Man, do I ever have more to say about last night…
This was the second long distance train we’ve taken in China (I’m not counting the train that brought us from UB to Beijing, by the way). The first train, Z1 (which runs Beijing to Shanghai), was exceedingly nice. Very comfortable, although the air conditioning kept cutting out, making the inside a bit sticky.
Last night’s train, T138, was at least steady with temperature, but a decidedly different experience. For some reason, we’ve been running into all sorts of people from Xian vacationing in both Beijing and Shanghai. Assumedly, for that reason, last night’s train was packed full. In our compartment was a business man who spent most of his waking time in another compartment with friends, and a young woman above me (I was on the bottom bunk) whose father (‘cuz I hope it wasn’t her husband … shudders) seemed to treat our compartment like it was part of his personal closet!
If I only knew enough Chinese to tell someone to piss off so I can sleep!
It also didn’t help that last night, we seemed to get a freight train engineer behind the wheel. The train lurched so often that I thought I might actually feel the urge to strangle the guy! I mean, really, this is a PASSENGER train, not a martini James Bond-style.
I have high expectations after all the Russian trains we took. Given all that we’ve seen of China thus far, I would expect their rail operations to be a tad slicker.
But we’re down to only one more long-distance train, as Amy wrote about. In a way, it’s sad, but believe it or not, I’m looking forward to not having to ride trains much anymore. I’m actually (almost) trained out. It’s a great way to travel, but a lousy way to live.
