And so with some trepidation.....now being completely out on our own, we hit Beijing! We had one of the worst train journeys to get there. We had actually paid a small fortune (well-ish!) for the supposedly more comfortable train - a soft sleeper! However, this was a four berth cabin, that was supposedly air conditioned, but which was in fact, smoke conditioned.....where some of the delightful male population of China opted to smoke in teh corridors outside the cabins, from where the air was directly pumped into our no longer so pleasant cabins! Thus sleep during the journey had been somewhat hard to come by and we both woke up unpleasantly hoarse with some pretty dodgy coughs (which given a few hours developed into full blown colds - not helped by the now freezing temperatures that
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