First, I should mention that during the month of April, I visited Shenzhen 5 times. Impressive. Well, mostly for tailoring but regardless, my passport is cluttered with Chinese and Hong Kong stamps back and forth within the same day. It's a breeze actually, despite dodging the incredibly slow walkers or jumbo suitcases full of goods and knock offs, the border crossing is a favorite pastime of mine. And oddly enough, it takes less time to go to China than go to Hong Kong Island!
So after using my handy dandy Google translate print out of 4 sentences that said, "I want to go to Changsha. Is there a train to Changsha? Is this the bus to the airport. May I borrow your phone, my flight is delayed and I need to call the agency." I managed to get on a 22 RMB bus to the airport instead of the 150 RMB cab that I heard it was normally... The only problem was that due to the May 1st holiday, there were no trains to Changsha so I had to stick with my plan of a morning flight. But what does one do if they are already at the airport only about 11 hours ahead of time.
The Traveller Halts, indeed. So my plan was to find a hotel or bed or spa for the night, but in my
fluent Chinese miming and poorly recognized English I only managed to find a couple options. So I spent the night in an unusual place but with an eye mask and light luggage anything is possible.
And then we all boarded the flight in a Chinese single file line as shown here.
Exhausted from my day of travel and I hadn't even made it to Changsha, Catherine
