D111: 广州 →

Why do they have to take their masks down to read the sign?

As I never leave the train station environs, I never get to find out how serious Guangzhou is about all arrivals having a 48 hour validity NAT. I avail myself of the free Covid test for no other reason than its something to do during the 8 hours between trains. That it's also something which the Rules say I'll be needing to present in Haikou (and something which no one seems to be actively checking for on the way out of that station) is just an added benefit.

Guangzhou Station, being substantially larger than Yunyang, has a logistics office. And while they don't exactly tell me I can't take my bike through the station, they do tell me that it has to be disassembled wheel off and luggagified while in the station. That's way too much of a pain in the ass to deal with and, besides, I've got loads of time to kill.

It's not very expensive shipping a bike. I think I paid either 60 or 80 but I can't check my records as, somehow, the logistics office at Guangzhou Station still uses cash and while we were waiting for the staff member who carries folding money to show up and let me pay him so he could pay the till, I checked my wallet and discovered I had just enough.

Then I went back to the waiting room and waited waited waited waited.

My train is perhaps 8 or 10 minutes late pulling into the station which, you have to admit, is pretty damn impressive for something that started 3,500km away in Harbin. It is substantially more late when it leaves the station and, as a result, will become still more behind schedule by the time we get down to the ferry port.

It never gets late enough that, like the train I took back from Sichuan last year, we end up sitting on a siding for 25 minutes while something on time passes according to schedule but we were still late enough that all the stations (even the small ones) had to rejigger things to accommodate us.

This is primarily the fault of the ticket check in Guangzhou. Out of a dozen turnstiles, only one is set up for manual processing (foreigners, all passengers with children under 12, and many of the elderly) and even when it's clear that there are still something like fifty people in line, the agent still waits until the official close of ticket checking (3 minutes before scheduled departure) to manually open all the turnstiles and tell us to run the 350 meters to the platform plus however much you have to go to get to your carriage.

I somehow manage to actually get on my carriage before our scheduled departure time. However, there were plenty enough folks behind me that weren't managing to move even as fast as the shuffling speed walk I do when I try to run that "being dicks about it" to us for not being aboard in time was never an option.

I'm glad I've got a lower bunk and a place to stretch my leg out cause it hurts enough that if I'd been sitting or particularly needed to walk, narcotics would have been in order.

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