Train from Shanghai to Guangzhou

Short Note: It's so hot in Malaysia OMG OMG. *hide in air-conditioned room*

Oh Yea. I'm back from 5 weeks in Australia!!! Ugh, I hate the sun. Manado Manado~

Anyway, now that I am back and have access to all my photos. I am going to continue blogging about where I left off before my laptop crashed (a month ago).


It was time to leave Shanghai.


didn't sleep the night before


On my last day, I packed my bags, said bye to Sean (my host in Shanghai) and took a taxi around 3pm to Shanghai Train Station, where I bought my overnight train ticket to Guangzhou the day before.

Shanghai Train Station was by far the most impressive train station, in terms of vastness and quantity of passengers each day, I have never seen.


Look to the right.



Look to the left.


China is so big (land and population wise), they even have to partition separate ticket buildings (not booths, buildings!) for short and long distance train tickets, which were then categorized into Northern, Western and Southern routes (there’s no East after Shanghai, unless you consider the ferry to Japan from here a route, which then tickets would have to be purchased elsewhere).

In fact, it was so big, I got lost when I first arrived here. I grabbed the first policeman I saw and interrogated him for the route ticketing area for long distance routes; to which he, rudely and ignorantly, raised his nose (or head, I couldn’t really make out) and made a gesture that directed my sight to a huge building located on the other side of the road. It was like “wtf? How many buildings do they need for a train station, geez!”

My ticket to Guangzhou consist of two journeys because there was no vacancy for the hard sleeper on the first leg of my journey.




First three hours to Jin Hua Xi on hard seater,


Hard seater carriage



Me trying to sleep on the hard seater by leaning against the wobbling wall of the train



My water bottle


then switch carriage to hard sleeper to proceed the following 15 hours of train ride (which means I will be reaching in Guang Zhou at 11:18am the next day). My ticket cost me 363 yuan (around RM 180).

Settling myself on a second class hard sleeper (which wasn’t that hard really) after much climbing and descending of staircase, lulling my oversized diva-like luggage (according to Sean) over platforms and check in counters (if that was even considered a counter) and squirming through the narrow passage through 13 carriages!!!!! Because my journey was divided into two parts, first 4 hours in carriage no.16 in hard seater and the following 8 hours in carriage no.4 for a sleeper (damn I tell you these were LONG carriages!), I was more than ready to enter dream mode.





This is the window reflection of me in my hard sleeper cabin


Carts selling supper would come by selling congee and snacks or instant noodles, but it was too tired to eat. Besides, supper’s not good for you.

Morning came pretty fast. Female conductors will be making a havoc wakeup call which included making a lot of noise and much banging on the walls (there were no doors to each of these sleeper cabins). I leaped down from my sleeper and join the rest of the early birds on the corridor to view the morning beauty of Guang Zhou from the train.





Oh… river! I wonder if I’m in Guangzhou yet.



Crumpled bed sheets in the morning.


Soon the breakfast would come along, selling what I thought could be leftover congee from last night, which of course could not be true, could it?




Despite not being a heavy beakfast person, I didn’t want to take the risk and moved to the cafeteria carriage where they would serve proper breakfast.

Though in my opinion, nothing served on Chinese transport can ever be considered proper or decent to be eaten. My breakfast was egg on toast, and mind you, they were some pretty stale bread.


Bloody thing cost me RM6!


Served with diluted milk too. -.-


Breakfast on the train is always the best!



Morning look


But yes, overall, it was fun taking train, all the hassle really put me to thinking twice if I would ever take another train in China again. But then again I have always fancied taking land transportation,




just the fact of waking up in another destination beguiles me a lot.




Next up,




Yum Cha in Guang Zhou.