Our Beijing tour was finally over. We didn’t plan any more tours but concentrated on shopping and buying souvenirs.

It’s a good thing that the Happy Dragon Hostel allowed us to take a shower in their common bathroom even though we’ve checked out already that afternoon. Katie even handed us towels, and offered a hair dryer. Too bad, we’re unable to say goodbye to her. They’re hosting a free dumpling party that night so she’s probably busy.

At 930pm, we finally got a taste of the D-train soft sleeper. Just when we thought that we could stay at this train for 17 hours, our travel time just took about 10.5 hours. The train’s really clean. We stayed at the upper bunks of a 4-bed cabin. Xty and I have businessmen (so we thought) as room mates. Anton stayed on another cabin. We noticed that some passengers even changed to their night clothes and put on their respective night creams. We say that the D-train is equivalent to the business class seating in airlines. Each bunk is provided with a soft bed, own tv, and own reading light. Each car has 2 toilets, a western and a local one. It’s also great that the crew always clean the toilet and replenish the tissue every now and then. The D-train is also equivalent to a bullet-train. It was so fast (and only has 1 stopover) that our first 17-hour T-train journey was cut into just 10.5 hours. If only T-trains were as clean as the D-trains, we would have loved to stay for 17 hours there. We were able to watch Iron Man in this D train. Unfortunately, it’s dubbed in Mandarin, and its subtitle is in Chinese. Even the Korean hit, My Sassy Girls was dubbed in Mandarin, subtitle was also Chinese.