Train, China Style

Smells, smoke, people, crowded, hard seats, food on the floor, people packed to the brim. And on and on. Oh the horror stories I heard about the China trains. 

So when I found out we would have to spend 12 hours on a train to Beijing I was worried to say the least. My only hope is that it was going to be a hard sleeper. 

Horizontal, my saving direction. It gave hope of sleep. 

Best money ever spent.

We got to the train station and boarded the train. We were greeted with a three stack high of bunks and guess whose ticket was the top. 

Yes, me. 

Up I went on my climb to be greeted by disgusting sheets. Good thing I ordered my sleep sack, from China, to bring back to China. Really though, it's amazing. It's like a sheet sewn in half and with a pillow case attached. What a beautiful sanitation invention. 

So the boys and I hung out on the bottom bunks until it was time to take our cocktails. Some had a melatonin and NyQuil mix others threw in Benadryl and some dramamine. As it got later things got funnier and funnier, you knew the medicine was kicking in so up the bunks we went. 

The bed is about one and a half feet wid and luckily has a safety bar. 

I didn't know why the safety bar was going to be so important until I learned the following:

As you roll into a station you are first greeted by the most horrific screetching noise and then a whap, bam, slam! The breaks go on with the most horrifying jolt you've ever felt. You are then slammed into the side of your safety bar, holding on for dear life. Then you drift back into your drugged sleep only to be rudely awakened by the next stop. Ba-bam. Slam. Ah. Not the best way to spend the night. BUT horizontal. Made it possible to sleep. 

Don't even get me started on the toilet situation. I'm actually okay with the squatters. I am not okay with squatters in a rocking train. Now do you remember when I told you about the random slamming on of the brakes. Now imagine being in a tiny, tiny bathroom with a hole in the floor and a bucket of water. Im not sure what the bucket of water was for not do I want to know. But I had to pee. I finally got the nerve after four failed attempts. In I went and the rest was history. Disgusting. Don't even use a hole in the floor on a train that is a rockin.