This weekend I traveled to Chengdu with Jesse & Chris. Chengdu is the closest major city to Chongqing and is the capital of Sichuan province. We were supposed to leave at 5:50pm Thurs evening, but somebody (who shall remain nameless) was mistaken about which train station we were supposed to leave from. First, we went to the North Train Station, arriving at about 5:30, only to be told that there are no trains that go to Chengdu from there. We then taxied it to Chongqing North train station, getting there 2o minutes too late. In Chinese the 2 stations don't sound as similar as in English.
So we exchanged are tickets for the 12:30am train, which was a bad idea. Hindsight being as it is, the best thing would have been to take the 6:00 am train. Our tickets got us onto the train, but did not provide us with seats. This wouldn't have been all that bad, but keep in mind that we were on the train for 5 hours, and this train was filled with people who had already been on it for as long as 30 hours. It was loud, (what were these people talking about at 2:30 in the morning?) filled with smoke, (even the train employees were smoking at that time of night), and crammed tightly so that the aisles and spaces between cars were filled with seatless people.
Jesse was standing next to a baby, which was in its assless pants. This meant that he had a birds eye view of how babies in China relieve themselves on Chinese trains. At around 3:00, after a few stops, I managed to get a seat. Seated next to me was a wisp of a man, not much more than a skeleton, who looked slated to have died a few days beforehand. All in all, not a pleasant experience. Jesse said it was only his second worst train ride in China, so that gives me something to look forward to :P
No comments:
Post a Comment