It's a Bus-age Wonder

Yesterday morning, I was a little worried I had absolutely nothing to write about today. Now, I feel like I have to pick and choose which parts of my weekend to talk about. 

Yesterday began with a trip to the fabric market, or as I like to think of it, the Achilles heel of my shopping willpower. I had one last piece of nice fabric that I'd picked up on my last trip that I wanted to have made up into a jacket. Of course, while I was there, I bought three more pieces of fabric. But they're just remnants! They're tiny! I can stuff them into my shoes to bring them home! I don't need to bring home my socks...

After my narrow escape from the fabric market, I headed out with my flatmate and another coworker for a little pampering. We got facials. I say facial, but in addition to all the attention paid to my face, I also got my back, arms, neck, and scalp massaged. It was decadent and extremely relaxing. I will not tell you what I paid for it, because it will make you cry. Sorry.

Just as we were coming out of the spa, I got a call from another friend asking if I wanted to see Men in Black 3 later that evening. I weighed it against my other option: going home to watch BBC mysteries and surf the net in bed. So, we made a plan to meet for the movie. It gave us a little over an hour to get dinner, so we walked up Tianhe Beilu to a Bavarian German restaurant whose name is eluding me at the moment. I had German potato salad and a mango smoothie. Then it was down and over to the Grandview where I watched Will Smith take out some alien baddies with his usual summer blockbuster energy (sidenote: man, the summer of 1969 is a really busy time for time travelers). The movie let out just as the very last buses were running, so I ran and caught one home and fell into bed. That was yesterday.

Today I got up and paid the rent, cleaned my apartment a bit so our real estate agent can show it to some prospective renters (even though we're not leaving until late July?), then met another friend for lunch at the cheap Italian place (again, the name eludes me). It really isn't half bad for the price point, which is way, way cheaper than any other foreign food place in town (including McDonald's). We had basil pasta, garlic bread, seaweed salad (yes, you read that right), a 9-inch Hawaiian pizza, and chocolate mousse cake all for a little under 10 USD. Seaweed salad, by the way, is regular garden salad with dressing, with a scoop of Japanese sushi-restaurant style seaweed on top. It actually wasn't half bad. After lunch, we decided to swing by Starbucks, as my friend had a buy-one-get-one card. The nearest Starbucks was packed, so we walked a block to the next one, which was also packed, so we crossed the intersection to the bigger one, which wasn't so bad. We both had the mango hibiscus juice tea. It was good.

Finally, I got around to the real task I needed to accomplish this weekend, which was to head to the coach station and buy bus tickets for my weekend trip. My flatmate and I are going on a three day trip to Yangshuo (you may recall, I was there in October, but my flatmate hasn't been). Last time, a coworker who had been before arranged everything, so all I had to do then was give her some cash and show up at the appointed time. This time, I am the designated ticket-buyer, so I had to brave the fun of a major transit station. 

The Tianhe Coach Station is at least easy to find, as it is right outside of the identically-named subway station (last stop on Line 3). It's two storeys tall, and there are helpful bilingual signs that direct you to the ticket windows on the first and second floors. That's where the bilingualism ends, though, as all of the bus information is in Chinese. No matter, I thought, I can read this. This is basic stuff! I can even read the sign about which ticket windows accept bank cards (about 4 out of 40 windows, so bring cash). 

First, I direct my eyes to the scrolling red text of the giant electronic signboards and locate the "out of province" buses. I patiently wait for the whole cycle to run through twice. Hmm. I don't see my bus listed. Well, maybe I misread the sign downstairs and I need to use the first-floor ticket windows. So down I go. Nope, those are definitely not right. Back up the escalator, and another scan of the signs. Still no dice. I wander over to a large poster of bus numbers sorted by province. Yangshuo is in Guangxi, and isn't listed as a destination. Huh. Wait a tick! I say to myself. I bet Yangshuo isn't the terminus of the bus. It probably goes all the way to Guilin. So really, I should be looking for the bus to Guilin. I don't see that one on the big signboard, but I do see it listed on the poster. 

Finally, now that I've been wandering around the bus station for about fifteen minutes, I get in a ticket window line. It's not actually a peak travel time, so my line is only five people deep and moves quickly. When it's my turn, I bust out my best Chinese (what? full sentences? ha. Only silly foreigners use full sentences) and ask for the Friday night sleeper bus to Yangshuo. Turns out there's a really late one, but I know there's an 8:30 one, so I ask and ahah, there it is (at the ticket window, there's a computer screen facing you, which shows you all the ticket information: destination, bus type, ticket type, departure time, and price). I ask for two tickets, hand over some cash, and ticket victory is mine. 

Oddly enough, I feel as though my trip to the coach station would have been faster if I didn't speak any Chinese. I probably would have just hopped in a line and blundered through. On the other hand, my confidence level was high, and it all went quite smoothly, so I'm calling it a win. I even handled the unexpected "is the second passenger a child" question.

So that was my weekend. I'm a bit tired, and I've got homework to do before class tomorrow (Ahem. All of my former students will laugh at me, but I actually forgot how annoying it is to have to dedicate some homework time. But! The teacher in me knows the benefit of doing it). One last thing, though, before I go. This Saturday is the Dragon Boat Festival, which honors the noble suicide of Qu Yuan, a Warring States-era poet. I suggest celebrating with a boat ride and some zongzi.