14 June 2011

Last night we boarded a train leaving UB and heading to the Chinese border town of Erlian. We chose the cheapest and longest option to get to Beijing - the train to the border and then a bus to the capital. We departed at 8PM and were joined by a creepy guy whose name I cannot pronounce... let's call him Fluffy. Fluffy spoke no English, and we attempted to communicate via a phrasebook. He's 40, and couldn't find his home province on a map (and I thought American education was bad). Fluffy took pictures of us on his phone and made my picture his background. Yea, creepy.

I woke up this morning in a hot, cramped compartment, and began coughing due to the cigarette smoking and no ventilation. I looked up, and through a cloud of billowing smoke saw the "No Smoking" sign, and sighed. Apparently, Fluffy transcends the rules.

We arrived in Erlian at 11:30 am and after an hour of wandering around completely lost with all of our bags, on an empty stomach, parched as hell, in the heat, and with no money, we finally found the bank. Now loaded, we went to lunch, where they hardly spoke English, and then to the bus station (which was impossible to find, and people pointed us every which way). Two hours after arriving in this dusty town, we got our tickets to Beijing. Another white guy, a German named Nikolai, was assumed to be in our group by the salesperson and was given a seat with us.

The four o us found spots in the waiting room and began playing the Mongolian ankle bone game. Four white people playing a Mongolian game on the floor attracted so much attention that we were literally surrounded by onlookers (one of whom was Fluffy).

We boarded the bus - tiny little beds lined the inside in three rows. My seat was taken by a shirtless fat Chinese man, so I took his seat, but was asked to switch with some girl... which worked out because Michael, Nikolai, and I were all next to each other. We made pit stops at nasty bathrooms, where there were three holes in the ground and no dividers. I felt bad for the man, who in plain view, was having stomach issues. At one stop, there was a thunderstorm, and lightening was going crazy in the distance, beyond the nuclear powerplants and broken buildings. It looked like something out of Residence Evil.

At 2:30 AM, we arrived in Beijing, but we didn't realize it because we were told we'd arrive at 4AM. People weren't rushing to get off, so I figured it couldn't be Beijing. We went back to sleep, and at 3:50, I woke up. I looked around, realized that the only passengers left were us, and walked to the driver to ask him if we had arrived at Beijing... he ignored me. We showed him 'Beijing' in Chinese, and he nodded. Laughing, we got off the bus in a dark, sketchy dirt parking lot and bumped into Mariana and Jim, two Americans we met in Erlian. The six of us took cabs to Tiananmen Square, and then walked to Leo's Courtyard Hostel, which is an awesome old building in an alley, off of an alley, off a side street.

PS - Wish You Were Here