We after the fun and games trying to organize my weekend trip to Beijing or Shanghai, neither in fact happened.

 

After plenty of umming and ahhing I decided that I would go to Beijing. Everything was arranged but at the last minute my Beijing friend had to cancel due to work commitments and by which time I couldn't get a decent flight to Shanghai.  Bugger!!!

 

So instead I had a cunning plan.  Rather than spend a small fortune on flights, I would hire a driver for 3 days and get him to take me where ever I wanted to go. So driver was hired, Monday booked off work, only the destination to decide.

 

I did a quick straw poll in the office of half decent places to visit within 1/2 days drive - pulled up Google Earth and eventually settled of a quick jaunt up to Guilin and the rice fields of Longji.

 

We were told that it was a 10 hour drive, so promptly at 5.30pm Friday afternoon, straight from the office, we commenced our 'epic' journey. The plan was to drive for 5 or 6 hours, find a hotel and finish the trip Saturday morning. That would leave the rest of Saturday for Guilin, on Sunday pop up to Longji (and back to Guilin for the England vs Equador football match) and slowly meander back on Monday.

 

At the best of times driving (or prehaps worse, being driven) in China is not an endeavor to undertake lightly. 

 

In the book "Tuesdays With Morrie" (which I just happened to read during this trip), Morrie adopts the Buddhist aphorism:

Imagine there's a bird on your shoulder and every day you ask it, "Is today the day that I die? Am I ready? Am I living the life I want to live? Am I being the person I want to be?"

 

This is the attitude that you must take using the road network in CN.  Either today I will die...or I will not.  Both options are beyond my control, so don't even think about it.  I found looking out of the rear window, rather than the windscreen, helpful. That and copious amount of beer.

 

You would think that after nearly 5 months in China I would have picked up a bit of the local lingo, and you would be right. I have found that "Hello", "Goodbye", "Thank you" and "2 large beers please" is more than sufficient to get by in any language.  Back in February when I first arrived in Zhuhai I made it my first task to discover these phrases and commit them to memory.  However my mind is a sieve-like organ so I actually commited the phrases to paper which now has prime spot in my wallet (deposing the Dutch, German, French and for some reason American phrases).

 

I tell you this so that you will understand any "he said, she said" has first been parsed by my long suffering co-worker, friend and translator - Vincent.  I am not suggesting he is a bad translator, however it is disconcerting when a 20 minute conversation between him and a local translates into approximately "First left, 2nd right and it is straight in front of you".

 

 

When I said we set of promptly at 5.30, that wasn't quite true.  We had planned to sneak out at 4 (come on it was Friday!), but the driver was late, either that or he is best buddies with the boss who had discovered our minor skiving off scheme.

 

I asked the driver, via Vincent, if he knew the route, he replied, via Vincent, of course he knew.  Did he have a map perchance? Don't need one, been there before. And it will take around 10 hours? Maybe less.

 

Anyone who has had business dealings with the Chinese will know that tiu lien  (losing face) must be avoided at all costs.  Culturally it is difficult for them to say "No", instead  they say "Yes", or if you are lucky and they like you,  "Maybe".  Negative answers are a big no, no. I know all this (via the painful School of Experience) yet I still took the drivers answers at face value.

 

When the driver said that he didn't need a map, huge ruddy great alarm bells should have started ringing. After all it is only a 700km drive, what could possibly go wrong?  Actually I have no idea what went wrong, a couple of hours into the journey I fell asleep. 15 hours and 1000km later I awoke to find we had arrived.

 

Somehow the instruction to stop after 5 or 6 hours for a rest, was translate/interpreted as "Hey I know you have been driving all day, but why don't you pull an all nighter".  I mean it's not like the mountains roads are twisty or the ravines deep, and I'm sure that everyone will see that it is us that is coming and get back onto their side of the road.

 

Why we took 50% more time and km's I have no idea - we had arrived, alive, that was enough for me.  It was also enough for the driver who, immediately after ordering breakfast, collasped into a snoring pile.