Foreign places Famous Faces All that digging in the sand at the beach when i was a little girl paid off and i finally reached China.

After the train ticket debarcle and getting hard seats and no sleeper for the 11 hours to Xi'an, we had finally arrived. Tired and cranky is the best way to sum it up. Not much speac eon those hard seat trains. We did have fun along the way. In fact, big giggles about all the snoozing chinese who have a habit of sleeping everywhere and anywhere. We did made a few sneaky snoozing movies featuring ...anyone who is sleeping. I tried to get some sleep and i become one of the victims as the Dragon Master put a sting on me. I shut my eyes a few times and got about 2 hours in total sleep (not even sure if you could call it sleep). The clock watcher himself had told me not to clock watch. so I took my watch off and had no concept of time which was the best way to get through 11 hours. If only i could meditate ! The hard seats on the train are totally upright, supposedly giving you posture but no where to slink your head back on the seat. I'm sure there are many travellers out there complaining of sore backs from long train journey's in china. After a couple of hours, even though the air con had kicked in, we were still fairly sweaty. When i stood up for the first time, it felt like ants were biting my bum. Not a comfortable feeling at all. We had bought some fruit and a couple of packets of instant noodles. Eating proved a good way to keep your mind of the discomfort of the long hourse. We bought a dinner which on the train which included a rice dish, a noodle dish, a tofu dish and a chicken dish. Hen hao ! The Dragon Master spotted a jar of chilli that the family sitting opposite us. He asked if he could have some. the mother said we could have the whoel jar. we didn't take it but Dragon Master helped himself a few times during the journey. It was damn hot chilli. Delish ! We amused ourselves by laughing at the man sitting next to us on the floor who was snoozing and snoring. Fits of laughter when we filmed the same man who ended up lying flat on the floor across the aisle with his head under one seat and his legs under another. He wasn't the only one to try to sleep on the floor. The train was pretty quiet when everyone was sleeping. and only few men didn't really sleep. At one stage, we were almost the only ones on our carriage that were awake. It was only until recently that i saw footage of the Dragon Master at workl that i realised he had been the only one awake of which he filmed the carriage and stung his sleeping beauty too ! Getting off the train, it was alot cooler in Xi'an. this is what we needed - a reprieve from the heat. Except that it was pouring with rain. This time we had booked ahead. The rest of the Xi'an story is told in 3 parts. This is the first, then next will be a long winded explanation of what happened next with the hotel. And the story posted after that will go into more detail about the things that we actually did in Xi'an.