All packed up, free shuttle to Hong Kong MRT station at 8.30, as we had to catch MRT to LuChu to cross over to China, no problem, catch TWL line from Central to Mong Kok, walk across platform and catch KTL line to Kowloon Tong, walk a bit and go up a floor and catch the ERL line to Lo Wu, don’t catch it to LocMa Chau. Passed through both sets of customs, except we had not filled in a form, so back to the end of the queue.
Walked out of customs, turned right and entered Chinese MRT station, to catch MRT to Shenzhen North railway station to catch our bullet train to Changsha, so we can go to the Avatar mountains for a few days. Very cheap 5 RMB each, line 1 to the Convention Centre, step out and line 4 to Shenzhen North. Once there. It’s down a level to the train station, go through to get your ticket checked, then baggage and body scan, then go to your waiting area for your train. Very civilised as we had red tickets for 1st class. Bullet train very comfortable, cruising at 304 mph, but it could do with better air conditioning, it was 32C outside. We are cruising to Changsha at about 304 km/h, just over 3 hr to get there, free water and snack provided.
At Changsha South railway station, it’s off the train and go to the MRT. Thats down a level and go to the right, then down again to the station, normal procedures, 4CNY, seven stops to Changsha railway station where we catch our train @ 7.22am tomorrow morning.
We have a budget hotel just around the corner from the station for the night. Used CTrip, pay when you get there. City Comfort Hotel, Railway branch, double business room, 200CNY, smoke fumes at no extra charge!
So now we are further from the coast, English is not as nearly as common, we walked around to our Hotel, the Manager has a great translation app, Baidu Translate. We talked and it converted it into chinese text, she typed Chinese and it was converted to English, we now both have the app, we also have one that reads text and converts to English, have to laugh at some of the translations.
Got our room, not to bad for $AU40 for the night. So even as it is a non smoking hotel, they all smoke, had to have window open to get fresh air. They gave us a name of a restaurant across the flyover and to the right, called Diners back in English, we had the Chinese name as well.
What a great meal, and a hoot to boot, no one spoke any English, so we did a lot of pointing at things on other diners tables, we had runner beans, pork, Szechuan chicken, rice and beer. They even came out and asked how hot I wanted the chicken (with and app). BTW, chicken is everything finely chopped up, first mouthful included a beak. We cleared the table, they refused a tip, 120CNY ($AU24) for the whole lot.
Thats it for the day, 7 trains, a border crossing, so it’s to bed, as we have a 5 o’clock start to catch 7.22 train to Zhangjaijie.
#hollingsheadout 