We should have arrived in Xi’an right now if we were able to book a train to Xian. Anyway, it’s a great thing that we were able to find tickets going to Beijing. Unfortunately, the only tickets available were soft seats leaving at 1pm and arriving to Beijing at 7am. That’s a 16-hour train ride. L. We have nothing to do but tour our area, Jing’an temple (jing an suh). There’s not much to do so we watched those performing tai chi. Afterwards, and because of boredom, we do some fashion-seeing… meaning checking how fashionable Shanghainese are.  :)

After checking out of Le Tour, we proceeded to Shanghai Railway station to face the inevitable train ride.

Train ride

The ride was tough… really tough. The CR’s a mess that I tried to use the toilet only once. At first, we thought that those who have purchased seat-less tickets would have enough space to place their luggage at the floor and sit down. We were wrong. If you purchase seat-less, you need to be prepared to stand/lean on other people’s seats. And if there’s an opportunity to sit even for a few minutes, then grab it. I if someone went to the toilet, pray that he’d be off for quite some time so that you can sit and rest for a bit. Poor Anton, his seat was taken several times. Again, Xty finalized our Beijing itinerary while we were on the train. We really had nothing to do inside the train. After 17 hours of twisting and turning in the seat (our train was delayed), we finally arrived in Beijing. To our dismay, the toilet in the Beijing railway station was disgusting as well. It was clean, but had a very foul odor.

We tried booking for our train ticket back to Shanghai, only to found out that all tickets were sold out AGAIN! (after constantly listening to their conversation, I’ve learned that Mei-yo means none) The counter we’re in was helpful enough and told us to come back after 30 mins(?) because a D-Train soft sleeper would open and sell tickets. After an hour or so of anxious moment, we were finally able to book a sleeper train. The schedule was good too. The train leaves at 930PM and would arrive at Shanghai at around 7am the next day. Problem solved! Now we can tour Beijing without any worries.