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Published: November 17th 2014
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Hello People,
So we woke up early as we decided to be lazy and have a movie night, instead of going to the Big Goose pagoda last night!! (Vick was not 100% either)
So we got the metro, which was surprisingly quiet compared to Beijing's and Shanghai's craziness. We got off and as we were both starving, we headed to find some good street food (yes i have been eating street food - never thought it would happen), we found two stalls together, one was doing egg and bacon (i think it was) in a kind of roll, more like a dumpling bun, it was amazing had extra chillies in it. Vick had a cheese and onion wrap with a crispy cheese and egg, it was also so good and all under a pound for both.
We quickly found the Big Goose pagoda and it was impressive, however our main problem was we had about 30 mins to look around as our train to Chengdu was at 1300. So we managed to get some good picture and was amazing seeing all the locals out doing their morning exercises, examples were tai chi, umbrella twirling,
some ball and racket thing, plus a few more. After our quick look around we headed back to the hostel to pack up and check out.
Once checked out we caught the bus to the train station, we arrived and first thing that went through my mind was a humanitarian war zone camp!!! People were laid out everywhere, bags everywhere think I saw a crate of chickens ready to be loaded on!!! We made our way through all the check points (you need passport to get on the train) and then managed to have a relaxing sit down before getting on the train!! To say it was busy is a major understatement!!! People had massive bags of who knows what in, it was a struggle to get on the train.
We have now been on a second class train in Russian, Mongolia and China and a third class train in Russia but this was our first third class in China. We may not have been prepared for this!!!! Once on, finding a spare space in the rack to put your bag was the first problem, next was it was 3 bunks so I being
the tallest person on the whole train had to some how climb up into a 1/2 metre space...not easy or fun 😞. Vick had a nice middle one with room, however we were not in compartments next to each other so I had to pop my head around to talk to her but it was all safe!!! There were a few crying kids but they were ok most of the time, but the worst thing was the toilets!!! Firstly, I hate this stand up toilet thing its not good (Vick likes its, she seems to adapt to everything) Second it stinks so bad its untrue I can't explain the smell, third there is always a poo left in there...why I have no idea but there always is!!! Fourth there is never and I mean NEVER toilet paper!!! I will not say the extremes I have gone to!!!
So we both had noodles for dinner (mine was earlier than expected as Vick made my spicy ones by accident, still dinner made for me I could get used to this. As it was 17 hours on the train, You can guess there was not much to do. We watched
a couple of spooks, somehow we both squeezed into my bunk (was not comfortable).
We shared a warm beer which was heaven, then both read before bed and our dreaded 4am wake up alarms.
Thats everything for now!! Love N&V X
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Sheila Lewington
non-member comment
your trip
loving all the pics. the toilets sound like the ones in India only the ones on the train go straight through to the ground, no bowl and no toilet paper . take care and have fun xxx