Day 24 – Where are the bars?
Breakfast was bread, courtesy of Dr Ying, along with some instant coffee and bags of coconut candies, which I took far too many of, as I still have a lot of them even now, four months later.
We bussed our way to the train station, grateful to be getting further away from the horror of Macau and the disappointment of Zhuhai and on to Guangzhou. After a very long city- bus ride to what looked like the middle of nowhere in a sandy wasteland. But it was actually the train station. It was just very very new and still under construction. We stood in line on wooden planks that were half-heartedly covering the sand to buy our tickets for Guangzhou. (I know, I just personified wooden planks, I don't care.) We had to wait an hour or so, and I got a little antsy… as you can see.
Though that could also be due to the fact that by that point we’d seen at least four mothers lift their babies above garbage cans, holding their legs against their stomachs, and trying to make them pee or otherwise relieve themselves into the bin.
God, China, WHY. WHY do you do things like this?
So that very obviously made all of us extremely uncomfortable, and we went to the complete opposite side of the waiting room where there were no garbage cans, or bathrooms, just a plain nice wall where I could swing my arms around.
The tickets we’d gotten for the train were for standing room only, and the first, and hopefully the last tickets I’ll get of the kind. I was quick, though, and put one of my bags into an unused corner near the door and sat on it as a makeshift seat. Hooray! I think it was around 45 minutes, maybe. I can’t remember. But long enough that I knew I wouldn’t want to stand the whole way and get jostled by train movements. Sitting was best.
We had been unable to reserve any hostels in Guangzhou the night before, as hard as we tried, so I’d written down at least three addresses of hostels. Thankfully, Guangzhou has a subway system, and so our first attempt was on Shamian Island.
WE SUCCEEDED on our first try! We figured that since karma was seriously out to get us in Macau/Zhuhai that something HAD to go in our favor. And now it was! The hostel was just a short walk from the metro, had dorm beds, AND we were able to book 5 nights. Such serious success after two infuriating days.
Finally we were able to unload our gear, and we had a decent dinner at a nearby restaurant called Lucy’s. I got the enchilada, since I am always craving Mexican food (and it is lacking in China), and it was alright.
Actually I lied earlier about having complete success. The one thing the hostel did not have were towels. And so we had a quest for towels (only I never vocalized it as a quest, but I definitely thought of it as one), and we checked the 7/11 (HOLY CRAP, a 7/11? I don’t have those even at home) but there were none to be found. So it would have to be a quest continued the next day because we had far more pressing matters. That of taking the ferry off the island (I need to mention how thrilled I was that we were on a hostel, on an ISLAND) to the famed Bar Street we read and also could clearly see from our side of the river. Look at that! It’s so enticing! Shiny lasers and tents and lighted PIRATE SHIPS.
We were hopeful and it was about 7 or 8pm so we figured we could just bar hop. Amigos was our first try, directly across where we disembarked from the ferry. We all got margaritas that were far too full of tequila and salt on the rim, but we finished them nonetheless. I, incorrectly (and knowingly), assume that by default, margaritas should be strawberry and frozen because of how taco nights work at my home. Having a salty lime one is always a disappointment.
The next bar was one called Riverside 88, where I got a ridiculously strong whisky sour (I don’t think I ever found one I liked well enough on the trip) and the others I believe got Tiger, a beer from Singapore which still tastes like every other blah light/East-Asian beer I’ve tasted.
And then the bars stopped. We walked around the area and found nothing. We backtracked all the way back to the ferry and heard what we were thinking, “Where are the bars?” by two guys behind us.
They told us they’d already explored the street in the direction we hadn’t gone and they’d found nothing but the cheap beer at the hostel they were staying at. We told them it was the same for the opposite direction. So we came to the mutual decision to return to their hostel and get cheap beer (4 kuai!). They were to be our buddies for the rest of Guangzhou, or rather, Guangers.
Matthew and Andy both come from Norwich, England and have known each other from at least university we gathered. And they were both hilarious people- for the next few days we coined or they shared with us an absurd number of terms, which I’ll scatter throughout the next few blog posts.
We stayed at their hostel, laughing and talking absurdly loudly, and convinced we were definitely the most awesome people at the hostel. The people inside were only in pairs, or silently on laptops, or more calmly drinking a beer. We were outside on the porch, being awesome and hilarious. Eventually we ventured back to the bars we’d abandoned earlier, though they weren’t a lot more “happening”, though with our new friends they were a lot more fun. At some point in the night, they’d decided they would switch hostels the next day to ours, because clearly sleeping on an island is cooler. And it would be easier to hang out later if we were sleeping in the same place.
Next up! The Towel Quest continues, Andy falls in love, we make our best awkward tourist poses, we find the Sexual Tower, and play lots of Jasper. All to be explained soon!
