This last week was a national holiday in China and we had a full week off from school so we decided to go to Guilin for a few days. The train ride is supposed to last around 13 hours and on the way there it was overnight.
Riding the buses in Guiyang are always an adventure and we had to take two different buses to get to the train station. Luckily, we could read the characters for Train Station so we knew where to get off. Previously our liaison had told us that you can't miss it, so we weren't too worried about finding it. But of course, we see the train station stop but no train station. We only had about an hour before our train departed so we hit the streets running and miming out the word train trying to find where to go. We rounded a corner and glaring at us was the station. Hallelujah we made it!
Now to find the ticket office....of course! Just follow the signs that say ticket office. Now to figure out which line to get in...and how to communicate to the ticket officer that we already have reservations and have paid for the ticket, we just needed to pick it up. And of course I was the first one who made it up to a ticket window and so I handed over my passport and confirmation number and the guy starts talking in English. I thought my ears were deceving me, but sure enough, he was speaking English! I think I have been completely spoiled with how easy it was and I'm sure I'll meet challenges in the future.
The ticket process wasn't quite as easy for all of us though. Jake was the last person to make it to the window and after he handed over his documents, the lady said he needed to go to a different line because she was closing. He didn't understand why it was happening because she took his information and all she needed to do was print out his ticket. And of course all of the lines were now super duper long and our train was supposed to leave in only 30 minutes. So I grab his arm and shove him into the handicap line that was practically empty. No one in the line looked handicap, so I figured it wouldn't be a big deal. But of course Jake starts getting dirty looks and with some quick thinking, he pretended to be deaf in order to stay in the line. While not entirely (or at all...) truthful, we were panicked and in a rush. It was pretty hilarious though. And in all fairness, he couldn't understand the guy anyways because his Chinese was in a different dialect and he spoke incredibly fast. So we all had our tickets and still had about 20 minutes to spare...well 20 minutes to figure out where in the world we were supposed to go next.
We found the right platform and the right row to sit in. Success! And then of course our train was delayed for over an hour. So we just sat down and relaxed for a little bit. When we thought our train was supposed to start boarding, we stood up to get in line. After a few minutes they delayed our train again by another 30 minutes. We turned to go back and sit down but all the seats were now taken. Then, as if the journey wasn't exciting enough already, a fight broke out in the waiting area right where we had been sitting. I guess we're lucky we stood up! After, a nice girl typed into a translator on her phone that we could follow her to the platform and train so we wouldn't get lost. I swear, everyone in China is so kind and helpful to us!
When we finally got to board the train, we had even more people helping us find our bed numbers. We had hard sleeper beds for the trip which basically is no different from the hardness of our regular beds. The compartments are open and each section has six beds and a little table between the two sides. The small hallway also has little tables and fold two fold out seats for each compartment. Amber and I were in one compartment and Jake was two down from us. I had a middle bed and the others were up top. I got to my bed and realized the guy next to me had taken my blanket! I just looked at him and he kinda started laughing and just threw it back over to my bed. I didn't exactly want to use that one and it kinda smelled bad...so I switched it with the still empty bed above me. Our compartment had three older men and one younger guy in it. Right away they started asking where we were from and such. When I told them California, one man pulled up a picture of Arnold Shwarzenegger and asked me how to say his name. He kept fake shooting everyone and practicing how to say the name. It was hilarious. The other man kept taking pictures of me and zooming in on my nose piercing. So I took it out and he was so confused that I kept taking it out and putting it in again. I then started taking a million pictures of him too which made him laugh.
A while into the journey, two older men came down our hall in just their underwear and when they saw us they just started laughing. One of them ended up stopping right in front of me and decided to strike up a conversation, still wearing only his skivvys. Amber was up on her bed and started taking pictures of them, so when they walked past Jake, they started hitting his arms. It was pretty stinkin' funny. For a majority of the trip, it was raining and storming. Watching a lightning storm from a train is sorta kinda awesome. You should try it one day. I also used my turtle to teach one guy some words in English. He was trying to read a bedtime story, so I used my turtle to act out cuddling, squeezing, and tossing and turning. He gave my performance two thumbs up.
FLASH FORWARD
Our train ride home was just as if not more eventful. Because this ride was during the day, we decided to check out the seats instead of the sleepers. We hadn't realized just how hard and ramrod straight the seats were and for 13 hours times got a little tedious at some points, but it was easy to walk around and we had some pretty awesome seat mates.
The seats were set up with four on once side of the aisle (two sets facing each other) and then six seats total on the other side. Jake, Amber and I were all in the same row on one side. Sitting across from us were two guys from Holland. Whenever boredom seemed to be getting the best of us, we found a new way to entertain ourselves. These guys were freaking hilarious. One of them, Dennis, has been travelling through India, Japan, and China for the last 3 or so months. He had tons of stories. We taught them how to play a few different card games (Idiot, BS, War...) but whenever those were getting boring (which they did, quickly) I started to make up my own games. All of the Chinese people sitting around us were so facinated by these "games" I was playing and I was just making everything up on the fly. The guys started to play along and gave some excellent reactions to whatever I would do or say. When my imagination ran dry, we started flipping and flicking the cards, trying to catch them or land them on our hands. We then tried doing different word/name association type games. Oh the things you can think of when you are trapped in a moving vehicle for 13+ hours (because of course we got delayed mid trip). I just felt bad for our new Dutch friends, they had an extra 10 hours after we departed. I only hope they were able to stay entertained.
I feel like I could go on forever with just train stories. Which is crazy. I mean, we were on a train. But man, the combined 25ish hours we were on those trains were amazing.
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