Bullet Train to Pingyao – 16th October

We set our alarm and got up early to travel to our next destination. Glen had booked and paid for our train tickets online a few days before. We had to get to the main train station and we were told to arrive two hours before the train departed to allow for the ticket collection. Therefore after 20 minutes stood fretting on the side of the road without a taxi driving by we decided to drag ourselves and the backpacks down to the subway.

We had to navigate the subway system, we had three changes, (get off a train and travel back two stops once we realised we’d jumped on the wrong train) go through numerous security checks, work out which queue to get in for the ticket collection and find the correct waiting area. Luckily with the help of Glen’s translate app and lots of helpful local people we got there in plenty of time and were sat waiting in area 11, as advised by a member of the station staff. And relax…… however, luckily Glen didn’t trust the last information and wandered off….. he came back and we then promptly jogged to waiting area 10! Backpacks bobbing up and down plus my wheelie backpack dragging behind me making the noise of a train going over the tracks, we pushed and shoved our way through to the front of the ticket check at the boarding gate (we are learning the ways of the locals) and eventually saw the immaculate, clean, smooth specimen which is the Bullet Train. We made it! Phew!

Glen, exhausted by the pressure of ensuring he got us to the train safely and on time promptly pushed his seat back and went to sleep! His work was done!

I, on the other hand, had yet to start my work!

I sat looking around for inspiration and noticed a lovely old man to our right. A younger man had walked back a few seats to him and put a jar of what looked like urine on his table and promptly and silently went back to his seat (his Grandson I presumed)

He looked at the jar for a while, I looked at the jar for a while. There was something floating at the bottom of it and I wondered whether it was a piece of fruit or fungi (we’d had some sort of pear, date and weird white fungi drink a few days before which was about the same colour) or i wondered if it was the old man’s pet fish!

Ah, OK so we’ve established it’s a drink of some sort.

The train is speeding along at about 300km per hour. The various sized blocks of flats have gone and we are now travelling through the countryside, it’s very flat. It is grey and wet outside so we’d timed our four hour train journey perfectly. The last two days were sunny with blue skies which had been glorious for our trip to The Great Wall and the Summer Palace the day after. (Beautiful landscape grounds with large lakes, temples, 17 arch bridges, people dancing and children with slits in their trousers)

A short time passes; so the drink seems to have been a laxative.

Back in his seat, having made some room! He is now enjoying a tray meal similar to those they give you in flight. In fact the whole feel of this train is like an aircraft. There are ‘cabin crew’ dressed in pristine red and gold uniforms pushing food trolleys up and down. The engine sounds like a quieter version of jet engine and the train banks one way and then the other in a way I wish I had my seat belt ‘securely fastened’

Meal finished and tray removed, the ‘Grandson’ was back topping up the jar with more of the liquid. The unidentified object still bobbing at the bottom of the jar. As I sit here blowing my nose (I still have a cold) and thinking this and that I wondered when the jar was last washed, whether the bit of whatever it was had been there for some time. I read once about a restaurant in England that had been making some sort of casserole, stew as my Nan would have called it, for 74 years without washing the pot! They just kept adding meat and vegetables to it and serving it out.

I just walked towards the front of the train to use the loo to find there wasn’t one so turned around and walked back to my seat and the lovely old man was beaming at me with a big warm smile pointing behind him, to the toilets I guessed.

Jack, I can report that they are perfectly clean and are western style. Emily, they had free paper seat-covers! It’s funny how they always have such things in the clean toilets and not in the dirty ones where you really need them!

Talking of toilets, I haven’t told you about the toilets in Beijing yet. They were unsurprisingly the squat style. Using them is the only time I remember I sprained my right ankle before I left and that I have a chronic left ankle problem. Having travelled through Asia before I can now use them with ease, unlike when I first went to Malaysia in 2013 and used to remove all clothing below my waist before attempting to squat! The problem now is not squatting down and aiming but getting back up from that position with my bad ankles and hips. Goodness knows how the old folk manage!

As I sit here, nearing our destination with a pile of used tissues on my lap, sniffing and coughing, I wonder if I feature in the blog of anyone around me!