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Onto Xian
Entry 33 of 44 | show all | print this entry |
To Xian
Well I thought Dali was over when I posted the last blog entry but it the best night was yet to come...I just went to do my emails and have some tea and dropped Sami and Nicola a txt to say I was in the Tibetan café. They came and joined and I had some nice stew and a couple of beers. Within an hour we were having a laugh with a local ex policeman and his wife and their niece. There was great hilarity focused around the fact that we had body hair and this man didn't (see photo). I never actually thought someone would be calling me monkey monkey!! In the end Sami and Nicola went home and I decided to stay out (risking overstepping the 11pm curfew). And overstep it I did. I ended up in a variety of little pubs with Ou Yang the niece. Meeting some interesting characters, including a German piss head who just seemed to come to these places and stay for a few months...I later heard from one of the French girls that they has passed them on their way to the bus in the morning that he was still sat drinking beer on his own at 8am!! So despite Ou Yang's assurances that I could just knock on the door of the guesthouse; when I did at 4am there was nothing stirring except their Alsatian dog going berserk...in the end I had to text Nicola who fortunately woke up and woke the woman to let me in...how guilty did I feel. Ou Yang had to sleep in my room too as it turned out her uncle actually stayed 10km away and she had no way of getting home; found all this a little bit forward for a shy Chinese woman but she was a writer for the Chinese equivalent of the Lonely Planet so had been out and about a bit for a Chinese girl. Unfortunately I only had to sleep a couple of hours and then it was time for me to get my skates on and get the bus to Kunming to begin the journey from hell: 6 hours on a bus, 5 hours hanging around in Kunming and then 36 hours on the train....
The bus was all went smoothly, except I was too tired read and too tired to sleep (I can be funny at times) and I arrived in Kunming bang on time. It was a simple walk to the station which all looked modern etc. So I got in line for a ticket and when I got the front (for some strange reason the Chinese people actually did queue here) presented the Chinese I had written down saying that I wanted a lower bunk soft sleeper to Xian. She typed some stuff into the computer and then shouted over another girl who spoke English who told me that there were no sleepers available today and that there were only standing seats left did I want to go on the next day instead...I thought for a minute but I had told Dave would be there so had to take the standing ticket....walking away I started to think about what hell on earth might be like and imagined that it could probably be quite close to 36 hours sitting on ones backpack outside the stinking toilets on a Chinese train...So, I wandered around town for the next 3 hours going into tour agents asking if they could get me a train ticket but all of them said they could only be got at the train station but that I could fly for a hundred quid. I agonized about this but eventually consoled myself that I was standing in cattle class and that once I got on the train I might be able to bribe the conductor to let me into a sleeper berth. On my way back to the station I passed a posh hotel that had a ticket which said train tickets available so I bobbed in. low and behold when I gave her my bit of paper she said soft sleeper tickets were available. However, once I gave her my standing ticket hoping she might be able to exchange it she refused to sell me a ticket even though I indicated that I would be willing to rip that ticket up and throw it in the bin. I think she was just trying to tell me she couldn't exchange it but that I would be able to in the station but I didn't care about exchanging my 10 quid ticket I wanted a bed on the train. So I just stood there trying to communicate this until a monk came up...he spoke some English and understood the problem so he grabbed me by the hand and we went to the train station. Now then, a monk is the man to be heading to the train station with as monks don't have to queue anywhere. We walked straight to the front of every counter till he found the right one and low and behold sleeper tickets were suddenly available...I can only imagine that a new batch of tickets had been released or something as all I had to do was pay another 20 quid and hey presto I was cooking with gas.
So I went and bought myself a big bag of food and got on the train. The cabins were nice with 4 beds and I can't say the toilets were too bad. The best thing about Chinese trains is the constant availability of hot water meaning that you can drink and endless supply of tea and eat as many instant noodle soups as you like. The 1st night I was just shattered so I just ate some noodle soup with duck meat (the Chinese are mad for this vacuum packed preserved meat...I have no idea what is in it to preserve it but it tastes good) and then went to sleep. The Chinese people weren't too friendly with me that 1st night but after 2 had gone the next day the young guy who was opposite me on the top bunk really started to open up...well if opening up is possible when neither of us spoke each others lingo. He had no book or anything so I was his only route to entertainment. We looked at maps together, he went through all my photos on my Ipod (why on earth did I leave pictures there of Liam dressed up they way he does at times?!?!?), we texted each other on our phones. I did find it odd that the Chinese people kept closing the door on our cabin meaning I could only see half the view and didn't get to see people and staff (selling everything from food to wind up torches to DVD players) walking up and down the carriage but I guess they had paid extra for soft sleeper and were getting their money's worth (as opposed to hard sleeper where you have six beds stacked up and no door).
At one point some people who spoke some English got on our carriage (I was the only western person I saw on the train the whole trip). They had a really interesting story; they had been visiting a village on behalf of the government that was about to be flooded by a dam and had quite obviously been stuck by how horrible this was for the villagers. Again, they were willing to talk politics concerning the price of progress and how backward the countryside was. This was totally different to my last visit to china 10 years ago when people didn't want to talk at all about anything to do with their country for fear of people listening. This country is moving fast. The train journey was mostly through beautiful countryside, nearly every inch of which is cultivated, hugging mountainsides and going through tunnels (you suddenly realize who is backward when you think of the procrastinations about building a new channel tunnel railway link back home when you go on a 2000km journey here with 100's of miles of tunnels etc). Whenever you hit a town or city you can see the development of this country in action. There is construction everywhere you look. And, unlike the old concrete structures of the communist years, most of the buildings are pretty with adventurous architecture. I have no idea what all these construction workers will do when this growth phase ends.
At one point the police came on board and checked everyone's identity cards and gave my little mate's bag a thorough going over. They gave my passport a cursory going over but weren't interested in my bag at all. I have no idea what they were checking for and couldn't communicate the question to my mate..my next mission is to buy a Chinese phrase book as I would love to communicate more and can actually see the benefits in learning some mandarin long term.
The second nights sleep wasn't quite as good as the 1st due to some guy getting in our cabin at midnight (I had gone to sleep at 8), turning the lights on and shouting down his mobile phone for 10 minutes. We were all woke up at 4.30 by the conductor, just enough time to brush teeth and make some tea before arriving in Xian.
The walk from the train station to the hostel took about an hour but even though I was carrying my backpack I do like to see a city in the morning before it's awake. The hostel Dave was in was amazing. It's actually on the 12th floor of an office building but is all new and had internet, Jacuzzi, coffee shop with books, bar etc. For a 2 bed dorm (sleeping on bunk beds is cool) we paid 3 quid or so each. It was owned by an American and really set my mind racing as to whether there is anything like this in Manchester as it would be a well cool little business (must by a UK Lonely Planet when I get home and see what exists in the UK!!).
Photos
P.S. If anyone wants removing or adding to the emails telling when a new blog comes out please let me now.
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