Thursday, January 27, 2011

Beijing to Xi'an

26th January

A busy few days but nothing much to report. We sorted a few loose ends, we managed to lighten our backpacks by about 10kilos by posting a box home so that should certainly take the weight of our shoulders * (shocking I know) * . We went into our local haunt we'd been in the other day and had a load of food for barely any money.  Goodbye Beijing, it was a great experience, the people are friendly if your lost but you will DIE if you get in their way when they attempt to queue, also the spitting it's not limited to the streets, bus floor, restaurant floor, etc it's all fair game in China!

Yesterday we boarded a 14 hour train journey to Xi'an and was it interesting, the train station was swamped with people returning home for the Chinese New Year. We got the 3rd class seats which were pretty much on par with the train to Galway, probably better as it had heaters and boiling water! The train was madness however they sold standing space so the carriage was mental but luckily we had a seat...going to the toilet proved an adventure it took about 10 minutes to travel a few metres to the jacks due to the amount of people you have to trample across, and they won't move for you! About 9 hours in the hard seat I started to feel it and wished that a cushion vendor would pass me..chance would be a fine thing! We were the only foreigners on our carraige and at times I felt like a monkey in the zoo, they were fascinated by us, even if you made eye contact with them they'd still stare at you.

We arrived at 7am or so, thankfully Tina had booked a place with a free pickup, we met an English couple that had been on the same train and could only get a standing ticket..and queued for 2.5 hours to get it....I realised then how lucky we were! 

Time for Bed!

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