Lovely morning, rubbish afternoon

I left Guilin in the morning to take a bus and then a boat to the small town of Xingping. The boat along the Li river passes some of the best scenery in China (it’s even printed on the back of the 20 Yuan note). The ‘bamboo boat’ can take 4 passengers. The small boats in the photo are similar to the one I went on. They may have traditionally been made of bamboo but these ones looked more like they were made of plastic. All the way along the river the stunning karst mountains towered above. I saw two eagles gliding on the thermals but they were too far away to photograph.

When the boat arrived in Xingping there was an electrically powered golf cart to take passengers from the pier to the old town. That’s when my day went downhill because somewhere I lost my phone. I either left it on the golf cart or it was in my pocket and fell out or someone took it out without me realising. All it took was a moment of me not paying attention. I realised almost immediately that it was missing.

I tried going to the parking lot of the golf carts and asking at the ticket office. They let me look round the parked carts but they all looked the same and I had no idea what number the cart was. I went back to where I got off the golf cart and asked some of the stall holders if they’d seen it. One young woman came over who spoke a little English and once she’d told the others what had happened a small crowd gathered all discussing what to do. One person called the police. When they first said someone had called the police I didn’t expect them to do anything – after all I thought I’d just dropped the phone somewhere so it wasn’t a crime. I thought they’d say it was a waste of their time. I was told to sit at a nearby cafe and given some tea while waiting for the police. After about 20 minutes 3 officers turned up. An even larger crown gathered to watch. I think I provided an interesting diversion from the routine of the day! None of the officers spoke English but a woman working at a nearby cafe who spoke good English arrived to translate for me. One of the officers called my number which went straight to voicemail so someone had switched the phone off. After they established that I didn’t know the number of the cart and that no one had seen anything they said they’d look at the CCTV.

That surprised me. The town didn’t look like it would have CCTV, it’s small, the entrance to the old town where I lost my phone was a small alley and I hadn’t seen any cameras. So I found myself in the back of a Chinese police car with the translator being taken to the local police station! One officer wrote a very brief report of what happened while his colleagues looked for the video. They found it but it didn’t show anything useful. The footage covered the place the cart stopped but not after I walked into the old town. There was no sign that I’d dropped the phone or that it fell out of my pocket and was picked up by someone. So that was the end of the trail.


Annoying. I’d got very used to relying on maps on my phone for getting around. I’ll need to pick up paper maps when I arrive somewhere new now. And I don’t have an alarm clock any more! But the stallholders in the area and the women who translated for me were so kind.