I carefully made sure to keep a single completely clean change of bike clothes to wear on the final day. Whether I biked down the peninsula (in which case, laundry might have happened) or I bussed down, I was absolutely going to have something that didn't smell like multiple layered days of sweat that had been poorly washed out in a succession of bathroom sinks.

This turned out to have been a completely pointless effort on my part as the scene at the nearby coach station rapidly had me soaked with pungent stress sweat.

Basically, the person on the ticket window (followed by someone else who also wasn't the driver but who had permission to take me out to the parking lot) was absolutely CONVINCED that there was no way my bike was ever going to fit in the luggage compartment and that, even if I wanted to pay extra for a ticket, I couldn't because the bike would not fit.

After being shown the tight (but not at all unreasonably small) luggage compartment on the larger of the two potential vehicles, I swore that my bike could be disassembled to fit and they agreed to sell me a ticket "but we won't refund you if you can't fit" and no, the bike can't go in the passenger compartment¹.

So, I disassemble as much as I can sitting on the floor of the station and then, fuck me, the smaller of the two possible vehicles for Hai'an pulls into the bay because that's how many tickets were sold between this station and some other one on the far side of Zhanjiang and there's no reason to use the big coach.

I'm grumbling to myself and taking calm breaths and doing all that nonsense that's necessary not to just start crying that I "just want to go home!" because now I'm going to have to reassemble my bike and ride the three or four days this bus was supposed to help me skip when..... what's this.... the smaller vehicle's luggage compartment is easily three times the size of the larger vehicle's largest compartment².

If I'd known this was what I was packing in, I wouldn't have even taken off the front wheel, let alone all the other crap that it's going to take me over an hour to get "not quite right" at the other end.

I wanted to take the ferry that goes to the downtown port which meant a 15km ride from where I got off the coach in Xuwen. Not that I ever want there to be a next time where I give up instead of finishing the last bit down to the port but I'll have to remember this as my reasons for wanting to end up downtown were so I could avoid the 15 kilometers of beach road between that port and Haikou.

For as long as I've known about the Super Secret VIP Cabin on the top deck, it's been a standard part of my ferry rides across the Qiongzhou Straits. This time, however, it was closed. Unless you count the cabin for the truck drivers (all 5 of them) doing a closed loop³ drop off signposted as emergency relief supplies, only the one passenger cabin (at about 15% capacity) out of three was open.

I got counted as a driver and was allowed down to the car deck ahead of the rest of the passengers which usually means that I stand there wishing I weren't breathing in car exhaust but, this time, on account of an almost empty ferry actually meant getting off fairly quickly.

For my on-arrival Covid swab, I was also a driver and I have to say it was quite impressive how quickly they adapted to my inability to answer questions like "license plate number" as this is something which I have long expected normal databases and procedures to choke up on⁴.

Round the corner to Sky's bike shop where I was met by David and, after changing out of my now thoroughly stunk up jersey, taken out to Jake's not yet open new place.

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¹ I actually agree that cargo and people should be separated 

² The larger vehicle could seat about twice as many people and had space for about 30% more luggage.

³ Basically, they are staying isolated from everyone so that they can immediately return to the mainland after doing whatever

⁴ Like explaining at Vietnamese Customs and Immigration at Hanoi Airport in 2006 that my passport being stamped as an arriving driver didn't mean I'd left the car in the country.