Little Feet Round the World: China Trip

So on the fourth day, we officially closed our journey at Zhangjiajie and moved on to our next destination: Guilin.

We hired a minibus that would bring us to Changsha South Train Station. From Changsha South Train Station, we took a high speed train direct to Guilin.

We spent approximately 4.5 hours on the road and reached Changsha South Train Station at around 11:30 am. We then unloaded our luggages and bid farewell to the driver.

Changsha South Train Station started operation in 2009 and it serves as a hub for Beijing-Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong high speed railway and Shanghai-Kunming high speed railway. It will also serve the route of Xiamen-Changsha-Chongqing high speed railway and Changsha-Huanghua International Airport in the future.

Changsha South Train Station Ground Level

Arriving yeah!

One of our group members lost the train ticket. With my basic Mandarin, I managed to ask the station officer on the procedure of retrieving back the ticket. I needed to go to a certain ticket counter, report lost ticket and pay for the price of the new ticket. Only after I reached Guilin, I would be able to refund the money.

After queueing at the wrong counter and getting scolded by the ticketing officer, I queued at the correct counter. But when I reached the front, only then I knew that the passport used to purchase the ticket previously was the old one. Damn Indonesia's system that requires us to change the passport number for every new passport. So I ran as fast as I could to the place where they were waiting, got the old passport, and ran back to queue again.

Luckily we were on time and we settled ourselves on the train.

The high speed train is wayyyyy better than flight!

We reached Guilin Train Station at around 5:30 pm and the driver had been waiting for us there. He helped me to get the refund for our train ticket and then sent us to Guilin Sapphire Hotel located nearby Xicheng Night Market.

Guilin Sapphire Hotel

There is a good Chinese restaurant nearby the hotel, called Macau Restaurant. We spent our dinner there and felt utterly satisfied with the quality of the food, the service, and the price.

The food!

After filling our tummy, we went to explore the night market until it was about to close at 10:30 pm. I did not buy a lot of things but I had fun exploring the not-so-crowded night market.