Tuesday - leaving Beijing another thrilling night train ride

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Today was our last day in Beijing. During the night I was awoken by a guy arriving around 3am and later by the boys arriving back from their night out. As seems to be the way now someone brought Stuart to bed, but within 5 minutes Stuart had got up and then proceeded to pee on the floor! I shouted in a whisper to him to stop as I didn't want to wake anyone else but I'm not sure if he heard me or not, but he stopped and left the room. I then got up and got the mop from the ladies loo and dI'd the best I could to mop it up As I didn't want anyone stepping in it or slipping on the wet floor. Luckily no one else's stuff suffered the same fate as me on this occasion nor did anyone's stuff get soiled.



The plan for the next day was to meet at 8am to visit the temple of heaven. Stuart said I should wake him up but I didn't bother to get up as I didn't want to walk around and negotiate the tubes with him as he would still be drunk, so I just stayed in bed as I was mad at him for peeing on the floor. It turned out I made the right decision as it was raining so no one went anyway. However Franklin and Nitzan were up early and Lunar decided to show them round the local streets and give them some history of the local area. Bhavisha and Kirsty headed out to the art district of Beijing which was an amazing place to go apparently, so if you are ever in Beijing you should go.



So I just hung around the hostel until it was time to go, I got up later, had breakfast, showered, packed, had dinner and got supplies for the night train (yet another one) this time we had a 16 hour train ride to Hangzhou.



We left the hostel at 3pm and walked up to the tubes station. The boys had had a few beers especially Stuart who decided to wear his cardigan and no t-shirt and had no shoes on as he had accidentally poured beer into them when he was decanting his beer into the bottle. He was able to walk and talk and carry his bags so that was a blessing.



We caught the tube to the train station and the boys decided to try to kick a small football round in the tube station which didn't go down well. On the second tube after we had changed lines Stuart fell over and our group laughed at him, but I had distanced myself as I was embarrassed to be seen with him. When we got to the station we headed for the waiting area and dumped our bags. Some of us watched the bags whilst the others went to the loo,to get supplies and food. Stuart bought 4 small bottles of whiskey and a Macdonalds - oh joy another night of fun on the train (sarcastically said by the way)



So we finally boarded the train and found our sleeper beds. Nitzan took Stuarts bunk at the top and stay art took Nitzans based at the bottom opposite Bhavisha. I had a middle bunk for a change which was a blessing. Tim had the bed above me. We also had a lovely Chinese girl called Jenny (poor girl). Bhavisha wanted to swap with Tim but he was having none of it. None of us wanted to sleep near Stuart because of his night time antics.



So we settled in to our bunks, Stuart ate his Macdonalds but not before spraying tomato ketchup all over the place and spilling the flask of hot water the rail company provide. It spilled on the floor next to his bag so to stop the water from getting on to his bag he yanked the curtain down! Again I was so embarrassed to be seen near him. Obviously with his broken nose, black eyes and cuts and scrapes he seemed to draw more attention than normal and we seemed to be visited by the lady who collects the rubbish and keeps the carriage clean more often and the security people walked past quite a few times too. Stuart fell asleep around 7.30pm and stayed that way until just before we arrived at our destination. The train was delayed about 20 minutes before arriving and it was chucking it down with rain. I managed to find the curtain and put it back up as best as I could so as not to draw attention to the fact it had been ripped down.



Xxx

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