Trains can either be looked at as a great experience, you get to see a multitude of things or just as easily a horrific experience, the pushing, shoving and general everyday feralness of the Chinese people. Our trip to Shanghai on the weekend (13-16 Feb) was to be one of those horrific trips. Unlike the Chinese New Year, we were not fighting crowds to get a standing ticket. We were quite cosy in our hard sleeper carriage. The lights were still on but we were just about asleep when three of the strangest looking men arrived. One was holding a catheter bag, the second in a brand new suit carrying the filthiest tarpoline covered box and the third was having some difficulty breathing. At the sight of them Jo thought - Please Jo sleep Now!!! The men settled in to the beds opposite us and in no time the first man with the catheter bag was fast asleep. About an hour later Jo looked over and noticed the catheter bag was filling rather quickly, the man was dead to the world snoring contently. Jo thought "shit" what do I do here. The only obvious thing to do was accidently on purposely wake the man and hope he'd go to the loo and empty the bag. Her first attempt at dropping something to wake him failed, the second was successful and the bag emptied phew!!!! Now we can handle spit, phlem and all the other grose things but pee - that's too much. It was unusually late when they finally turned the lights off in the carriage and just as they did this No 2 man in the brand new suit pulls out obviously also a brand new mobile phone. Well if he didn't test every ring tone at the loudest level for the entire clip. Just as Jo was about to reach over and rip the phone out of his hand to put it somewhere unpleasant "freresharka" tune bellows out. Jo had been teaching songs to her Junior kids all week and had been having some trouble sleeping with the crap songs replaying in her head to all hours so she was even less impressed with the tune right there again. The man with the breathing problems was fast asleep snoring is heart out for China. You can't exactly say "roll over" to a man you don't know and hey he wouldn't understand anyway. 9 hours later we arrived in Shanghai pleased as punch to be off the train and very tired.