A slow day today, we need to be at Beijing West train station by 6.30pm for our train. I have to run around from ATM to bank to ATM and muster 10,000 thingies in cash to pay for our train tickets, Tibetan tourist permit, Tibetan hotel and travel arrangements- all in advance.
After lunch we find a local massage parlour ( the basement, beaded curtains type) and Ais and I have a joint back massage which looked and felt like it was straight out of the WWF. (that's wrestling, Mum)
We watched a Month Python at the hostel, bartered two free t- shirts and set off.
Beijing West station is huge, in China you sit in waiting rooms until your train is called and then fight the masses to the platform. Our train is the T27, carriage 5, berths 13&15. We booked soft sleeper tickets ( you can also get hard sleeper, soft seat and hard seat) they didn't come cheap but for 44 hours probably worth it, we share with just two others and we have the bottom berths.
As we set off in the dark just after 8pm, my thoughts on China thus far: It has an Orwellian overtone, like Big Brother meets The Trueman Show with a hint of Disney faux-ness. There are cameras everywhere and police at ever corner, then at every other corner there are plain clothed Police with cameras. It's all too neat and clean, for every person that drops litter another is employed to pick it up, in Beijing, historical buildings are all perfectly restored and glisten with varnish, it's like the Beijing they want you to see.
No one smiles and everyone smokes, those that don't smoke and even moreso those that do, have perfected the cringeworthy art of hacking, from their ankles up, the biggest loogies and then propelling them everywhere and anywhere- if you can't pull up a huge phlegm ball you just ain't proper Chinese, and they don't wear shorts, now that's just plain weird.
Our train has the worst kind of piped Chinese music, like being stuck in a horizontal elevator for 44 hours, thankfully we all have individual TV screens so I settle down and watch Rambo, in Mandarin, which is fine cos' no one understands Stallone anyway.
Oh and they all still smoke and spit, on trains, in China.
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