Once Upon a Train Ride

Once upon a two day train trek,
I wrote a small tale to tell.
Sit back and listen as the story unfolds,
of our true train adventure from "hell".

A flight was just too much money.
There was no road to follow by car.
A train was the very last option
for the distance to travel was far.

Shanghai was our next destination.
Two days by train it would be.
"Let's do it," I said and our tickets we bought
The decision? A mistake I'd soon see.

Fourty whole hours to wistfully waste
as we perch on hard planks of wood.
Valium would be my first drug of choice,
though Prozac would also be good!!

We have books to read for hours on end
and journals to write down our dreams,
windows to watch the view speed on past
(though it all looks the same it seems.)

There's pot noodles to slurp for dinner tonight
or tuna and fruit to eat.
There's even some rice and spare seeds on the floor
as well as some stuck on my feet.

Sleeping would be a wonderful thrill
if our bunk mates would ever shut up,
but they giggle and yack and twitter and screech
Good God, make this train hurry up!!

Our carriage boss is napping again.
The sloth should be cleaning instead.
The floor is so littered with mud, grub, and trash
that I'm afraid to step out of my bed.

Lights out in a mere five minutes to come
though music still blares down the isle.
Thirty two hours to tick tock on by
as we count down each slow, lonely mile

Day two begins with a thump on my feet
and I sleepily open one eye.
Our bunk mates are lounging at the end my bed
"Another long day, " Cara moans with a sigh.

Bottom bunk was surely a poor choice to make.
We have "new friends" for most of the day.
They talk and they eat and they smoke and they spit
all while sitting six inches away.

Green tea and mugs are great things to have.
(We're on our sixth cup right now.)
We could go for ten if we really get bored
but, Dear Lord, those bathrooms are foul!!!

A card game is fierce at the foot of my bed.
Half the carriage has come to observe.
The games been on for near five hours now
and it's getting on my very last nerve.

My book is all done and writings a bore.
The landscape outside is just stark.
The IPOD was fun but it's run out of juice.
"It's an adventure" is Cara's remark. (She sounds like my dad!)

The card game goes on, the smoking gets worse.
The floor is a sickening sight.
The toilets don't flush, the faucets are broke,
The Sloth is still slacking tonight.

Twelve hours to go till Shanghai appears,
we just have to sleep a bit more.
Close tight our eyes and think happy thoughts
and try not to hear those who snore.

Day three arrived while I lay in the dark.
Our bunk mates are moving about.
Someone sat on my leg, something fell on my head.
"Go back to sleep," I wanted to shout!!

I woke Cara up from her deep, comfy sleep.
"Come on doll, it's time to get packed."
And the Sloth came along to give us a yell......
(it's high time that old guy gets sacked.)

We packed up our bags and slipped on our shoes
as into Shanghai we arrived
Gave our mates a goodbye, then finally cried.
"Yahoo - the trip we survived!!"

On the Road Again

There are numerous things to do on a 45 hour train ride, one being writing silly poems that don't rhyme properly. On the other hand, I did get a couple of chuckles out of Cara as I read her my work in progress from time to time. We also compiled a rather long list of other semi-entertaining activities to fill some of the duller moments. A few of my favorites include: counting the number of telephone poles passing by our window, organizing a relay race with other train patrons using a banana as a baton, paying for our 500 Yuan train ride by offering shoulder massages to our neighbors, and creating our own rock band using only chopsticks are musical intruments. I'll let you be the one to guess which ones we actually put into action!

I embellished of course. The train ride wasn't that bad, kind of like pulling teeth at the dentist!! Kidding aside, the two days actually passed quite quickly and pleasantly though we did have plenty of time to stare out the window and twiddle our thumbs. True, our bunk mates were not eager to stay in their upper bunks (the ones with no head room) and seemed to have no problem with joining us on our more expensive, more comfortable, and certainly more roomy bottom beds. They were friendly about their intrusions and only semi-perched on the outer edges of our beds, being careful about not sitting on any of our possessions and/or body parts. Seeing our distress with having strange bed companions, the sweet ladies began bribing us with candies and oranges (which worked of course!). We stopped glaring at them and curled up in the corner, allowing them free roam of our precious, well made and clean beds. Our four charming cronies weren't the problem.....it was the dozen or so others that claimed our territory as their own. We seemed to pick the lucky lottery draw for most popular carriage hostesses. Whereas in other areas of the train, people actually slept, read, or did other quiet, non-noisy things to occupy their time and to not disturb their fellow passengers, we lucked out. Rather the opposite occured as Cara and I had a large crowd coming and going within the squished, sixteen inch space of our bunk section. Most of our visitors gathered to watch the never ending card game taking place at the end our beds, a monotonous game that lasted the entirety of two days, give or take a few brief hours when the weary players finally crawled upstairs to rest before doing the whole shabang again the next day.

While I truly enjoyed having a mass of gawkers huddled on top of my blankets and was thoroughly entertained by the constant procession of musical chair contestants who took their turn sitting on my feet, I was only slightly disturbed by the fact that none of them knew how to use their inside library voices. I think Cara and I both had a two day headache from their constant yelling and insane chatter. We certainly had a comprehensive mixture of card players who joined the game from time to time. In one afternoon, I had a fourteen year old boy, a ninety year old lady, a father and his two year old daughter, and a pair of young, giggling girls who each took their turn at a hand of cards. My favorite was the loud, young chap with the constant leg twitch. For three looooong hours, my bed shook by his ceaseless, nervous girations. I tried to read my book but the bunks were vibrating so much that I finally had to put my very interesting novel away. Instead, I passed the time staring at the back of his head, hoping he could feel the callous thoughts I was trying to send his way.......

I wasn't exaggerating about the gold star potential of our carriage boss. Perhaps it was his first day on the job but I won't be reccommending him for any promotions in the near future. Unfortunately, he was not graced with good graces and charm either. Putting in kindly, he resembled an ex-convict with is long greasy hair, receeding hairline, mismatched clothes, a jacket that bordered on threadbare and some questionable, glazed over eyes which assumingly came from sharing the ganja pipes in the cooridor with the other equally glazed eyed passengers. He swept a grand total of twice, both during the nightime leaving us the entire day to tiptoe around discarded orange rinds, forgotten noodles, and spit out sunflower seeds. As with all places in China, nobody heeded the no smoking signs posted everywhere and our escaped jail bird wasn't puttting too much effort forth into saving the lungs of his fellow Chinamen. Since there was no ventilation in our carriages, any type of smoke was highly toxic and clogged what little air we had flowing through the cabin. Not wanting to further blacken our already polluted, second hand smoke filled ungs (spend one day in China and you'll see what I mean), Cara and I took it upon ourselves to be the patrolmen on board. More than once we received a startled stare after tapping on a passenger's shoulder, smiling sweetly and then vividly motioning for him to kindly put out his cigarette. Most people found it tremendously amusing to watch our antics as we searched for the offenders in our car and, more often than not, we received a smile and laugh from the person we harassed. All of them weren't so kind. Cara almost grabbed a dangling ciggarete from one disagreeable man's mouth, but now knowing the social standards for attacking woman in China, she refrained. We let that one get passed our surveillance.

As usual, eating time as our favorite part of the day, if only because we were able to savor our food and waste more minutes on our slowly moving clock. Whenever meal time rolled around, Cara would get an excited little grin on her face as she rooted through her bag of treats. She resembled a young girl pouring through her Easter basket but I'm sure I had the same wide eyed, amused expresssion. I don't know why we got so much pleasure in searching through our grocery store food bags. We knew exactly what was inside. Perhaps we thought something new and exciting would suddenly appear at the bottom..."oh look, a Snickers, I wonder where that came from?" As always, we had pot noodles, plenty of bananas, bread rolls, peanut butter, apples and oranges, peanuts (the ones in shells take longer to eat!) and other odds and ends. I voted not to try the train food for once although Cara gave in to tempation one night. She wound up throwing most of it away as it resembled something that our carriage boss had swept off the floor a mere ten minutes previous.

Into Shanghai we Rolled

Shanghai was cold. Not the "Gee, it's a bit

A Chinese version of a Kebab cooker

chilly out here. I might grab my scarf," type of weather. It was a "nope, absolutely not, I don't care how hungry I am. I am NOT stepping one toe outside!" After the storybook weather of the Yunnan Province where we had clear blue skies and tshirt spring breezes for many of the afternoons, this was an unwelcome change. We once again brought out the scarves, mittens, and thermals and became rosy cheeked travellers as we feared the bitter outdoors. One afternoon was all it took to see many of the sights and we were left with a remaining two days to find something to do in the streets of windy Shanghai.......and what do girls do when they are bored in a big city?? SHOP!!!!!

I was quick to comply when Cara mentioned an afternoon of shopping and we happily set off in search of the popular knockoff stores selling Prada, Gucci, Versace and whatever other designers they could copy. To my utter delight, there was an entire building dedicated to our fantasy shopping, three wonderful stories full of clothing (extremely overpriced), expensive watches (very poorly made fakes), jewelry (mostly tin and cheap), and, the best accessory ever invented for women (beside high heels of course)..... purses!! Store and stores of purses, bags, and wallets of all shapes and sizes. Yes, many (if not most) were poorly made immitations and were tagged with names such as Cucci instead of the proper labelling of Gucci. This was done so they wouldn't get in trouble by the police when the five-oh's made their frequent strolls through the building. However, little did the patrolmen know (or perhaps they knew but were being well paid not to know), each little shop had a secret room and this, my friends, is where the true treasures were held. It was just like being Alice in Wonderland......unless I'm getting my fairy tales mixed up here. If there is a will there is a way and Cara and I had it all figured out.

The trick was to go into a shop, browse through the poorly copied items with feign interest for about two minutes and then turn to your friend with a sowerful expression and sigh, pretending that you just didn't see anything that you liked and were so utterly upset that you could just break down in tears. Seeing your distress, the eager shopkeeper would rush up to you, lean in and whisper something about a secret room, doing some eyebrow raising gestures and a couple of winks and blinks, just to see if, maybe, you might be interested in seeing some real items. Trying not to laugh at his completely hilarious facial gestures and the FBI secret mission type of espionage that you were about to partake, you would turn to your friend and, pretending to not have visited twenty secret rooms already, whisper back in the same curious, eyebrow raising, wink, wink demeanor that "gee, yes", we would certainly like to see this secret room. By golly, how much fun would that be?!?!
Then, after a bunch more whispers and winks and covert looks outside to check for police, and after a few knocks, scratches, and whistles through the back wall, a hidden door would magically open and we would be ushered back and locked in again. Many of the hidden rooms were so small that you didn't have room to turn around, more or less breath and were crammed full of wallets, purses and handbags. They were fakes as well but were of a much higher quality.

Cara and I must have spent hours and hours combing through the stacks of Fendi, Prada, Gucci, and Coach, searching for the perfect bags. Unfortunately, I wound up only buying a wallet for myself as many of them were too poorly made to justify a purchase and I didn't have too much extra room in my backpack. I'll just have to save up and buy myself a real one down the road (when I have a job that is). Cara, on the other hand, plans to build herself a separate little closet in her bedroom soley for her new purse collection. At least we had fun on our shopping escapade and we certainly perfected our little act to a tea!

And We're Off!!

Time to leave China -- we are flying out of Shanghai in a few hours. Cara is going back home to Brisbane while I am off to the Land of Smiles....Thailand once again. For reasons unknown, I have decided to delay my flight back to Oz and spend a couple relaxing weeks in the islands. Worries aside, my ticket is already bought so I'm going to suffer in silence and lie on the beach....I promise.....no complaining!!!

I think Cara and I both have mixed feelings about China. It took us a little while to get adjusted, especially with the gloomy weather we encountered for most of the trip. As a pair, we had a wonderful time and certainly had our fill of interesting experiences. Cara is a travel budddy that I would take with me anywhere!! I know we both loved the Yunnan area and would like to return at some point to travel further north into the mountainous areas. Travelling during the low season was also especially nice as we came across plenty of lower prices and travel deals.

As many of you know, I tend to be rather outspoken and, on more than one occasion, I had to bite my tongue from making a comment or asking an out-of-line question about a taboo topic. I at least wanted to have some indepth conversations about the Chinese government and history with some of the locals. Many stories, passed on to us from other travellers, were interesting to say the least and Cara and I had our own fill of serious converations with one another. For instance, since Taipei is claimed as the capital of Taiwan in the Lonely Planet, these books have been confiscated by customs at several Chinese border crossings. Interesting but no big deal. The government isn't happy with what they say is an "untrue claim" as China would like to think that Beijing is the capital of ALL it's land. Furthermore, I have HUGE problems with the Chinese occupation of Tibet.....or what use to be Tibet. Now Tibet is not longer it's own free country but a playground for genocide and religious prosecution. Tibet's religous leader, the Dalai Lama, has been living in exile in India for the past fifty years while the Pachen Lama is being held prisoner in mainland China. Many truly horrible and inhumane things happened during the Chinese invasion, too bloody to mention here on a happy blog but it's worth investigating if you have any interest. In current times, Tibetan monks and nuns are not allowed to follow their religious beliefs (or even speak about it) and are often arrested, beaten or killed for practicing their faith. Sadly, Tibetans are now the minority in their own country as hundreds of thousands of Chinese have moved in and taken over their jobs, land, language, culture, and former way of life. I realize that this happens all over the world and is, in many cases, on a much grander scale. However, I'm very fond of Tibetans as they are some of the most kind hearted and compassionate individuals that I've ever met and I am truly intrigued by their religion and history. I don't mean to go on a rant here but what bothers me is that most Chinese locals see Tibet as just another stepping stone, just another piece of land that they now occupy and just another gold star for their flag. Now that they have control of Tibet and Hong Kong is out of the way, they are intent on settling the score with Taiwan......it really makes me angry and is one of the reasons that I didn't choose to travel into Tibet at this time. I think I would be too emotionally involved and would be outright furious at the publically displayed poor treatment of the Tibetans. I will get there eventually but I'd like to have some extra time to really see the "country" rather than just skip through it in a week's holiday.

I could go on and on about my frustrations, another one being that the government completely disregards any acknowledgement of the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 and this mass murder is NOT spoken about anywhere. But.....I suppose all governments have their problems and I'm one to talk, Miss USA!!!! After all, this is why we travel, in order to get more than a bird's eye view of the world, cultures, and societies. It's not all roses and flowers is it???

Back to our Shanghai departure. I'm kind of excited about our flight. I'm sad to admit that I actually like airplane food for some odd reason. And we get to watch free movies for the entire flight on the fun little monitors that are built into the seatbacks in front of us. Did I mention that Singapore Air serves all the free drinks that your little heart desires???? Next time you hear from me, I'll be writing from the sunny skies of Thailand. I think this will be the fourth or possibly fifth time that I've entered the country. I hope they don't have a limit.........

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