Thursday, July 19, 2018
This morning we woke up early, and sadly packed up our things. We checked out of Yangshuo Mountain Retreat, and the taxi we had arranged through the hotel arrived on time at 6:30 am. We had a 10 am train to catch, but we had a couple of other stops to make first.
We drove to XingPing, where the train station is located, about 40 minutes away. First up, we wanted to stop at the famous 20 yuan note spot. It’s easy to find, and there’s a sign posted there confirming it’s the right place. There were a couple of other parties there taking photos when we arrived, so we waited a few minutes to get our own.
Next up, our driver took us to Laozhai Hill.
We wanted to do one hike to a high vantage point over karst mountains, and this one was conveniently located. It’s not for the faint of heart though; it’s 1169 or 1189 steps to the top (I can’t quite make it out in the picture), including one place where there’s just a ladder.
If we thought we were sweaty after hiking Moon Hill, we were even worse after this one. But the view from the top was worth it.
We asked our driver to give us an hour to complete the hike, and we were about 6-7 minutes late meeting him afterwards.
Finally, he dropped us off at the train station around 9 am. The XingPing train station is much smaller than any of the others we’d been to, and very easy to navigate. We bought some snacks and drinks while we waited.
(More egg tarts for me – I couldn’t get enough of them!)
We had purchased tickets for the full route from Liuzhou to Shenzhen, but we were getting on the train mid-route in XingPing at a point where the train number switched. (They don’t release tickets for segments of a route until the tickets for the full route have been released for a period of time, and we were worried that the full route could sell out and leave us stranded; not worth the risk when our itinerary had no flexibility built in.) Regardless of all that, everything ran smoothly.
The trip to Shenzhen was about 2.5 hours and although I had an engrossing book to read, I spent most of the trip looking out the window at mountains, villages, and farmers working in their fields.
Arriving in the border city of Shenzhen, we had a driver from Delight Car waiting for us (who turned out to be another good driver). Exiting the train station, the first thing we noticed was the abundance of English language signage that made easy work of finding our rendezvous point. We met up with our driver, loaded up our luggage, and set out for Hong Kong.
The border crossing was simple. We had our China departure cards saved from our flight in, and our driver gave us Hong Kong immigration cards to fill out. As we drove through the border, he passed those cards and our passports on to the border agents. I think we saw a total of three border agents and one health officer. All of them took a look in the van to match up passports to faces, but it was a quick process overall, and we didn’t have to get out of the vehicle. The health officer did take a temperature reading inside the car to check for infection, and we passed. China let us out, Hong Kong let us in, and we set out for Disney’s Explorers Lodge.
We arrived here around 2:30 pm and checked in. Our room was ready, and we were able to pick up our park tickets for tomorrow. Sadly, our park tickets are all Iron Man and Star Wars themed; no Mickey tickets to be had here. On the bright side, we were pleasantly surprised to be given three sets of Fastpasses since we are staying at the hotel for 3 nights – despite the fact that we only have one park day.
We dropped our luggage in our room and immediately headed downstairs to the quick service restaurant to get something to eat. Mallory kicked her Disney trip off with Mickey Waffles, I had an avocado chicken flatbread, Chad had spare ribs, and Liam had nachos. My flatbread was accompanied by a bowl of soup, as was Chad’s meal, which seemed like an odd side dish to serve in a tropical climate in July. It was really good though! Food is expensive here – my meal was 140 HKD or about $23 CDN. I also couldn’t resist getting a Cookie cupcake – Cookie being the new Duffy friend who was just introduced at Hong Kong Disneyland. It was another 70 HKD. Yegads! It was mango and caramel mousse flavoured, and also happened to have blueberries inside. It was also really good.
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering around all 3 Hong Kong Disneyland resorts to see the properties, check out the gift shops and restaurants, etc.
On the agenda for tomorrow: Hong Kong Disneyland!!
Cook Family Travels 