Traveling in Asia: My Adventure in Getting to the Train Station

My husband and I have been living in central China for six months now. We have enjoyed a comfortable job as English teachers at a university near our apartment. But recently our semester finally came to a close, and we were ready to take our winter holiday and explore more of what Asia had to offer.

The initial element of our travel experience was to buy a train ticket and travel to the south border of China before crossing the border over into Vietnam. Often purchasing any kind of ticket can be troublesome because of the language barrier. But thankfully, we have had the opportunity to meet many bilingual Chinese friends who have assisted us in communicating needs such as ticket purchasing. We were mistaken when we thought getting a hold of a train ticket was going to be the most inconvenient portion of the railway experience.

January 15th arrived. We loaded our over-sized packs onto our backs and headed out to the street to catch a cab. The day before it had been rainy and, unbeknownst to us, it was only days away before the biggest winter storm in decades would hit. So on this wet, dreary day we rode in the taxi hoping he had understood our pathetic attempt to communicate the correct location.

As we neared the train station traffic began to get more and more congested. The taxi driver weaved, cut others off, and nearly hit pedestrians to get us to our destination. As we continued through the mobile labyrinth the problem became clear. A normally four lane wide road had become just two because of a huge road construction project that burrowed right through the center of the madness. But eventually we spotted the train station on the other side of the road - on the other side of the construction. Our taxi driver motioned that he could not get to the other side of the road and would have to drop us off here. We nodded with understanding, paid our dues, and once again loaded our backs down with our luggage.