Excellent Travelling Companions

As I said in the last post, travelling anywhere in China is a struggle. Be it buying tickets for the wrong type of transportation (see Suzhou) or expecting Car #1 to be before Car #2 but in reality it is after Car #16, something always happens to make the trip memorable.

Our guesthouse in Pingyao booked two sleeper tickets to Datong for us on the overnight train, taxi to the train station included. We arrived at the station early and, as always, were the center of attention. (Pingyao's station is quite small so it wasn't nearly as unnerving as being in Taiyuan where rows and rows of people craned their heads around to watch what we were doing for the hour while we waited for the train.) When two other foreigners appeared, both women, they became the center of attention and we got to sit quietly for a few minutes.

Joey, true to form, wandered off about twenty seconds before the call came for our train. My Chinese was just not good enough to explain to the non-English speaking attendant why my husband was gone at that particular moment. Much pointing and sighing happened until he reappeared. She then hurried us out to the platform about five minutes before the train was scheduled to arrive.

Once on the platform we did our usual routine of showing our ticket to random people in uniform and then following the wave of their hand. Eventually, we ended up standing by the British women, Shelly and Claire. Thus began twenty-odd hours of close companionship.

After the train got underway, they drug us off to the food car where we proceeded to drink all the beer on the train. (It sounds more impressive than it was. They were not ready for a troup of foreigners to descend on the beer supply.) At about 11pm, we asked for one final round. The man told us, later, later. At 1am, we realized that later meant not tonight but maybe in a day or two. The two hours of waiting for more beer were well filled with watching the crew, gossiping about travels, etc. Our only recommendation after watching the chef for two hours is that one not eat on a Chinese train. At 5am, we all arrived in rainy Datong.