18 hours on a train

I’ve never done anything like this before! We are on the over night train to Hong Kong. Instead of two bunks, 4 people to a room with soft beds, Tvs, clean and modern rooms, we are in the same size room with 6 people on hard beds. It is quite an experience. No one else in our room speaks English so it’s pretty quiet except for Katie and I, who are on the top and have hit our heads a few times. We can’t even sit up straight without our heads hitting the ceiling. Climbing up here was a trip, I just hope I don’t need to go get down to go to the bathroom!! When I climb down I can't reach the floor or the bottom step (which is smaller than the size of my foot by the way) so I have to dangle from the bar and jump off, our Chinese roommates definetly get a kick out of that everytime I do it.

I couldn't even sit up straight in my bed!

This was our room, 6 bunks and I had to dangle from that bar on the left side of the picture and jump in order to get down! 

We left Shanghai at 6:30 and should get to Hong Kong around 12:30 tomorrow afternoon. I can’t wait to get there and shower!!! I’m also looking forward to getting out of China, the rudeness and pushing was starting to get to me really bad today. We haven’t even been on the train for two hours yet and we are already going stir crazy, and we just realized the chocolate we bought expired in August 2008. We definitely should have bought a bottle of wine before getting on this train…

Everyone brought tupperware containers with ramen noodles and either veggies, meat, etc, to eat. Every room on the train has a hot water kettle and there are hot water "stations" at the ends of every car so people can refill the kettles and add the water to their ramen noodles. Also it's very popular to buy noodles in a box and fill the cardboard box with the hot water.


Good thing I have a book and a deck of cards, maybe we’ll play rummy 10,000 all night. I just hope no one snores and I don’t fall off the bed!