Recovering from the hard seat again

Trip Start Jan 16, 2009

Trip End Nov 20, 2009

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Flag of China Pingyao, Shanxi, China
Sunday, August 23, 2009

So despite me swearing not to take the hard seat ever again, there we were again yesterday. This time it was only 12 hours though and I knew precisely what to expect so it was somehow manageable (didn’t even need the baijiu). This time the people around us were also a bit more interested in the two foreigners, and I was for example persuaded to eat a duck egg, which was one the most disgusting things I’ve ever tasted, but luckily I was able to hide most of the egg in my noodle soup so I didn‘t have to finish it. Some of the next-seat passengers (not all of them had a seat or course) also kept asking questions about our home country and they were actually surprised that we both come from Finland because we don’t look the same. Didn’t want to say that unlike the Chinese, not all the Western people look the same, so I explained that we look different because I’m from the northern part of Finland while Kaitsu is from the south. This time the carriage also had quite a few children on it and when the corridors are crowded, like they usually are in hard seat, going to toilet can be a little complicated so the baby next to us naturally urinated on the floor of the corridor - only narrowly missing Kaitsu’s shoes

Sunrise in Pingyao.

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The reason we came to Pingyao, was actually because we wouldn’t have got a straight train ticket to Xian by time we wanted and both of us had also heard good things about this place form other travellers. Pingyao is a small town of 40 000 inhabitants and it’s a tourist attractions because of its old town inside the city walls, like Dali. Our train was here already at half past five in the morning, which was a good thing because we couldn’t have slept any longer on the hard seat anyway, and that also allowed us to witness the beautiful sunrise on the narrow alleys that weren’t crowded yet. However, a few hours in the morning was actually enough in this place and now we’re practically just waiting for our night train (hard sleeper this time fortunately) to Xian by playing kicker and watching movies in a traveller cafe. Being tired after the hard sleeper, I don’t actually even feel like doing anything special so this is quite okay for me anyway. In Xian we plan to see of courtse the Terracotta Warrios also climb the Hua Shan mountain if the weather allows.

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