I wish I had a picture of this scene. Technically speaking the hard=seat is not a bad seat and is quiet comfortable as a train seat really - IF you were travelling up to 5-6 hours no problem at all. The seats are pretty new, soft enough, clean and with some space.
However for an overnight ride - this just does't work at all. The seats seat people back to back. So there is no incline at all. The back is straight up and down, with even perhaps some forward incline due to the head cushion. errrr
Also you are facing other people in front of you, so your legs are all tanlged up together as there is just enough space strech out so long as the legs are tangled together - but after you are in a position there is no way to really move to another position.
Then there is the annoying thing that there is a table between you and the people in front of you. Now this would be fine on a short ride, but on a long haul, add to the discomfort.
In the end it is pretty hard to find a position to be able to fall asleep with. On the wirst buses in India I have been able to sleep, but here I could find only a few minutes of shut eyes at a time before my ass getting numb or my position getting painful. Plus you really just end up sleeping on the others - it is necessary.
Its is even weirder that they don't ever shut off the lights in this compartment.
However the experience was fine in the context of things, we were lucky to get a seat at all to Beijing. So we were thankful no matter what was happening. The people we sat with were also nice and made the experience alot easier.
Of course we arrived to Beijing at around 10am, easily bought our tickets to Hong Kong without and drama at all (this ticket was easy to buy). After getting to the hostel which was in the centre of town just near Tianmen sq - we crashed for a few hours to get some much needed sleep. ahhhhh
Ciao for now
