Tuesday 21st July 2009 Xian

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Tuesday 21st July 2009 Xian
We packed our bags up again, which thankfully had survived the shower flooding our bedroom and headed out for another walk around the town and to get some food to eat on the overnight train to Shanghai. We headed up to the Muslim quarter with its traditional architecture and its Chinese women wearing their head scarves. A lot of the area is actually taken up by markets which were interesting. There was a lot of tourist garb there so we picked up a few pieces of tack as you do and continued our search for some subway sandwiches which would keep us fed on the train. So armed with our footlongs we were left with the task of finding something to eat for lunch and sure we were on a bit of a roll so we decided a Pizza Hut was in order. There we were in the middle of China eating pizza hut with subway bags on the chairs beside us, we are really embracing the local flavours. I think all the Chinese people were very jealous though. ON days of overnight trains there is no other way, taking the risk on a dodgy stomach just isn’t worth it, that’s my excuse anyway.

We headed off to the train station about an hour before our train and were actually a bit pushed for time, didn’t help that they pulled us over at the bag x-ray scanners and were pointing at our bags but not saying anything, we were feeling a bit of pressure so were shouting at them that we had to get our train. Eventually some girl came over and started going on about something big in our bags, I kopped it might be our bug spray aerosol so threw that at them and just left. You could be there all day with them not knowing what they were at. The station was a sweatbox, jammed and smelly; luckily we boarded our train after about 10 minutes and found out why our tickets were 500 Yuan. We had soft sleepers, you still are sharing with two others in a 4 bunk cabin but you have headroom, the compartment has its own door and everyone has their own TV screen. A much nicer train than our last one. We settled in and went for a wander after a while and found the restaurant and bar, this is how to travel alright, they had couched and armchairs and bar stools, the food actually looked ok even. We had a beer and sat and looked out the windows at night falling outside. We had a taste for the booze then and still had half a bottle of vodka that was weighing us down so we decided to have night cap on the corridor seats outside our room. I think this why people enjoy train travel, it can be very relaxing and you arrive where you are going refreshed. We jumped up on our top bunks then and slept til about 6.30 when we had to get ready for Shanghai

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