Writing my last blog took me until close to 6am in the morning, at which point I slowly packed up and was able to drag my luggage quietly down the stairs at about 7:15 am. I was in room 1502b, but I had peeked into 1502a while it was being cleaned the day before and noticed that it was the ground floor area of my upstairs suite, so the reason my stairs started immediately right on the other side of my 1502b door, and also why there was a master 1502 door that was usually open but was closed late at night, was because it all used to be one unit and was split into two when they repurposed these into an “audio and video hotel”. So, all that is to say that I tried to drag my heavy luggage bag down there and stairs as gently as possible at 7:15 am so as to hopefully not wake whoever was in 1502a up.

When I bought my ticket three days ago, the ticketing lady had told me that I would be fine arriving half an hour before the bus departure time, which was 8am, but I did not count on three things to slow this time estimate down. One, the driver that the Didi app assigned me had another nearby stop to finish first, two, it was raining and thus everything simply moved slower, and three, there was an accident where one car rear-ended another (we didn’t see it though, just the aftermath where they were exchanging information) that was blocking our route to the Haikou West bus station.

Despite all that, we still arrived in reasonable time, at 8:06 am or so, and I had to dodge the rain and some very pushy drivers who wanted to drive me all the way to Zhanjiang themselves as I went into the station. There was no queue for the bus station security gate itself at all though, although my passport would not work in the ID scanning machine and thus had to be manually checked and accepted by the guard at the gate. This “friction” would continue for every security gate I passed today on the bus and ferry ride — it was always someone manually checking my ID because the automated system was only set up to handle ID cards from China and adjacent territories.

There was no problem at this particular gate, at any rate, and boarding had already begun for the bus itself, but they actually collected my passport (and the ID cards of all the Chinese nationals who had ID cards to use), which was a little worrying because I didn’t understand why at first, but that seemed to be the absolutely accepted thing to do so I just rolled with it. My big luggage bag was loaded into the baggage cabin by the bus driver and my backpack went into the overhead cabin above my seat, before I settled down for a nap with my sling bag and mild anxiety. (Picture below is of the bus, though it was borrowed from later on the day at the port.)

The bus driver waved a flag before we started and basically told us to watch for the flag for purposes of having a gathering point for our bus passengers when we were at the ferry. He said not to get lost if you were going to Zhanjiang in particular (hey that’s me) since the flag said Haikou and Wuchuan, and Zhanjiang was an intermediary stop. He added an anecdote of two former travellers who were looking for the Zhanjiang name on the flag and were lost for an hour in some other trip he had been on. Duly noted. He himself would be shepherding the bus onto the ferry itself so one of his attendants, a lady in a black shirt, would be holding the flag for the day. (Picture below also borrowed from later on in the day.)

I closed my eyes for a bit, and the next time I opened them we were disembarking at the port. My backpack remained on the bus in its overhead compartment as well, and all I took with me was my sling bag. To my surprise, we were at a very familiar port:

This was Nangang, the port I had visited three days prior! I thought for some reason that we would be heading to a more northern one and taking the ferry from there, but we went northwest instead, which meant that not only did I know the place already, but that I’d be able to see a bit of the decoupled train, yay. I’m not actually sure if all passenger ferries go through Nangang or if there are some that go through the ports further north, but that’s fine.

I walked through the port with all the air of a pro, making sure to very cordially not hit my head on the side walls and all that. Soon we reached the gate again and I tried to step through that, except that oh, that required an ID card (or passport) and I didn’t have one. The security guard asked if I had come on a large bus and I said yes, and he gestured to the seats to the side of the gate, essentially saying that I should wait there and that the bus coordinator would come back with the ID cards and ferry tickets eventually. It was over 45 minutes to the next ferry anyway — we arrived at the ferry gates at 9:15 am and the next ferry was scheduled for 10:25 am.

The coordinator person did reappear eventually. Mine was the only passport in a sea of ID cards and she apparently knew that that was mine as she beelined right to me with mine, even if I didn’t fully recognize her up until that point. She gave me my passport and a ferry pass, then called out names and handed out the others.

My ferry card looked like this. Wait, Calgary? What? Well, I’d find out shortly. Firstly, I got held back at the first station again because the facial recognition machine had no idea what to do with my passport, and the officer that was there couldn’t do it either. He had to call over another officer, who took a few minutes to wander by, and that guy was then able to approve me and send me forwards.

Forwards here was another quick bag check, since we were mixing with walk-on passengers as well as passengers in taxis and cars at this point. Then there was a crush of people at the actual ferry ticket gate, and I was told to use the leftmost gate so that they could verify my passport manually there. Except I saw that my bus coordinator and the rest of my group was waiting at one side for the crowd to subside anyway, so I waited with them.

After the crowd was a lot thinner, our tour coordinator signalled for us to go, and we all went. Most of the people got through just fine. My passport perplexed them as always and it was handed off from one officer to another, then back to the first, then back to me, and they inquired why my name was different on the ticket than on the passport. Apparently that line that said Calgary? That was supposed to be where my name was. And the FAO line? That was supposed to be my passport number. Well it sure wasn’t! That name at the top left wasn’t mine either, I think that was the issuing officer.

The first officer said that I basically bought a ticket with wrong info and thus I didn’t have a valid ticket and couldn’t board. I said that I was with a bus group and they had bought the ticket. She said to call the coordinator person. I said I didn’t have their number and besides, I didn’t have a local phone line either. I thought I was in a bit of trouble here because the coordinator had already boarded the ferry, as I didn’t see her anywhere nearby. But she had apparently dropped back to look for stragglers, and swooped back in to my rescue after a bit. I don’t know what system the buses use to buy ferry tickets for their passengers, but she basically pointed out that the port authority themselves were the ones who had just processed the ID cards and provided them to her to hand out to the group, so…

After hearing that, the guards just gave up and let us through. I thanked her later for the assist, heh. As a sidenote, I eventually figured out where they got the Calgary and FAO number from, and I couldn’t believe it. Some Chinese official who couldn’t read English and had never seen a passport before took it from this page from the middle of my passport. This was my Japanese student visa (with lots of random stuff blurred out from it) that was granted a few years ago but that I never used since my Mom had her stroke right after, which made me decide to not want to go.

Apparently she (the ferry ticket issuing officer) mistook that for my passport details. Amazing. At least I have a super cool misprint ticket as a souvenir now.

Anyway, the ferry was fairly packed but also very large, and I got to see some vehicles as well as trains get loaded on board through other entrances as I boarded the ferry.

The ferry itself had a first floor covered outdoor area with a few seats that were snapped up instantly, and tiny outdoor viewing areas on their second and third level, all towards the back (I think) of the boat where we boarded, and the rest of the boat was indoors. The viewing areas were designated as a no smoking section but features half a dozen people smoking there constantly anyway. There were three large passenger lounges and a food shop, but the toilets were pretty nasty, on par with the worst hawker center and kopitiam ones in Singapore, so I didn’t want to risk eating anything there in case that made me need to use it.

A lot of the seats were taken up by people using double and triple ones for their bags, or to lie down in, etc, which was annoying, but I did eventually find a seat anyway and sat down for another nice nap in between writing a few paragraphs for this blog. Then I got up and went to the viewing area to watch the ship arrive at and back up into the port area to get moored.

The journey itself was super smooth and it arrived right on time at the destination port, Beigang, at 11:45 am or so. We disembarked and I saw the trains start to get unloaded, and passed this cool sign along the way.

We then went over to the bus waiting area, and then… just stood there for an hour and change, waiting for whatever port processes there were for the bus to complete. This took soooo long, but I recognized a good handful of the passengers by then, and had no connecting flight or train to catch anyway, so as long as I knew where everyone was it didn’t really matter to me. And on the bright side this allowed me to catch up with today’s blog all the way to this point in time.

I finally understood why there were so many passengers milling about in Nangang’s equivalent of this area when I visited it three days ago too. They’re sooooooo inefficient. The next ferry after us arrived about an hour and a half later, but our vehicles definitely took a little longer than that to process and release.

Lots and lots of people ate instant noodles, both on the ferry (from the snack shop) as well as here (which also had an attached snack shop), and there were hot water machines in both places to facilitate this, but I decided to hold off.

Finally at 1:30 pm or so, the bus arrived and we were allowed to board it again. I was glad to be on board and had another short nap here, until the beep beep beep from some phone thing another passenger was annoying watching out loud kept waking me up.

This was resolved an hour and a bit in when we reached some sort station on the northern side of Zhanjiang, and everyone who was going to a Zhanjiang location was unceremoniously bundled off the bus. I wasn’t the only one here who didn’t fully understand what was happening, since I could tell that some of the other people were also like But my destination is Zhanjiang SOUTH!” It was explained in a very brash manner (but this was the normal way they spoke, I surmised) that because Zhanjiang was only an intermediary stop for them, the bus was headed on to Wuchuan and the Zhanjiang passengers would be brought to their destination stations via a free company van. Well, actually two separate vans. Cool. Weird. I was assigned to one of them, a Ford minivan with manual transmission and a gear stick that brought back memories of Singapore taxis when I was young.

I had a great view as our insane driver, carrying his payload of 11-12 people and a bunch of luggage bags in his van, swerved in and out of traffic and around cars and honked his horn at people like he owned the road, to the tune of some Chinese instrumental music with lots of bass. It was kinda fun and definitely a very unique experience. He dropped people off at Zhanjiang West, then Zhanjiang North (which was southeast of Zhanjiang West — don’t ask), and then finally Zhanjiang South (which was southeast of Zhanjiang North). So yes, this “official” bus service did eventually kind of get me to Zhanjiang South as the ticket said.

From there, I took a Didi to my hotel, and finally arrived there at around 4:25 pm.

Hey look, an actual hotel! With an actual front desk!

Between their broken (and almost nonexistant) English, my own broken Chinese, and lots of gestures, they said my room was still under cleaning and would be about 10 minutes longer, and explained how the key card (needed to activate the lift) and the power card (for the electricity in the room) worked. And in the blink of an eye, I was in what seems to be the best room of my stay thus far.

This double bed room cost me about $194 CAD after discounts… total, for all 3 nights that I’ll be here, so that was a nice price point too. Apparently if I had paid $60 or so more total, I could have access to a triple room which came with gaming chairs and computers to play with too. But who would I play with? Tigey? Ha! He can’t dig his way out of a 3×3 Minesweeper grid with 9 hidden bombs. Please don’t let him read this. Ow.

Anyway, the weirdest thing about this room is that the actual toilet bowl is in a different, separate room from the rest of the bathroom. Like the door leading out of that toilet alcove goes into the main hall, next to the front door, and a doorway next to that leads into the rest of the bathroom. The room itself is very luxurious and comfy, the television actually works to receive local TV stations, the shower head is strong and there are three different bottles for body soap, shampoo, and conditioner, there are adequate power plugs on both sides of the bed, the ventilation and cooling is controlled wel, and everything is just… nice. And they have a fancy kettle.

Down on the second level there’s also a kitchen with paid breakfast and free late night porridge from 9:30 pm to 11:00 pm.

And a gym.

And a laundry room with complimentary laundry machines and dryers that I did not know existed. I thought this place had no laundry services at all, which I was going to be okay with because my stay here was a short one between other stays which had laundry.

It is shared though, so I’m not sure if it will be possible to really use it during peak hours. After surveying my new empire, I set out on a walk toward the nearby mall, passing by these cool-looking roadside stalls along the way. They’re halfway between stalls and actual shops, and I was tempted to eat here. I don’t repeat eat at places on trips though, so I decided to save it for another day maybe, since it was so near the hotel.

Instead I went to the mall, which was about 5 minutes away in the gentle drizzle.

This mall was called Dingsheng Plaza, or DSC (the C probably stands for chang 场). REIT mall but not as aggressively flashy and upscale as the big Haikou ones that I visited. The top two levels, as always, were dedicated to restaurants, and I went up there to get inundated by another pile of ephemeral menu flyers that I got to keep, just like back in Haikou’s Paradise Walk. Lovely. I spent far too much time waffling around in indecision again, before eventually settling for a pigeon restaurant, which Gemini was happy to tell me was a local specialty. I didn’t want to actually try the menu spotlight though, I mean, check out this brochure that I took a copy of and will eventually scan and upload to the Internet Archive.

The pigeon is taking an oil bath in the first panel and the top of the second panel, and there’s a cawing pigeon head visible in the bottom two pictures on the second panel… nope, that’s just nope. I did end up eating the one at the top of the fourth panel though, which was still pigeon, just not existential crisis pigeon.

That meal seemed to translate to their Signature Pigeon Gizzard Claypot Rice, and looked like this in person:

It took 20 minutes to arrive, but was pretty good. Very light ginger taste, but very easy to eat. I eventually ordered some veggies too:

That thing translated to blanched lettuce or something like that and it was fresh and crisp and tasty. The total cost of the meal was 65 yuan, or $13.03 CAD today, apparently we were slightly below the 1 CAD = 5 yuan mark. 39 for the pigeon rice, 23 for the veggies, and 3 for a flask of tea that I refused to touch after taking one cup of it, because it was my most vile arch enemy, monkfruit tea. There was lots more stuff that I wished that I could try, but I can only eat so much at once, even if I’ve been starving myself the entire day!

After the meal, I walked around the mall a bit more. In particular, I went down to visit the supermarket, immersing myself into the sights and smells there and also filching a sale flyer to take home with me as a prize.

This was a Lotus supermarket, and it was pretty great except that its tea section was also distressingly small. I’ve mentioned before that I love wandering foreign supermarkets and just seeing and smelling what they have on sale there. And occasionally finding things like this, although this picture was actually taken back at the convenience store at Beigang Port earlier while waiting for the bus to arrive to pick us up again after the ferry. Same sort of idea though. And I regret not trying this Lovesick Meat Floss now. Perhaps if I see it again.

Either way, I enjoyed my aromatic walk around here, before heading out of the mall, passing by the exhibition outside the mall which was now all lit up.

Doesn’t that lady look forlorn, as she searches for her one true love? Sorry lady, Tigey‘s taken. I went back to my room and hung around for a bit, taking a picture of the night life outside my window:

There were lots of honks, and occasional things that sounded like fireworks, through the late night, but I was pretty high up on the 11th floor and so it didn’t bother me too much. What did bother me was the late night porridge that I mentioned earlier. I had seen this advertised on their trip.com listing, and also in various places around the hotel:

But when I went downstairs, there were only a couple people there. Hm, weird, for a free food thing. They had baos:

Porridge:

And this peanut porridge:

And some pieces of bread and a number of condiments on the side.

The bread and condiments were actually good, but the porridge was horrid, vey watery and tasteless. I could see why no one was down there as well. I also retreated back to my room myself after sampling both porridges and the other stuff on offer, took a great shower, and then settled down to watch some TV and categorize my loot before sleep overtook me.

And now an English guide (or at least chronicled experience) for the Haikou to Zhanjiang crossing finally exists!