Since traveling to China already crossed my mind, I can’t get out of picturing it till I finally bought the return tickets! BUT, the problem was, I bought the ticket to (and from) Guangzhou! And, I just realized that Guangzhou is FAR AWAY from any destination I pictured about. Really wanted to go to Beijing, was already dreaming about going to Great Wall, otherwise, the distance itself was about 2.133 km, 23 hours ride by train. Flight tickets were double expensive than our return ticket from Jakarta. So, how? In this post, I wanna tell you that nothing is impossible...IF YOU ARE CRAZY ENOUGH. Here is my itinerary (in recap) for going to my dream destinations from Guangzhou.

Day 1: Arrived at Guangzhou at 2 am. Took asleep and planned to stroll around Guangzhou in the morning. Turned out, sleeping is all that we need!! Just wake up at 11 pm, getting ready and went to Temple of Six Tree Banyan. Not far from the temple, accidentally we were crossing the bazaar street, you can buy some stuff like Chinese tea and their pretty ceramics.

Day 2: Was planning to wake up at the earlier morning, like 5 or 5.30 am, to go to Guilin. But again, we were all tired and we slept till the 8!!! And guess what? We missed our train. Already booked it for the 8am ride, turned out we just woke up at the same time.
Therefore, we bought the tickets again and continued our journey to Guilin, to a small town called Yangshuo to be exact. We arrived at 3 pm at Yangshuo train station, continued to ride the bus, and arrived at 4pm at the central bus station of Yangshuo. We went to Yulong River straight away with our carrier bag on us. The operational of Yulong River will be closed in the near time, so we decided to rent Tuktuk from the station to the river. 

We went to the hostel after that, stayed at Yangshuo Sudder Street Guesthouse, strolled around the city with a bicycle, looking for the dinner.

Day 3: We woke up very early, to feel the ambiance of Yangshuo in the morning. Also, we need to check out any sooner because we wanted to move to another city. Yes, that’s why I call this trip as a “Genie itinerary”. We were just moving away from one city to another in the counting of hours!

We took a taxi from the hostel to Yangshuo Bus Station. After that, we continued the ride with another bus to go to Guilin Railway Station. From Guilin Railway station, we took the fast train we booked before, it was 3 hours ride heading to Changsa since the train will stop there and we will transit for two hours. From Changsa, we were moving to Beijing by train, slow train exactly. Spent 16 hours on the train, just to go to Beijing City!

Day 4: Finally arrived in Beijing at 9 am! It was such a long journey, but because we are moving from one ride to another, we didn’t feel that bored, only when 16 hours long on the train. Yas, 16 hours. On that day, we planned to go to Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, after checking in to the hotel. Btw, our hotel was in Wangfujing, it’s a good and very strategist area! You can only by walk to get to the shopping center, whether it’s mall or bazaar, and it was very near to Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square too. We're planning to get there at noon, BUT WE FELL ASLEEP AGAIN. It’s the third time we changed our itinerary just because we were sleeping. The conclusion was: we just simply were tired...

To kill the time, we went to Miniso (seriously!) near our hotel, bought some cute things. And we strolled around Wangfujing main street, there were some people dancing in front of the church following the music. And like the locals, we danced too! Although it was tiring day, we were feeling so happy at that time.

Day 5: ANOTHER LONG JOURNEY AWAITED US. We wanted to go to The Great Wall of China, but from what side? That was three option to get to the great wall, but the most authentic was in Simatai Great Wall. Nonetheless, Simatai was the farthest one, located 120km from the city. We took variances of public transportation. The city bus, subway, transit to another subway, riding an express bus from the station, switching to another bus, and it took around 3-4 hours to get there. The entrance was in Gubei Water Town. And yea finally made it to Great Wall. From Simatai, we took the bus straight away to go back to the city, and went to Donghuamen Night Market. When we were looking for bus halte to go back to the hotel, tuned out it’s just a walk away from the main street we strolled around last night, and we walked our foot like a lot on that day.

Day 6: Went to Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, it was near the Donghuamen so we came back to the bazaar again after that. Checked out the hotel and go to the train station AGAIN to go back to Guangzhou.

Day 7: Still on the train.....

On the train..

Eat antimo

Sleep..

Sleep again

Eat

Repeat

Watching Netflix

Going to another episodes, another film..

Editing photo

Talk to the strangers

Laughing with the locals

Struggling again with language barrier

Ask it ask that
In the total, it was 23 hours of the ride! The longest ride I’ve ever been. Can you imagine how did it feel to get to a train for 23 hours nonstop?!?! In China?! Where the sanitation was quite dirty?!?! But you also have to take a pee, right?!?! Of course not forgetting to cleanse the face, at least? That’s how we felt for the long ride on our last day in China. And finally, we arrived at 5 pm on the next day. Straight away to Guangzhou Airport after going to HC Inn first to pick our luggage we left there, and go to Jia Mei hotel to meet our (supposed to be) teammate, we planned to go to Guilin together but they couldn’t make it due to the engine problem with their plane. It was our last day in China, our plane take-off to Malaysia at 2am. Time to say goodbye to China!

That’s a wrap about my itinerary! Gosh..writing about it and imagining it again already makes me tired, can’t believe WE DID IT! Thanks to my crazy traveling partner, for accompanying this crazy idea to explore China mainland right to the city of Beijing!

I think that's all to sum up my itinerary and budget to explore China mainland, if there is any question, feel free to contact me here. Hope it helps, and thanks for reading!

Every good wish,

@wulandarirobyanti