Posts tagged with “Train travel in China”

Backpacking in China: up and down

Monday, 22 June, 2009

My journey to the West continue, with its good and bad experiences. Backpacking anywhere around the world usually brings some highs and lows, but this is especially true about China.

Yesterday I started the day quite happy to move on to Zhangye (张掖), described by the Lonely Planet as nice and colorful. But then I get to the train station and I learn that my train is long gone: the departure time was 2h48 a.m, not p.m… How could I be so stupid!

So, quite angry about myself I go and see if a train is leaving soon to the ticket office; and by chance there is one leaving at 14h43! So I ask for a ticket, but there is no more room on sleeper!!! So I take the hard seat, ready for 16h of pain and torture. I am even more angry about myself now; I was actually looking forward to relax on my bed in the train for 16h!

Then I get in the damn train, and after one minute a guy come and seat next to me and start talking to me as he want to practice his English. Very annoying, because I am tired and angry. But I have to behave, so I talk. But then it appears that this guy is a complete weirdo, he ask me if I was virgin, shows me a porn video on his cellphone, tells me he never got any girl, etc…

So that was for the down. At that point I really hate myself for misunderstanding the train situation. But suddenly a very nice looking girl seats next to me, and everything changes. The weirdo has eyes only for her, and since she’s very nice (she’s a nurse) she talk with him also, so he forgets about me. Ouf. So things start to get better. When they leave the girl gives me another gift from Maiji Shan, the Buddha mountain I visited the day before. And the guy gives me some sour vegetables cooked by his mum. Nice.

Then the people change at Lanzhou, and I stay, so I get to have some new travel mates… And what a change! Suddenly I am at peace, the couple in front of me is very sweet and smiling, I have a beer with 2 guys from Dunhuang, everyone is silent, no baby crying, it’s not too crowded… it’s perfect. As the train continues it’s smooth ride I observe the landscape, which is gorgeous. We pass through arid red mountains with white horizontal stripes, the valleys are of a splendid green as there is irrigation, and I can just imagine being Marco Polo and passing through this magical landscape several centuries ago. This was for the high. But now sadly an ugly factory pops up here and there, and the hideous highway destroys permanently the valley’s perfect composition…

And then I get to Zhangye, at 2h in the morning, half awake half asleep. I go to a hotel indicated by the Lonely Planet, but there is no dorm as indicated in the guide, so I take the double room for 40 Yuan, which gracefully came with hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. So I am eaten alive, and impossible to fall asleep since I am bitten every 5 sec. Finally at 6 a.m I collapse. This was another down. When I wake up I also realise that there is no shower! And that the town is ugly. Down down down. I hate Lonely Planet, it seems that the did not even come here. I’ll try to explore a bit more the place before giving my final judgement.

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Tianshui Euphoria. 天水。

Friday, 19 June, 2009

Greatly great, with spices and everything. So today I took the train from Xi’an to Tianshui; a 6hours ride on the hard seats packed with people. But this may not sound as tiring as it really was. In front of me were 3 kids of about 4 years old with their indulgent father, and they did not stop one second fighting each other and jumping everywhere and yelling… and bring attention on me, to my great sadness. Indeed one of them suddenly observed that I had hairs on my legs and this was the excuse for the whole wagon to wonder about me, so here is what the discussion looked like:
- “where is he from?” (as they usually discuss my case between in front of me, but then they all turn to me at once to know the answer)
- France!
- Aaaaah!
“travelling alone???”
- yep!
- Aaaaaaah!
“strange hairs!”
- indeed
“aaaaah”

And then more aaaaaah and ooooooh and blabla for half an hour, and the above dialogue is about all I understood. Great.

But then a girl who wanted to improve her English came to me so we talked for some time a bit in English and a bit in Chinese, so that helped to pass the time.

And then I finally arrived at Tianshui, which is not a beautiful town as I expected. But it’s so nice! I can’t believe how nice everyone is! In the shops, restaurants, everywhere! So it was a pleasure to wander alone in the streets to find a place to eat still open. People still smile and laugh at me but it’s different, because as soon as you (me, in fact) talk to them they are really nice and helpful and joyful and etc… So I tried a sort of soup with noodles, tofu, seaweed and a sort of green salad/cabbage, the whole thing in a red super hot oily mix and served in a clay pot with the stuff still boiling (or frying, I don’t know which term applies best). Very nice!

And then I had an ice cream, and I bought a Chinese CD with very-Chinese music. And now I am tired of all these emotions (and still haven’t had time to recover from the train ride to Xi’an in which I slept little).

Ciao, 再见。Tomorrow I’ll go and see the Buddha stuff.

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