坐火车旅行Continued！Wednesday -- By the time we got back in to Hanoi, we were all pretty disgusting, covered in layers of grime and wanting some food. I got my rucksack from where I'd left it in the hostel and we'd gotten on well enough with Clueless, Bid-D and Blue to say good-bye to them ^^
Lou and I wandered to Highland Coffee, had Carrot Cake (YUM) then wandered around to get tea, which, again, ended in Carbonara for me the driver didn't have a clue where he was going, he first tried to stop in the middle of the highway, then he had to ask three different people where the station was, but he got us there in the end *stress levels high*
The train was technically a hard sleeper, but it was decent, there are 6 beds in one tiny compartment (without a door) in a hard sleeper. Luckily this train was relatively empty and the Chinese girls with us studied Vietnamese, so were accustomed to the social norm of low voices, unlike the American next door to us -_- The train stopped twice to send us through border control on the Vietnamese side, then have our bags checked on the Chinese side. Considering this procedure lasted from about 10pm->4am, the American decided that after each stop he would inform the entire train of his opinions on the Spanish economy, packing his bags and the Vietnam-America War *head-desk*
Thursday (occurred sometime before now)-- The Vietnamese train took us to Nanning, China, where we wandered for a few hours trying to find internet (free). We ended up in a park chatting to a Brit who's just married a Chinese woman and is back to have a second wedding with her Chinese family. He was telling us about the process of marrying someone of another nationality and apparently he had to provide evidence of correspondence between the two of them (making sure she's not being sold??) and his bank/ house details (making sure he'll be supporting her, not the government). I was amazed he could be bothered to go through with it *romantic at heart*.
The sleeper from Nanning to Kunming 昆明 was hell compared to the Vietnamese one. Although the only beds available were soft sleepers, which means only four beds to a compartment, with a door that closes, there was a child in ours. Yes, a Chinese child, if we look this up in a dictionary we will find one definition: [n] spoilt little shit. -__- Lou already had a top bunk, I had a bottom bunk, originally I was happy with this situation. After it became clear this kid has never considered other people are anything more than simulations for the progression of its life, I put my headphones in and stared out the window. Lou went to sleep and the mother and kid had left the room for a bit, so I chilled, then the kid marched back in and shouted at me “Why is she sleeping?!”. I tried to communicate that the meaning of being asleep is that you can be woken and that the screech of a spoilt pig is unwelcome. The kid stared at me then coughed. What? Am I supposed to suddenly freak that you're ill? Finally I went back to ignoring it, which annoyed the brat so it started hitting me with a ball. Then the mother came back in and the kid went from hitting me with the ball to playing on my bed. I know I'm British and terrified of any form of physical contact, but this was the last straw. I grabbed my bags and fled to the top bunk. Amusingly the child than started whining to its mother that it had wanted to go on the top bunk, the mother replied that maybe the kind ayi 阿姨 (aunty) would let him go on the top. I decided that ayi didn't speak Chinese any more.
The kid slept for two glorious hours, but after it woke up wouldn't go back to sleep. The rest of the journey consisted of it screaming (default volume I tell you) about its video games, I managed to get five minute sleep breaks every now and then when exhaustion took over, but other than that it was fat brat scream in my ears *not a child person*
Friday (early morning *twitch*)-- In Kunming, we went straight to the bus station, bought a ticket, were directed to the right area by TWO DIFFERENT ATTENDANTS (note this), and waited. I got talking to a woman from the Bai 白minority group. She's studying English and Japanese at Guangzhou 广州 and was looking at me suspiciously for a while when I took my inhalers Thankfully it turned out she was just trying to start up a conversation, as opposed to reporting me for foreign diseases ^^ So, her parents live near Dali, that shiny place we were coming to, and she has a sister. China's 56 minorities aren't subject to the one child policy like the Han Chinese are, so they can do what they want. It seems that over time they've started having fewer children anyway and they have fewer problems with gender imbalance than the Han, because they can choose, whilst a big problem for the government with regard to Han is that, because they're only permitted one child, they all want a boy. The government is estimating by 2020 there could be up to 24 million more men than women in China. Fabulous. A load of sexually repressed men. That's just what they need. Feminist worries aside, this lady said that Japanese is very easy for speakers of the Bai language, because the two are very similar. Bai has eight tones (!!) but, listening to people speak it, it does sound like Japanese (to an untrained ear). Whilst talking to this lady, one of the attendants was peering over my shoulder at my ticket and yelled that we were at the wrong station -______- She told us to get the 88 bus to the next station, then it would be fine. Considering we had 20 minutes until our bus left and the journey took 45 things were not looking up. This country could not organise a piss-up in a brewery. The people who worked at this station TOLD US TWICE that we were in the correct place. *unimpressed face*
Needless to say we didn't make it, but we did get a 50元 refund on our 100元 ticket, better than nothing I guess. Then there's the extra 130元 we had to pay for another ticket -_- On the bright side, I noticed that we'd reached a part of China where there is blue sky! It was magical, I could see fluffy white clouds as well |
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have a good week!
