I've finally found a proxy server to access my own blog, yay! For those who are unaware, the Chinese government blocks several websites including Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, and recently Blogger. But as always there are ways around it and I've finally found one.
Anyways...
I arrived in Beijing after a pleasant 12 hour flight from San Francisco on a beautiful day. Beijing can get very smoggy (LA X 10) but when I arrived we could actually see some blue sky. We got in around 2:30pm giving me plenty of time to make the 7 o'clock train I was hoping to catch headed for Kunming. I took the Beijing lightrail (subway, whatever you want to call it) shluffing all 85+ pounds of my crap all the way across town. One and a half hours later I had reached the station where I needed to get off.
Walking up to street level some older Chinese man saw me carrying all of my stuff, ran down, grabbed my 50 pound duffel bag and helped me the rest of the way. It was a very nice gesture but then, as he reached the top of the stairs he just turned the corner and headed off towards the taxi's (yea, I guess I kind of stick out and perhaps look like a sucka). He flagged down a man on a little bike/rickshaw thing and just through my bag in the back of it. I had kept up though and knew he wasn't going anywhere for I had mentally gotten myself into track mode! It was all good though; I showed the cyclist on a map where the train station was and he already seemed to know that's where I was headed. I barely fit in this thing with all three of my bags but held on for dear life as this man motored me the one mile distance to the train station via little ally-ways. It was finally nice to just sit back and take in Beijing as the sun was getting lower. The people are fascinating and so are their ways of life.
He finally came to an abrupt halt where I proceeded to unload, practically tumbling out of his rickshaw. I paid him the 10 kuai ($1.50) it cost for the little ride and made my way towards the train station. I was glad I had made it this far with no hassle and was hoping to get a little further by catching this train.
Fortunately it wasn't too crowded at the ticket counters so I didn't have to wait that long. I was two hours early and couldn't wait to get on my sleeper train to conk out. Then the lady at the ticket counter, who actually spoke English (thank goodness) informed me that all trains to Kunming were full until the next night!! I was losing daylight and didn't know what to do; finally I just decided that the next day was my only choice. So I booked the ticket, which was a hard seat (there are four different ways to ride the train; listed from best to worst: soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, and :( hard seat. I also noticed that I was on the train K471 which is worse than the train T61 (I'll tell ya how worse in my next post). Now it was time to find a hotel.
A nice lady outside the terminal figured out my gestures and body language attempts to communicate 'hotel' and walked me right up to the front desk of one that was attached to the train station. It was only $50 for the night which was great. Everything here is cheap cheap. I cleaned up and went exploring a little; I found a grocery store and loaded up with two loaves of bread and 4L of water for the train ride. I wasn't sure if food was readily offered on the train nor how much it would cost. After checking the place out I came back to nestle in for the night. I had traveled some 6,000 miles and had a few more to go. I was anxious for the coming day but excited at what might happen on this adventurous train ride!
(See Facebook for pictures... although I am ONLY using Facebook to share pictures and not to communicate)
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