Ahmad: We were a little sad to leave Xian; we also had some real difficulty getting train tickets for Beijing. In the end only had ‘Hard seat’ tickets were available.
——> Trains in China
Trains in China are relatively comfortable, the booking system (barring the language barrier) is also much less complicated than Indian trains (tickets are either available or not, there is no concept of a wait list).
Standing – You are literally standing for the entire journey, most people with standing tickets take pieces of cardboard to put into the isle so they can catch a nap.
Hard Seat – The train carriage consists of three seats a table on one side, and two seats and a table on the opposite side, the seats are (as you can imagine) very hard and there is no recline at all, it’s at 90 degrees
Soft Seat – Four seats per row, with aeroplane style seats that are comfortable (and recline). This class is relatively rare as its normally the same price as Hard Sleeper (why sit when you could have a berth?)
Hard Sleeper – Each train carriage is split into ten cabins, each cabin consists of six beds, three per wall. This is the best value and most popular class of Chinese train
Soft Sleeper – Each train carriage into ten cabins, each cabin consist of four beds, two per wall, this is double the price of Hard Sleeper and in my opinion not great value for money.
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We got to Xian train station and got onto the train with a sense of trepidation, at first glance the hard seats looked okay, potentially even comfortable ( 7 years ago they were plastic bucket seats, something my behind remembers well) . We got our luggage stowed and settled in for the 12 hour journey, we were sat opposite a couple of Chinese gentleman, one of which (We’ll call him Ling) immediately started eating (pretty standard), what he was eating though left a lot to be desired, he was eating a variety of ‘speciality’ food (including but not limited to, chicken feet, locusts and other varieties of insect).
After having not slept well for the past 5 days (due to the dungeon in the otherwise fantastic Shuyuan Hostel in Xian) and a serious case of Diarrhoea (2 months of it, with weight loss at almost 8kg) not being able to find a decent sitting position on the train was difficult.
Hard seat being the second cheapest class is taken by a lot of rural Chinese; a great example of this is when a baby started crying, the mother put the child on the floor where the child squatted and took a piss, the toilet by the by was no more than 10 feet away, and unoccupied. The toilet was equally fouled with excrement all over the floor so maybe the kids parents had the right idea, I seriously considered squatting and taking a dump rather than going back into the toilet).
We did eventually get to Beijing, but I was literally feeling as weak as a day old kitten, we walked to the closest metro station and jumped on the tube to where our hostel was, the hostel was okay but the management (a French guy) left little to be desired. The dorm was thankfully air conditioned and we both just lay down and went to sleep for a few hours.
On waking we went to get our Vietnamese visa, and we managed to get our applications in just before they closed.
The following day we tried to find a local train ticket office but failed and went to the main station, for the superfast day trains (11 Hours) to Shanghai (only available at the main station). We got to the main station and we think that the lady misunderstood what we had requested and was trying to give us the equivalent of Soft Seat tickets at over £110 a pop.
We left and went to the Forbidden City (which was okay). I was still pretty Ill at this stage (the antibiotics I was taking weren’t really having an effect) and we moved through the city pretty quickly. We walked back to the hostel (half an hour walk) and I went back to bed. Laura (being a star) went back to the train station (with some advice from the useless hostel manager) and attempted to buy the right kind of ticket, however they refused to sell her a ticket for me unless she had my passport ID with her. The following day, we found the local ticket office but they were unable to issue a ticket so we headed back to the main station, passport photocopies in tow and finally got our tickets.
A friend (David Williams) had moved to Beijing some 6 months earlier, and we had arranged to meet him. We met David, his wife Sonja and her friends Kat and Andrea (who were visiting) near Sanlitan, we ate at a Muslim restaurant that had tables on the street and had a veritable feast. Sonja and Andrea both spoke excellent mandarin and they ordered our food for us. We had quite a late one (for us at least) and agreed to meet again the following night.
We went to the summer palace the following day and then went round to David & Sonja’s flat (which was incredibly nice) for a quick beer before getting some food. We went out in the local area to a place that Laura still salivates over called ‘Leg of mutton’. The name of the restaurant is pretty descriptive, and we ordered two legs. The meat comes out on the bone, and is placed on a large charcoal brazier; everyone is given carving knives and forks and tucks in. Two legs later we were mostly sated (apart from Laura and Andrea who were still picking at the bones). We went out to a great little bar afterwards that had a resident cat, and agreed to meet later in the week.
We did nothing all the next day, and then met up with our friend Rodrigo from Xian in the evening, we hit the Pacman (a great cheap eatery with a sign that looks like a pacman) and got some meat sticks, we had a beer in his hostel and then called it a night and said our goodbye’s till Rio.
The following day we had arranged to tour a ‘Secret’ section of the great wall, this was fantastic, and there were only two other tourists (other than our group) on the section of the wall (one of tourists got naked and had his wife took a photo). We ate at a local Chinese eatery then headed back to the hostel.
On arriving back we sat down next to a couple that turned out to be John (my best mate’s) parents. I was astounded to say the least!
David had offered to let us crash at his flat once Kat had left, so we moved to David’s flat the following day, it was lovely to stay with some friends and be able to chill out. We collected our Visa’s and then tried to find the underground Beijing city (with no luck), we walked on to Temple of Heaven park which was cracking. We went out that night everyone and again over ordered on the food. Even Andrea couldn’t eat any more and Andrea is an absolute eating Champ, (I think she missed her calling, she would be an amazing competitive eater). It was still pretty early so watched possibly the worst film ever (Prince of Persia was an Oscar winner by comparison) called ‘Shadows and lies’.
We spent the day looking around district 198 with Sonja and Andrea, which had some cracking contemporary art galleries. In the evening Andrea had arranged to meet up with a friend but the four of us went looking for some street food, we didn’t find any but did find a really nice Cantonese restaurant (Sonja seemed ecstatic). We also found a bar that specialised in Aperol cocktails and then called it a night.
The following day we packed our things, said goodbye to Sonja , David and Andrea and left to get to the train station.
The fast trains are fantastic between Beijing and Shanghai, and we had a comfortable and uneventful trip.