My Birthday - Shanghai to Beijing

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The next day was a bust. I was out the door at 8 hoping to get a seat on the train to Beijing, I got to the station to find out standing room only again or I could pay more than double the seat fare for a sleeper berth. This time I managed to book a ticket to Beijing for the next morning so back to the hostel...again! I met up with one of the teachers from the house party and we went for coffee then a group of us went to a western style restaurant which actually had fair pricing, we ate well for £2 a head. When morning came I went to the station yet again. It would be nice to get away from the crowded streets and all the hype about the 2010 World Expo and just be in a city that wasn’t twice as populous as normal. The express train from Shanghai to Beijing took 10 hours, a whole 5 hours les s than the normal train and a lot more comfortable. When I got to Beijing I jumped on the number 20 bus which took me past Tianmen square, i found the hostel and contemplated going to bed but as it was my birthday I decided to treat myself to dinner in the only place still open, it was 11pm and all i could get to eat were Chinese barbeque skewers cooked on the roadside, something that is a staple of the diet travelling. I strolled down the street and found a bar where I joined some other travellers, an English couple (Sean and Maya), a Swedish couple and a German. We got through the introductions and I mentioned it was my birthday, the repercussions of which meant that we spent the rest of the morning drinking buckets, literally drinking whisky and coke from aluminium buckets as well as some pitchers of beer and some shots. At 5 am we went for dumplings in the restaurant next door, it was a fantastic way to end the day in a way I couldn’t have expected and the dumplings were the best I had the whole time I was in China and not just because I was drunk. I went back for more.

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