Friday 18 May
We have to leave the hostel at 10.00 am to get our train from Urumqi to Lanzhou, but before that, Reg and Frances go early to get the train tickets for our journey from Xi'an to Beijing, but without success. The office is open, the tickets are available from today, they just aren't available yet.
We all have breakfast - yoghurt with jam, and bread and marmalade (psychedelic orange and very sweet), and of course tea, and then Frances comes to see us off at the station, helping us with our luggage on the crowded bus. We give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek - she seems smilingly embarrassed. Later I get a text from her to say her parents have never kissed her, so to be hugged and kissed was a new experience for her. We know some Chinese to be very openly affectionate to their young child/children, as we've seen it - but some families in all cultures I guess don't openly show affection. We've always been a family that hugs and kisses.
This is our first time on Chinese trains. The train journey, mostly through the Gobi desert, will take till tomorrow (Saturday) morning. We're sharing a cabin with a Chines gentleman, probably in his 50's. He's wary of us at first, as we dominate the cabin with our huge suitcase and Reg's rucksack and 2 smaller backpacks, plus a carrier bag full of food. We arrange our luggage as best we can, and smiling Reg soon wins over the reticent Chinese man, who at lunchtime offers us some of his lunch, including crispy fried chicken's feet, which we decline. Early on in the journey, which began at 11.45 am, the Chinese man changes into his striped pyjamas, and is still in them when we leave the train at Lanzhou.
Chinese trains are faster, quieter, and the toilet area is kept much cleaner than on the old "Soviet" trains. The clean bedding is already on the bunks - you don't have to make your own bed. In fact everything is better apart from 2 small factors; there are no clean towels provided (not a big problem), and on this particular train, there are electric sockets in the cabins, and in the corridor - but no electricity. When we had no joy with the sockets I asked 2 train guards, and both shook their heads. This is quite important for the computer and Reg's phone on long journeys. However, a plus for Chinese trains is that, aeroplane style, they come around with meals in plastic trays in the evening for purchase - Reg and I have one each and they are quite nice really. Reg eats with the chopsticks provided, I use a knife and fork.
In the evening, it seems that there won't be a 4th person in our cabin, so we decide to put our big suitcase and Reg's large backpack on the spare top bunk (Reg is in the other top bunk), to give us more room to move in the narrow space between the bottom bunks. All goes well until we stop at a station at 5.00 am, and there's a loud knocking on our cabin door, which we've locked for the night. A Chinese man in his 30's has booked the other top bunk! To be fair, his reaction when sees his bunk strewn with lots of luggage is brilliant. I manage to wake up Reg, and between them, Reg and the new passenger haul all our luggage down from the top bunk and plonk the suitcase in between the bottom bunks, and the large backpack on the end of my bunk. I can't get out of bed as I've no trousers on!!
Very soon the new passenger in the top bunk is snoring very loudly indeed. The Chinese man in the pyjamas, in the bottom bunk, shouts at him good naturedly in an effort to stop the crescendo of sound. Reg says the man's snoring is even louder than mine! When we were snoring together it was according to Reg a cacophony of sound!
We arrive half an hour early in Lanzhou, and luckily, asked Frances to write the name and address of our hostel in Chinese. Several Chinese people, including our potential taxi driver, pour over our piece of paper, and eventually they seem to decide they know where our hostel is. The driver delivers us safely, but we've decided that Chinese road users in Lanzhou - cyclists, buses, motor scooters and car drivers - have the same mentality as our taxi driver in Kiev - it's a case of every driver for himself, and never mind who gets in the way. The continuous beeping is almost tuneful; the cars and buses even sound their horns when stuck in traffic - perhaps it relieves the stress. Nonchalant pedestrians scurry across the road, weaving in and out of the cars, and also wander along the gutter areas, seeming to prefer these to the pavements. Where the pavements are wide enough, cars will drive along them, looking for a parking space, taking little notice of legitimate pedestrians.
We have to leave the hostel at 10.00 am to get our train from Urumqi to Lanzhou, but before that, Reg and Frances go early to get the train tickets for our journey from Xi'an to Beijing, but without success. The office is open, the tickets are available from today, they just aren't available yet.
We all have breakfast - yoghurt with jam, and bread and marmalade (psychedelic orange and very sweet), and of course tea, and then Frances comes to see us off at the station, helping us with our luggage on the crowded bus. We give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek - she seems smilingly embarrassed. Later I get a text from her to say her parents have never kissed her, so to be hugged and kissed was a new experience for her. We know some Chinese to be very openly affectionate to their young child/children, as we've seen it - but some families in all cultures I guess don't openly show affection. We've always been a family that hugs and kisses.
This is our first time on Chinese trains. The train journey, mostly through the Gobi desert, will take till tomorrow (Saturday) morning. We're sharing a cabin with a Chines gentleman, probably in his 50's. He's wary of us at first, as we dominate the cabin with our huge suitcase and Reg's rucksack and 2 smaller backpacks, plus a carrier bag full of food. We arrange our luggage as best we can, and smiling Reg soon wins over the reticent Chinese man, who at lunchtime offers us some of his lunch, including crispy fried chicken's feet, which we decline. Early on in the journey, which began at 11.45 am, the Chinese man changes into his striped pyjamas, and is still in them when we leave the train at Lanzhou.
Chinese trains are faster, quieter, and the toilet area is kept much cleaner than on the old "Soviet" trains. The clean bedding is already on the bunks - you don't have to make your own bed. In fact everything is better apart from 2 small factors; there are no clean towels provided (not a big problem), and on this particular train, there are electric sockets in the cabins, and in the corridor - but no electricity. When we had no joy with the sockets I asked 2 train guards, and both shook their heads. This is quite important for the computer and Reg's phone on long journeys. However, a plus for Chinese trains is that, aeroplane style, they come around with meals in plastic trays in the evening for purchase - Reg and I have one each and they are quite nice really. Reg eats with the chopsticks provided, I use a knife and fork.
In the evening, it seems that there won't be a 4th person in our cabin, so we decide to put our big suitcase and Reg's large backpack on the spare top bunk (Reg is in the other top bunk), to give us more room to move in the narrow space between the bottom bunks. All goes well until we stop at a station at 5.00 am, and there's a loud knocking on our cabin door, which we've locked for the night. A Chinese man in his 30's has booked the other top bunk! To be fair, his reaction when sees his bunk strewn with lots of luggage is brilliant. I manage to wake up Reg, and between them, Reg and the new passenger haul all our luggage down from the top bunk and plonk the suitcase in between the bottom bunks, and the large backpack on the end of my bunk. I can't get out of bed as I've no trousers on!!
Very soon the new passenger in the top bunk is snoring very loudly indeed. The Chinese man in the pyjamas, in the bottom bunk, shouts at him good naturedly in an effort to stop the crescendo of sound. Reg says the man's snoring is even louder than mine! When we were snoring together it was according to Reg a cacophony of sound!
We arrive half an hour early in Lanzhou, and luckily, asked Frances to write the name and address of our hostel in Chinese. Several Chinese people, including our potential taxi driver, pour over our piece of paper, and eventually they seem to decide they know where our hostel is. The driver delivers us safely, but we've decided that Chinese road users in Lanzhou - cyclists, buses, motor scooters and car drivers - have the same mentality as our taxi driver in Kiev - it's a case of every driver for himself, and never mind who gets in the way. The continuous beeping is almost tuneful; the cars and buses even sound their horns when stuck in traffic - perhaps it relieves the stress. Nonchalant pedestrians scurry across the road, weaving in and out of the cars, and also wander along the gutter areas, seeming to prefer these to the pavements. Where the pavements are wide enough, cars will drive along them, looking for a parking space, taking little notice of legitimate pedestrians.
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