Are We There Yet?

Talk about adventure.  We had to get all that luggage from the Hong Kong hotel to the Huizhou Hotel…doesn’t sound too complicated….right?  Well problem #1: the Hong Kong driver can’t cross the border into China and the Huizhou driver can’t cross the border into Hong Kong.  Which led us to Plan #1 take a taxi to the border, walk through customs then meet the driver on the other side…again…simple.  Which brings us to problem #2: We found out from the lady at the hotel that a driver can’t take us to the border and we would have to take the train, and problem #3: The train station wasn’t close.  Plan #2: Take a Taxi from the hotel to the train station and take the train to the border crossing then meet the driver.  Problem #4:

This was the taxi that took us to the hotel in Hong Kong

Adam called one of his coworkers that lives in Hong Kong to get his advice and he offered to take the trip with us and help with the luggage…THANK GOODNESS!  I felt bad at first and thought we could do it on our own…but Adam was right to worry!  We met YC at the train station, had a guy take our luggage on a cart to the inside of the train station…but he couldn’t help us beyond the ticket point. 

Think about it…two people that stand out anyway with all that luggage on the day that everyone goes back to work after Chinese New Year.  YC helped us buy tickets to the right destination (sigh of relief) and helped us find the right train (there were 2 trains the same color going to 2 different border crossings).  Once we were on the train all we had to do was make sure the bags didn’t roll away as the train shook.  Getting from the train through customs was a different story.  It wasn’t like any airport customs I have ever been to.  We had to walk pretty far before we got to the point where we show our passport… walk further to check your recent health history…walk more to the place where you put all your luggage through an x-ray machine…walk again to get your temperature taken…walk some more to turn in your entry paper…keep going where we met the driver!  He held up this sign…

Thank goodness he had a van! 
At this point we were totally overwhelmed and Adam was soaked with sweat! 

The long trip to Huizhou from the border was exactly what we needed!

I’m still not sure but I think our driver got lost…he kept stopping in the middle of the road (stopping traffic) to talk to people in a frustrated manor.  
WE MADE IT!