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Published: October 12th 2016
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So time for my first real experience of traveling In China!
I left work at 3:30 and went straight to the train station in my lovely little Yantai for the first leg of my journey to Jinan a bigger city in my province. The train took around 4 hours and without realising I had booked a first class ticket... Lovely sit was definitely needed as I was not very well on the journey and super appreciated the extra comfort to get some sleep. Arriving in Jinan I immediately realised it was a much more lively city than mine as the bright lights on every corner blinded me I decided to skip the mile long taxi queue and walk to the hostel estimated 40 mins not a ad after sitting down for 4 hours so off I went. It took me about 35 minutes to get lost and had to call the hostel for directions but as they did not understand me I stopped a co plate stranger and handed him my phone "tell them where I am please" thanks to the lovely gent I had new directions and was off again up the road finally reached my destination
and still no hostel in sight. Great! Sent a message to the hostel and had to send a picture to show where I was before I knew it 2 little heads came bobbing up the road shouting me. Once I got upstairs I was treated as royalty 3 of the nicest Chinese girls I've met since I arrived sat me down and gave me a cold beer and we sat chatting about life in general for a couple of hours I was invited back and they are apparently going to show me the town next time. Offer I can't refuse!
The next day I asked the girls to call me a taxi to the train station so I could set off on the longest part of my journey this week a 20 hour train journey what exactly was I thinking with that one. Not only did one of these lovely girls put me in a taxi which would have been more than what was required of her she came with me to the train station waited for 45 minutes then even came down to the platform to hep me find my bunk on the train she even hugged me
goodbye now that is a whole new level of customer service!
The train journey was interesting to say the least I was assigned the top bunk which seemed to be ridiculously high whilst laughing at myself attempting to climb the ladder a nice guy who had the bottom bunk offered to swap with me. My saviour! So for the first 10 hours or so of my journey I nodded in and out of sleep watched a few films and ate noodles not so bad. My kind friend then got off at his stop which meant someone else got on for his bed oh no! So I jumped over on to the other lower empty bunk and hoped for the best, no such luck next stop a guy got on for that bed by this time it was night as well when I actually needed to try and sleep dam it. So a pottered around for a little then climbed up on to the top bunk now having a fear of heights lying on a tiny bed God knows how high off the ground on a moving train was not the highlight of trip to say the least
I felt as if I was going to come off at any given point so I held on for dear life and attempted to sleep. A very rough few hours later I woke up and realised a lot of people had got off and the bottom bunks where empty again I wasted no time climbing down and snuggling back in as close to the ground as possible. Managed to sleep there for another couple of hours before finally arriving at my destination. When I woke up a nice Chinese girl I had spoke. To earlier was all freshly changed came and asked to take my picture because I was beautiful.. Well if sleep deprived and grumpy is beautiful to you go for it haha. So it wasn't the worst in the world but I would definitely make sure I had a bottom bunk if I did it again.
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