Patricia and Andre’s RTW Adventure

We made our way from Beijing to a little town called Pingyao.  It’s the only fully intact Ming Dynasty (about 600 years ago) walled city in China and it has never been restored just repaired in places.  It’s is also a UNESCO World Heritage site and is so beautiful.  We biked around the outter walls and walked through the old streets…….we stayed at Harmony Guesthouse where Jipu and his wife were so friendly and the food was great and there were plenty of other backpackers to draw knowledge out  of.

Unfortunately, we didn’t find out about the corruption of this little town until we were going to leave.  Let me tell you about the train-ride from HELL and the corruption from this little beautiful town that caused it.

The corruption is that ALL train tickets and ALL bus tickets out of town are controlled by scalpers who would only sell their prize tickets to their favorite guesthouse owners and even then they charged the guesthouse owners 50RMB commission!!!  Jipu, our guesthouse owner, said he also couldn’t get tickets unless he went through these scalpers!  Supposedly, there is a group of people who have dealings with the train station ticket sellers.  They buy up ALL the tickets and then sell them for huge commissions.  The tickets that aren’t sold are just given back to the station and since everyone gets a cut, no one loses any money at all – except us!   We didn’t get a soft sleeper and we didn’t get an air-con hardsleeper. What we got was a “bed” on the VERY top bunk of the 3 bunks in the staff car section that had only 2 working windows to open AND it was next to a COAL BURNING pit! Yes, that’s right! A coal burning pit that was used to heat the hot water!! As we walked toward our car, in absolute disbelief of the heat on the train, we passed by a woman who was shoveling coal into this blast furnace!!  This made the temperature in our car 38degC!!!!  Yes, we have a thermometer, so we know the exact temperature!!

We quickly made our way to the dining car in hopes of some relief from the heat where we met people who were waiting to buy a seat to sit in for the duration of the journey.  See, not only do the scalpers control ALL the seats and beds, but they also sell ANY available room on the train itself.  There is “standing room only” tickets that you actually can buy at the station and is self-explanatory – they just jam as many people into the free spaces as possible …..oh, and there are also the much coveted dining car chairs that they were selling for 50RMB each!!  The asshole train staff however were NOT pleased at all that there were westerners in the dining car sitting, drinking and playing cards b/c that meant that they couldn’t sell the seats.  These “staff” were so incredibly rude to the Chinese travellers that they made a guy who was sitting at our table playing cards with us get up and go back to his standing room hell-hole!  We loudly protested, poured him a beer and asked him to stay, which he was happy to do at that point, but these assholes made him leave!!  The rest of the Chinese people were in absolute disbelief that we were standing up to these tyrants.  Even when Andre wanted to get up to use the bathroom, they had locked the adjoining door on the train car and wouldn’t open it to let him through.  That’s when the pounding on the glass started and the really loud shouting happened…..the woman quickly let him through.  They were just trying to make this place as uncomfortable for us as possible so that we would leave and they could get money for the seats we were sitting in.  Even when a couple of the other westerners that we met got up to go pee, the one guy had to actually expose himself and threanten to wizz on the floor if she didn’t let him through!  I mean, we all HAD tickets for beds back in that area, and these people refused to let us through!  We were pissed off and refused to do anything they said.  They eventually started clearing our beer cans off the table and told us we had to go sleep……they had 3 women standing there and one tyrant conductor guy just insisting that we go……we knew we were going to go soon, but refused to go when they told us too.  So we sat and drank the rest of our beer very slowly and at midnight we casually got up and went back to our sweat box!  Unfortunately we had to leave one of the guys behind as he was only able to secure himself a seat at the dining car for the remainder of the 10 hour train ride……we hoped he would survive!! And that, my friends, is the Train ride from HELL!

When we arrived in Xi’an, we bought tickets to Chengdu for the next day.  We knew that it would be a whirlwind tour quickly through the sites and sounds.  Our Chinese travel visa was about to expire and we needed to get it renewed ASAP.  So after not sleeping all night long, I actually got up at 3 am and just started taking random photos of the horrible sleeping environment we had to endure.  We arrived at 7:30am, went to the Bell Tower Youth hostel, had breakfast, took a shower, took a bus to the Terra Cotta Warriors and were surprised to be awake enough to enjoy them!  They were magnificient and everything we thought they would be.  ABout 5 hours later, we took a bus back to the hostel, met up with friends we had met in Beijing and just drank our sorrows away.  We also found the guy that we left for dead in the train dining car – he made it and we had a drink to celebrate!!!!

The next day we caught our train to Chengdu and we happy that we had the soft sleeper to ourself!!  We were extremely happy and ahd a fabulous, air-conditioned sleep!

The ABSOLUTE highlite of our trip here to Chengdu has been the Panda beers. I got to hold both the small red panda and then get to cuddle the Big Panda. I was a bit frightened in the photos ’cause I got to watch them eat and play all day and I just had the vision that they would think like I wanted to play with them too! They were so beautiful and excatly like a real-life teddy bear. We miss them a lot!
We have also gone to see the Big Buddha in Leshan and at 71 meters high, it was an incredible sight to be seen. Tomorrow we’re off to Emei Shan to hike to the summit of 3100meters staying at monasteries along the way. On the 31 st we’re off to Tibet!

Tags: Travel

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