Moving on again: our first sleeper train - Day 17 - Oct 4, 2009

We checked out of the Hotel again with another dispute with the staff, this time over the return of our deposit. We had little patience and decided not to waste our time and left.

We boarded the train and were delighted with what was in store. No hard seats and relatively clean travelling conditions. No smoking and unlimited hot water (for our tea and pot noodles) and not so crowded. We did not know what we were missing until we took that first step onto that sleeper train. We will never travel long distance without a sleeper again, no matter what the cost! During the day the bottom bunk (of 3 beds) was used as seats and we sat with a young girl called Kitty who is studying Business English at college. Her English was quite limited but it was nice to talk to her about her life in China. She explained how if she was our age her mum would kill her if she wasn’t married and that by 30 y/o it’s considered too late. The Chinese seem to be quite wedding crazy, there are lots of wedding shops and wedding photography in every city centre. We found it all a little scary. Surprisingly, the bride wears a white gown just as we do but they take the wedding photos on a different day so that they can be perfect.