The Sleeper Bus

Two unavoidable and extremely annoying characteristics of all great holidays are: first, they eventually come to an end, and second, there is always a time during the vacation where you suddenly become conscious of this finiteness. In China, that moment came for me on Sunday 22nd November as I woke up in Guilin. I have no idea why. Maybe it was the prospect of a whole day with nothing much to do, coming after days of endless hiking and boating and running after busses. Maybe it was our imminent leaving of the People's Republic proper for its Special Administrative Regions. The only thing I know for sure is that, on that morning, I thought for the first time of my office overlooking Avenue Antoine Depage in Brussels, and the computer screen I'd very soon be staring at again.

That, however, still laid many days away. Presently Micol and I left the hotel for a tour of Reed Flute Cave, China's most celebrated underground attraction. It is indeed a spectacular cave, full of magnificent limestone formations brought to life by brash multicolored lighting. The world-famous lake is, well, world-famous for good reason. I have no idea where the name of the cave came from, but it certainly proved useful for kickstarting a healthy industry of touts selling cheap plastic reed flutes all over the place.

After lunch I killed a couple hours just walking around aimlessly. Guilin has a small but beautiful lake surrounded by grassy banks where children of all ages frolic under the sun. Its shopping avenues offer everything you'd find in any Belgian town and more. Then again, the quaint little town of Guilin, known internationally only for the beauty of its surrounding scenery, has more inhabitants than Brussels.

At 5PM we all got together again for one of the trip's braver experiences: spending the night in a Chinese sleeper bus. With flights to Macau unexpectedly expensive and inconveniently scheduled, we chose to spend the night on a bus that would drop us in Zhuhai, where we could reach the border by taxi. We'd been warned that the trip might be uncomfortable, which is saying something in a country with a "Standing" class on overnight trains. We were not disappointed. We each had exactly 5 square feet of living space, to be shared with our bags and shoes, for twelve hours of a bumpy noisy ride where sleep is an unattainable dream at best. Babies took their turns screaming. Every 3 or 4 hours we stopped near a communal hut drenched in urine and asked for our small contribution. We all drank copious quantities of baiju, wagering long-term liver damage for the dulled consciousness needed to retain a positive disposition during such a trip. I can't recommend the experience highly enough.