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Published: February 8th 2007
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Pathetic?
Me in bed with 101 deg fever and tissues. The last overnight train ride we took in China was the worst of all. Our beds were right at the end of the car on the same wall as the door. All night long the ticket checker went in and out through that door and every time he went through he slammed the door. Mind you this door doesn't close on its own, if you didn't shut it, it would just stay wide open, and even at 3am, with an entire car of about 200 people sleeping, this a-hole was slamming it with all the effort of an angry teenager. It wasn't even the noise that was so bad, it was the vibrations that shook our beds at least every 30 minutes throughout the whole night. Needless to say I didn't sleep a wink, it was more like torture. When we finally arrived the guy didn't wake us up until we were already at the station and we had to rush to gather all our stuff, cause we'd actually arrived early. I almost forgot my scarf on the pillow, but remembered and jumped back onto the train at the last second. When we got off it was about 6:30am and luckily
Tineneman Square
I guess thats where it all went down. our hotel wasn't far. The temperature was probably around -17 deg Celsius and I knew something was wrong when I was actually hot. We checked in and I layed down with a fever of a little over 101 deg Fahrenheit. It was bad.
We relaxed for a couple hours and were supposed to take a tour that day out to some caves and a hanging monastery, but in my condition I wasn't going anywhere. Aaron decided to do the tour without me and I could just rest. I had a sore throat and black boogers, like little pieces of coal coming out of my nose, it was kinda like you just wiped off the bottom of your shoe. Healthy... I just rolled around in bed all day until Aaron came back and I sent him out for a sprite and some food. He did a great job of taking care of me and arranged everything so that we would have a comfortable train ride the next day to Beijing.
We had a soft sleeper almost all to ourselves for our last train ride in China which was only like 5 hours. I slept almost the entire way and it was good. In Beijing we had a guy picking us up at the station and we got a taxi through the big city to the hotel. Our hotel wasn't in the Lonely Planet, but our friends from Australia were going to stay there and we'd been recommended it by the Canadian we met in Xi'an too. It was a nice enough place for me to start recovery and I spent the last two days in China in bed. We wanted to get a taxi out to the great wall but our hotel was trying to rip us off, and charge us almost double what it was listed as in LP, so we gave up and decided to just throw in the towel in China. I still can't believe we went that far and didn't see the great wall! Aaron got to wander around the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square while I slept, so that was good at least. On our last morning my fever was gone and I really wanted to see Mao. Isn't Mao dead? you might say... yes, but his body is on display right in the middle of Tienanmen Square. We went as early as we could and waited in the huge line with probably more than a thousand people before it even opened. It was the weirdest thing, all these people bought flowers and bowed to the Mao statue. You couldn't take photos or anything. We were basically ushered in this huge line right through the room where Mao layed. There he was in a glass case filled with something, maybe formaldehyde. You walk in an look right up the man's nose. Its so eerie. And everyone around you are these Chinese people with this great respect and honor for this man that killed millions of them. The official ruling on Mao is that he was 30% wrong and 70% right!!??! This revered ruler is getting a C- and he's looked up to as a god! I suppose that explains a lot.
We left Tienanmen Square and went to the airport and escaped China, air travel never felt so good. We were then on to Japan.
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