Travelling with a friend

Since a few days I travel with my friend JF and so far it’s as been quite interesting. First of all we know each other for over 15 years and been studying computer togetter. He works in Shanghai since a year and a half so he’s supposed to know some Chinese. We quickly discover in Hangzhou, the first city on our trip, that his chinese was not so usefull outside of Shanghai.

When we arrived a the train station we had some kind of directions to get to the guesthouse, and as good traveller we had a backup plan (another youth hostel address & phone number). We had to get off the bus at Hangzhou Mansion, thing is there’s no english anywhere and how the hell are we supposed to say Mansion in Chinese? Let’s try to tell then the street where we want to go. We finally manage to get at the right street and go to the given address but no guest house. Now JF is starting to panic a little bit, I guess he don’t have the Hitch Hicker’s guide to the Galaxy and the comforting DON’T PANIC caption. So I tell him : Dude, you have a cell phone, call the 2nd guesthouse and give the phone to the taxi driver. Well, 8 Yuan (1$), 13 minutes later we’re chicking in at the IYH. He had a nice happy smile! It turns out that he missprounce the name of the street so we where on Zhaogong RD instead of Jiaogong Rd, it’s sound almost the same…

I also took him on his first 25 hours train ride to Xiamen. We had a few games of chess where I wacked him at first but the little bugger started to use my tricks and beats me a few time. As most people his first night on the train he didn’t sleept much, but I slept like a baby. He chinese helped us a lot in the restaurant… witch his a very important part of the travelling life!

Even if I’m not use to travel with other people I’m very happy to travel with him at the moment! We love Xiamen and might stay here a few more days before heading to Chaozhou and Shenzen.