So, we left you in Beijing….right before one of the very helpful hostel staff recommended that we catch the bus to the train station, rather than take the subway as we had planned. I’ve been on a few very overcrowded buses and they always seemed kind of fun…I’m not sure why this particular bus ride was so traumatic but I’ve narrowed it down to four points:
1. 10kg of luggage strapped to your back starts to feel very heavy after standing for an hour and being shoved violently back and forth at every stop when someone wants to get off
2. everyone hated us because we were taking up more than our share of space with our giant backpacks (not to mention the puffy jackets that are so big I can’t actually see my feet when I’m wearing it)
3. four layers of clothing in a heated bus with 70 other people in close proximity makes you feel like you could lose your mind at any minute
4. there was an old man standing next to us coughing and vomiting into a plastic bag and I was very concerned that he was going to drop the bag/fill up the bag/die, therefore dropping the bag of vomit
The bus ride certainly wasn’t funny at the time…it’s a little bit amusing now (even though we’re now suffering arm socket injuries from holding on) and maybe even hilarious tomorrow. Anyway, we were very happy to make it onto our train after the lack of English instructions in the (enormous) train station. The train ride was quite pleasant – it was great to be able to sleep horizontally (as opposed to a plane), and if you’re not claustrophobic, significantly overweight or scared of heights (for the top bunk that you have to vault yourself into), it’s a good way to travel.
I’ll leave Josh to talk about the Terracotta Warriors (I don’t have my guidebook with me and I’m not sure my brain has retained too much of the information from our very thorough and slightly boring audio guides).
We spent tonight wandering the Muslim Quarter, which was awesome. It’s basically lanes of little food shops with people cooking all sorts of exotic fare out on the street…we walked through choosing different things to eat and most of it was delicious. The low point was perhaps the hot pear mystery drink (Josh’s choice), while the high point was the leak/beef turnover (my choice) – excuse me while Josh and I have a small argument about who chose the best food – and the crazy fried vegetable sandwich (Josh’s choice). We have agreed that those are tied for first place. So we’re doing pretty well with the food choices – Josh has left me in charge of picking restaurants, which can be dangerous because I usually just wander into one when I get tired of looking and start ordering things off the menu while Josh is still saying “I’m not sure what’s in that though…” We had a delicious dumpling and beef noodles lunch today, and no sign of food poisoning yet.
We haven’t had as much luck with the traffic…I have to hold Josh’s hand like a five year old while he tells me when it’s safe to walk across the road. We agreed that this was necessary after two instances of me nearly getting run over…one time I actually got shouted at through the bus loud speaker (I’m not sure what the driver was broadcasting but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t “please be careful where you’re walking Madam, for your own safety”).
Sorry we can’t add any photos – there’s no way to do it at this internet place (stay tuned for the photo of the day – according to Josh – of the dog from the restaurant we ate in today for lunch. It might be the last photo he’s in, since they definitely had dog on their menu… I though the man cooking quail eggs was better though).
(Josh here… I’m booting Penny off the computer and I’ll try and post update about the rest of the day via the kindle back at the hostel… once we’re out of this smoke filled spinster hole… Penny tells me spinsters are only women, and I’m being too obtuse… we’re in a video game cafe, which just happens to have internet access…)