We were leaving for Xi’an today and Ryan was confronted with
his first problem, how to get his sword onto the train. We discovered you can’t
mail swords through postal mail. Gump helped us get it boxed up and shipped
over with the excess luggage, it cost about 80yuan. His cheap sword was suddenly not as cheap. I was feeling annoyingly
sick so I was really glad it was a low key day.
We were taking an overnight train to Xi’an. Train is the
most popular way to travel in China. Especially during the holidays when
everyone is trying to go home all at the same time. There are four ways to ride
the train. They had soft sleeper cars with bunks and mattress. They had hard
sleepers which I assume is the bed without the mattress. They had chairs to sit
in, and then they also sell standing tickets. Standing tickets means exactly
what it sounds like, there aren’t enough chairs so people will stand during the
entire trip. And China is not a small place, we were on a 14 hour train ride
from Chengdu to Xi’an, I can’t even imagine how painful that would be to stand
for 14 hours.
We got the soft sleeper cabins because we’re spoiled
tourists and the expensive cars to them were probably only like $20 for us.
Each cabin had two bunks, there was space in between the size of the door and
no more. Ryan and I roomed with Anne and Ric. People socialized out in the
train car hallway but I was still feeling sick so I just tried to rest for the
trip. It was much more comfortable than a 14 hour plane ride, but that’s about
it.
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