Chinese service & the Bangkok train - more similar than one might think

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008: We arrived back in China today, though i've been inhabiting a world full of uniquely China worries since Thursday.

We've flown into Shenzhen and need to get to Shanghai, thus timing our journey to perfectly coincide with more migrant worker chaos on the railways (just like then and then and then .).

On Thursday i finally realised that the National Day 7-day holiday starts this week, so i got on the phone to try to organise Shenzhen-Shanghai train tickets. Too late, i was told by two friends, the tickets for Monday will be long gone so you'll have to fly.

So i got onto a few Chinese discount airfare reservation sites. Infuriatingly, however, the website with the cheapest fare, the only one we could actually afford, appeared to be down. The main page, strangely enough, was working so i suspected it was a ploy to simply suck customers onto the site.

After about an hour wasted trying to navigate through to the promised fare, i tried the whole process again, from the start. This time it worked, and i got as far as to be staring at a "Reserve ticket" button. But when i clicked on it, nothing happened. In fact, it was quite clearly not linked to anywhere at all.

The "reservations hotline" was prominently advertised all over the website, though this fare was supposed to be a special cheap internet fare. Once again i suspected a desperate ploy and was proved wrong. I called up the "hot" line and a fellow answered. I explained to him the situation, principally that i wanted to reserve two of the affordable tickets i saw advertised on the website. "You can reserve them on the website. That's how you get that fare," he said. I reiterated that i had already tried that, and that's why i was calling etc. etc., at which point he went off into a diatribe that i didn't understand. So i suggested we communicate via email, he agreed, and i sent him the details of the fare i wanted.

An hour later after no reply i called the "hot" line again, and this time spoke to a young woman. I explained in my best "distressed" voice that her friend's inaction had greatly disappointed me and could i please book immediately. She replied that i could, but there was none of that cheap fare left, and i would have to pay RMB140 extra.

Here i encountered a problem that i had never imagined.

What were the passengers' names?, she asked.

I told her.

How do you write that?

I told her, but she stopped me at "A-N..."

"Which 'aey'?" she asked (all of this was in Chinese of course).

"Umm, A for Apple."

Silence. Then again:"Which 'ae'?"

"Oh, uh, anquan de A ('the A of anquan'),"

A pause, then, "Is that the A of ABC?" she asked.

"Right, right."

"And then?" she asked, still in Chinese - amazingly there actually is something to be learned from the movie "Dude Where's my Car?"

"N"

"Which 'emn'?" came the voice down the line, like the new Metallica album (and, apparently, 2000s music in general - ht titcho) fuzzy at the points where there should be critical and subtle difference. If i sounded the same to her, i could understand why she had to ask.

"Uhhh, the N of November...uhhh, the N of 'nvshi'(lady)."

Silence.

"Do you bright-clear?"

No

"Okay, it's ABCDEFGHIJKLMN de N ('the N of ABCDEFGHIJKLMN')."

She gave up. She told me to put our names in an email, which i sent immediately.

Thank you. So how would i like to pay for that?, she asked via email.

Can i come in on the 29th when i get to Shenzhen?

Yes, but she 'feared' they wouldn't have that price any more.

Could i pay by credit card?

"We will help you keep the fare to the best of our ability."

"Ai!." i replied, "Thanks, but we're students, we can't afford any unexpected thousands of yuan. We need a confirmed reservation. Do you have a secure server that i can pay by credit card on?"

"Let us help you."

"Thanks, but can you send me some kind of documentation of this reservation? Your name?"

"I'm sorry, i want to rest. My name is Ms Bu. Thankyou."

So what the fuck is the point of this "hot" line supposed to be? You can't use the web to pay, and you have to actually be in Shenzhen already to buy the ticket! Not to mention the uniquely Chinese 'let-him-work-it-out-at-the-time' service ethos. For fuck's sake. This whole process took about 6 hourss and i happened to be wracked with fever.

So it was to my great pleasure, therefore, when i discovered the "no seat" tickets on the Shanghai train, enabling us to blatantly stand them up. Unsurprisingly, however, this afternoon i found a message in my inbox from yesterday, stating that they in fact could not help me at all. The only surprise was that they bothered to inform me.

Decidedly more reliable was the Bangkok train we rode to get to the airport. It was an effective scheme that got us 9/10 of the way there for 6 baht each. It was full of middle-aged poor ladies who get on at various tiny markets. The train barely stops for them; sometimes the driver just slows down to walking pace and opens the doors and they get on while it continues moving. They sit on the floor in giant groups, gossping (or so it appears) loudly, carrying their unsold meagre wares home in supermarket baskets. The train's reliability was rather a mystery, though. It was one of those trains that just looks like a normal carriage but can move itself, and i spent the journey standing at the front of the train in front of the hole where it can link up as part of another train, seeing almost exactly what the driver sees.

Just near the station the eastern line branches off on its own, down a single track, an alleyway for trains that is no wider than the train itself. The slums on both sides are built out to within a few inches of the train windows, and the train-alley is used far less by trains than by people and animals. It's covered in rubbish. Through the whole inner-Bangkok area the line is in unbelievably bad condition.
The train jolts over large gaps, swaying side-to-side. This is particularly alarming
when you notice that the narrow-gauge track is perhaps only a quarter as wide as the train itself. Parts of the track are almost buried beneath sand around construction sites, and whenever the train switches tracks the driver must slow to a walking pace to get through the points. Poverty clings to the train line for many miles, in devastating contrast with the glassy Suvarnabhum airport. This was the parting gift of bejewelled Bangkok, as memorable for me as the Klong boats

So now we're in Shenzhen; tomorrow we ride the big, stable, China train to Shanghai, and our tickets are of the "no seat" type. Whether that means "no seat for you", or just "no allocated seats", we've yet to discover, but what's certain is we'll have 18 hours to think it over, and a carriageful of worker-peasants to talk it over with.