights on and are exceedingly hard to see in the dimly lit conditions.
At Guilin we boarded an express train and headed eastwards for two hours towards Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton). The maximum speed attained was a mere 248 km/h but even at this speed, the train was silky smooth in its movement and very quiet.
High speed train, Guilin
Tony writing the blog on the train, Guilin to Hong Kong
We changed trains at Guangzhou and took a second bullet train through to the border between China and Hong Kong at Shenzhen. This train cruised at 300 km/h and reached a maximum speed of 311 km/h and before we knew it we were at the border. Here the security and customs officials required that we firstly checked out of China and then walked across an area to check in to Hong Kong. This process meant undertaking the tiring business of following an interminable queue to be eventually processed which although slow, all went smoothly.
Now being in Hong Kong at Lok Ma Chau (Futian Port) we exchanged our remaining Chinese Yuan for Hong Kong dollars and then headed for the sub-way to Kowloon.
We took the East Rail Line and then changed at Kowloon Tong station before crossing to the Kwun Tong Line that took us through to our destination, namely Yau Ma Tei.
Although most of the stations had escalators we seemed to also use railway station stairs on many occasions so on arriving at our Kowloon Hotel (Caritas Bianchi Lodge) we were all ready for a rest and a shower. The conditions in HK are even more humid than we’ve experienced recently.
Our guide, Paul did a fantastic job in getting our group through this complicated day’s travel involving a succession of changes in countries, stations, trains, platforms and lines.
As a further ‘final’ evening meal for our “Wild China” travel group, now depleted by three members, we went to a restaurant quite close to our hotel and then caught the sub-way to the Kowloon waterfront to watch the ‘light-show’ over HK Harbour. This very popular tourist event brought out crowds of thousands into the waterfront precinct and cameras worked flat out in the night light in an attempt to record this laser and coloured LEDs spectacular.
Light show, Hong Kong
We then returned to our lodgings and said farewell to two of our group who leave very early tomorrow morning to catch international flights home to Australia and Dubai.
This has been a long day of travel, sometimes frustrating, sometimes boring and sometimes exhausting but the incredible and fascinating journey we’ve just undertaken over these last three weeks makes these minor travel complications of no consequence.