China Train Experience

The Best Part of our Train Ride, a Xian Sunrise.

If 22 hours on a train in the “hard seat” option doesn’t get our blood boiling for some Amazing China touristing, well, I don’t know what will.

The Beginning.

From Huangshan to Xian, we took one motorized bike taxi, two trains, and used our fascinating feet to finally walk the city wall to reach our hostel in Xian. On our ‘hard seat’ train tix (we couldn’t read the mandarin) we sat 5 to a cubby.

Throughout the ride we saw bellies, as well as hotdogs in a bag, chicken feet, and warm beer being sold. We were also giggling at the individuals smoking right next to the no smoking sign in our train car, every time we looked up someone was back there puffing. It was funny until hour 20 when we realized we were inhaling this for most of the ride, yikes. We also had numerous photos taken of us as we were the only westerners visibly seen on this 22 hour ‘adventure’.

I guess he was warm, our view for the ride.

Interestingly enough, Oreo makes a Green Tea Oreo in China, we tried them on our train trip thinking they were mint Oreos since we couldn’t decipher the Mandarin, much to our dismay they weren’t the greatest, or even ver good 😦

Green Tea Oreos.

The agonizing train ride was not our worst (we did 60 hours one way on a trip to Ghana in West Africa in 2006), so we could take the long and hard sit up seats there. The trip was well worth the wait as we arrived at a sweet hostel in Xian. We are excited for our excavation pit views of Terracotta Warriors, meandering around ancient tombs, and spying on pandas! Stay tuned for these fabulous sites from Xian!

The End.