24 hour train ride

i had the pleasure of taking a 24 hour train ride across china this past week. seriously, pleasure. not only did i travel way across china, seeing a bunch of random places on the train, but it's fun to travel with friends in a non-squished environment. do you know how uncomfortable planes are in comparison to an overnight train? and other reasons too. i will tell you why.

first, the train station we started out at looked like an airport. none of the other train stations in china that i have seen look like this. this one is pretty new.

there you can see a slow train on another track. this is taken from the train before we pulled out. these slow trains are old...thus slow. and not very cool looking on the outside compared to the new fast trains. but at least roomy!

check this out!
we rode in the "soft sleeper," which is slightly more expensive than the "hard sleeper." the hard and soft adjectives really mean nothing since apparently the beds are the same hardness/softness in both. but the hard sleeper has 6 beds in one room, while the soft sleeper only has 4, so the soft sleeper is a bit more expensive. it cost about 75 USD for the 24 hour train ride in soft sleeper. compare that to the $60 no-fun 8 hour amtrak train/bus journey from northern california to santa barbara.... anyway, it was great to have so much room. the thing that is not fun about planes is that you are stuck in a cramped seat the whole time and can barely move. in the overnight train you can sprawl all over the place and walk up and down the aisles as much as you want. but ok, in planes are faster. and you get to see the world from above. you get to fly. ok. but the train was oh so comfortable.

except, perhaps, the toilet.
that is the toilet. just about the scariest toilet ever. in airplanes, there is the "what if there is turbulence while i'm in there" and the loud flushing sucking noise and the tiny little room. this is entirely different. before you say anything about "ewww you have to squat," believe me, it's preferable. everyone used this one instead of the western style toilet, because who wants to sit on that? but instead, you have the rocking of the train, which is predictable, but continuous. and at the beginning of the ride, you can stand over the toilet, and see the tracks rushing past beneath you! definitely the scariest toilet ever. and then later in the journey, the hole that goes straight down to the tracks somehow gets backed up with tissue, so it smells...which also doesn't happen on an airplane. you can't use the toilet when the train is stopped at a station either (guess why). i could see the tracks going by beneath the toilet!!! i couldn't get over that part for some reason. but enough about the toilet.

we could see various parts of the countryside from the train, when we were paying attention and it wasn't dark.

kind of hard to take pictures of though, and when it was cloudy and rainy. but interesting. there were places we would see buildings with empty windows all run down, but then laundry on top of one of them, and the next door building would be partway demolished. and then a minute later see nice brand new apartment buildings. and then trash by the tracks in the beautiful countryside, with rice fields and mountains and trees stretching into the distance.

here's our first glimpse through the rainy train window of guilin, in kind of southwestern china, which was where we got off.
and the story shall continue!

P.S. follow this link to get an idea of our trip. for some reason it doesn't look as long or crazy as it felt when we were on the train. imagine taking a train from santa barbara to denver. does that seem far? it's about the same distance as far as i can tell. but although i've never been to denver or that part of the country, it just doesn't sound so crazy or exciting to take a train there. it sounds boring. maybe that's why some of the people with us who are much more familiar with china were bored too. haha. but for me it was exciting. except for the toilet near the end of the 24 hours, i'd do it again.