Getting to Guangzhou

Update Note: I've made a few minor edits to correct errors made from attempting to type all of this on my tablet.

Greetings from the "Grand Hotel" in Guangzhou, China! We made it with plenty of time to spare to get to the Expo we're heading to (starts on Monday). Getting here was 30+ hours of seemingly-nonstop travel, so I'll break down the highlights:

Thursday Night into Friday Morning

Most importantly, I did not sleep at all Thursday night (pulled an all-nighter!)... I'm getting waaaaay too old for doing that. We spent time in the early morning last-minute panic-packing before taking an Uber to the airport near D.C. (DCA).

Friday Morning

Our flight from D.C. to Toronto was on-time and thankfully uneventful! Our flight landed at the terminal as far away as humanly possible from the main terminal in Toronto (we got to take stairs off the plane and walk across the tarmac!).

Once we were finally in the main terminal, I did the most important thing anyone can do in Toronto: Got some Timmy's coffee.

The Eternal Flight

I've been on multiple long-haul flights before, but this one somehow felt worse because of how small the seats have become. We were given a 787-9 "Dreamliner" for the flight from Toronto to Seoul, South Korea, but they had 9 (nine!) seats in each row. This meant I had approximately 2 inches of leg space. I foolishly thought I would be able to start writing for this blog on the airplane. Instead, I watched a few movies that I had considered watching but didn't feel like spending any real money on (Alien: Romulus, Baby Driver). The only thing I really liked in the Alien movie was the concept of the girl's dead father "living on" in the synthetic human as her "brother" (Andy). Everything else about the movie felt repetitive from previous films (gee, I wonder what happens when a face hugger is on your face for a moment?)

Incheon Airport Saturday Night

We had only an hour layover in Seoul, so we had to dash across the terminal to make it to our next flight – but not before stopping at the Duty Free store for cosmetic stuff!

I did manage to capture the most important photo possible of Incheon Airport:

Flight from Korea to Hong Kong

My expectations were really high flying into Hong Kong. I thought you would be able to see the endless skyscrapers and of the impressive skyline as the plane landed. Nope. Instead, it was foggy and all I saw was the reflection of a few lights on the water as we landed. As it was getting late, there weren't many people at the airport and getting our luggage was a breeze.

I found it amusing they had a display showing the things you are NOT allowed to bring into Hong Kong.

Going from Hong Kong to Shenzhen

My wife had told me there is a border still between Hong Kong and Shenzhen where you have to go through security, so I was curious to see what it looked like. We booked a taxi van from Hong Kong Airport that I assumed would take us to downtown Shenzhen. We drove for maybe 30 minutes until we go to a security checkpoint (looked a lot like a toll plaza). We had to roll down our windows and hand our passports to a security guard who checked everyone in the van (we didn't have to get out of the van). Once past that, I assumed we would be taking one of those cool bridges where you go from driving on the left side of the road (British style) to the right side of the road (American/Chinese style). Nope. Instead, the van pulled up to a massive building that said something like "Border Crossing Hall" that was essentially a large hall where you went through airport-style security. We had to fill out entrance forms and that was where we had our passports stamped for entering China. While I was waiting in line (and yes, there was a line at 1:00 AM), I noticed groups of people casually walking through and putting their ID cards on a scanner that let them go through (I'm assuming there are tons of people who work/live between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and I'm also assuming they are annoyed at this point that they still have to go through a security checkpoint every time).

The Train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou

We booked an Uber-equivalent (I can't remember the name of the app here) to get from the Shenzhen border to the "Shenzhenbei" (Shenzhen North) train station. My wife was shocked when we got there that NOTHING was open. This was at 1:30 AM. We had hoped? that something like McDonalds or Starbucks might be open, but no. There wasn't even really a place to sit down outside, so we kind of wandered around the outside of the train station until we finally found a tea restaurant that was open and had outdoor seating.

As I was pretty dehydrated at this point, I found a vending machine and found they had a drink called Alien Energy looked promising:

Bullet Train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou

Like many of the train stations I've seen in China, the Shenzhen North Train Station is stunning. It's hard to explain how large these buildings are.

Words cannot describe how much my feet and legs hurt by this point. We finally got on the bullet train, which was a quick 20 minutes? to get to Guangzhou. I don't think we managed to get up to top speed as Shenzhen and Guangzhou are next to each other.

We took another taxi from Guangzhou to our first hotel (more on this later), took a nap, and then went out for dinner with my wife's friends. I have to wrap this up now as we're getting ready to go to the Expo (the main reason we're here). I'll attempt to write more later, time permitting.