Train ride from Shanghai to Chengdu

For some reason I kind of expected to see some other travelers on my train or at least some English speaking Chinese. That was not the case though so all the attention of the carriage was focused on the sole foreigner; that would be me. When I boarded the train on Thursday (21 September) night I discovered that I was on the top bunk (of 3 levels) and as luck would have it, the top bunk has the least space. Yippie! At least I could fully stretch out, even if my feet did hang in the walkway, although well above any passing heads. The train was laid out as expected; 6 bunk beds in each open compartment, 11 open compartments per carriage. The train ride could have been a pleasant experience had the smoke not continually drifted in from the smoking area and had they not blared Chinese music from 7 am (no joke) in the morning until 10 pm at night.

Since the train departed at 9 pm that night I didn't linger below for long -- the main reason being that there wasn't much space for lingering in -- before crawling up into my very cramped and window-less bunk. There was nothing spoken between me and my other 65 compartment-mates other than the occasional 'ni hao' (Chinese for 'hello').

I'm not sure who to blame for the blaring Chinese music that started at 7 am on Friday (22 September) morning. I guess I can only blame myself for not taking a soft sleeper (2nd class bed). But who wants to sleep in on a 2-night, 40-hour train ride? I, for one, certainly did not! I spent the morning reading before making my way to the restaurant car, catching nearly everyone's stare on the way there, for lunch. I must have been the only foreigner on board. In the afternoon it was more reading and then a long nap. At some point in the afternoon the sole Chinese english speaker on the train found me and we chatted for an hour or so. He wanted me to teach him some english so I tried. Then it was another early night. I find it really easy to sleep lots - but not continously - on long train rides which is good for passing time.

Saturday (23 September) morning we were seranaded again at 7 am to China's best pop music. Since we all went to sleep so early the night before, I guess they figured we would probably want to wake up early too, even if we didn't arrive at our destination until 11 am.

So if I ever take hard sleeper again I'm going to make sure I get a lower bed in the middle of the carriage.

I took a taxi from the Chengdu train station to my hostel not wanting to deal with the buses and route finding in a new city in the rain.