Packed In Like Sardines

So……morning. No breakfast to speak of so we had to make do with the rest of our snack/supplies that we had purchased along our travels. All we had to do was check out of the hotel by 11:30am and head towards the train station, via the metro. With a heavy heart we said goodbye to Chungking Mansions and made our way outside to stock up on food for the train journey through to Shanghai.

Once we arrived at the train station we ended our trip to Hong Kong in the same way we had started – a McDonalds meal upstairs. We added some cards and a crossword in too to waste some time as we had a couple of hours to kill. When it came time for us to depart we made our way through all the passport controls and security to get through to the waiting room, and then joined the stampede for the escalators once we had been given the “OK” to make our way to the train. It seems to me that in China (and indeed some other Asian countries, but not all of them) there is no formal queuing system so I didn’t feel guilty at all about sneaking through a little shortcut to beat some of the heaving masses. Sadly my little trick didn’t quite work because someone had fallen/stopped at the bottom of the escalator so it was powered down until the blockage was removed. It didn’t really matter though as we all had allocated seats/beds anyway.

As we got on the train we were bracing ourselves for what would greet us when we got to seat/bed 19 and 20. We were unable to get a soft sleeper booth (4 people, 2 up and 2 down with a closing door) so we had to make do with a hard sleeper bed (2 up, 2 down, 2 in the middle, with no door to close) and hope that the other 4 beds would not get filled. They did, of course, but we had bagged the 2 at the top so we could just hide ourselves away up there and not get in the way of the crazy Chinese people below and around us. There certainly wasn’t much room up there and we both managed to bang and thump most parts of our body on the ceiling, walls and bedrails. 

Comfy?

We spent some of the trip in the corridor at the small fold-down seats and table, until we were absolutely sure that we wouldn’t have to get off the train to go through yet more security. After we had eaten our dinner we passed the time with cards, music and a few episodes of Red Dwarf, before settling down with a movie to finish the day off. As days go these travelling ones are pretty much write-offs unless something amazing happens, so this blog entry will finish here. Apologies.

Filling in yet another departure/arrival card