Thursday, January 3, 2008

30th August: A choo-choo train and a wedding train.

Its time to leave western China behind us and head back to the east. This involves taking a 28 hour train trip along the south of China. We barely made the train as we stopped to get some beer to soften the long train journey. Again we were the height of attention as all the posh travelers take the planes and wouldn’t dare being stuck in a small cabin with 12 people. We of course were on a strict budget.

The smells in the train were terrible again as everyone in our carriage opened their pot noodles as the train took off. This did not bode well with the hangover. A new craze had also started. Eating hard boiled eggs in the pot noodle. As you can imagine it smelled even worse coming out than it did going in.

In our carriage full of strange people staring at us there was what could only be a newly wed couple whose honeymoon was this trip on the train. They spent most of the journey under the sheets tossing around and moaning. Not the nicest thing to be sleeping under.

On the good side of the trip were the views. We passed huge waterfalls, rolling hills, weird rock formations and hundreds of kids washing themselves in the sewers. Amazingly, it was the first time we had seen a paddy field in our month in China.

We cracked open the beers early but the conductor came around at 8pm and literally put everyone to bed. She was really annoyed with us because we couldn’t understand her and I got a bit worried when she jumped into my bed and pretended to sleep. Then I realized that she was telling us to go to sleep.
While bored on the train I decided to get rid of the rough and ready hunter/gather image:




And return to my boyish looks.

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