Shanghai -> Xi'an - The journey way out west

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We've done a heap of overland travel in the past 24 hours. Our bus back from Xitang to Shanghai took about 2.5 hours then we took a train from Shanghai to Xi'an which took 17 hours. The long hours spent travelling have ended up being a lot more fun than I expected. We were in sleeper compartments for our train to Xian and it was pretty sweet. We had a lot of laughs with everyone and at bed time, we all huddled around Louise and Gem's portable DVD player, watched Body of Lies and one by one, all dozed off.

We made a new mate too. In the sleeper compartment next to us, a small Chinese boy was travelling with his grandparents. He was energetic as heck and a heap of us had a cool time attempting to play Scissors-Paper-Rock with him. It turns out the Chinese have their own their own version of it. "Bear-Hunter-Gun" works off exactly the same formula - Bear eats hunter, Gun kills bear, Hunter controls gun. If you want to play it at home, the hand actions are pretty self explanatory. Bear (both hands like claws), hunter (one palm up) and gun (hand forms a pistol).

I also ended up playing a few rounds of the board game Ludo with our new little Chinese mate, Xiao-Xiao. This kid was only seven but he was a MASTER at Ludo, which is a game similar to checkers (drafts) but with more complicated moves and can be played by up to six people. Xiao-Xiao (sounds like Shiaow-Shiaow) kept trying to speak to me in Chinese while we played so I learnt how to say "Wu Pudong" which translates to "Sorry mate, can't understand wtf you're saying".

Slept surprisingly well on the sleeper train. Waking up in a whole new city is a cool feeling.

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Photos

Teaching Xiao-Xiao Scissors/Paper/Rock
Fun times.

Chinese local snoring on a bus
Ha, ha, ha...

Me with Xiao-Xiao
I liked this kid heaps.

Our bunks on the sleeper train
Shauna, Chris and Gem

Passing the time
Frida and Clare