The most interesting 48 hours!

Did I say interesting? I meant most stressful / tiring / crazy!

On Saturday night Colin and I set off to the train station to get out
of Beijing. We knew we had 16 hours on a hard seat ahead of us and
prepared ourselves for a tough journey, but we couldn't really be
prepared for the experience awaiting us. We boarded the train 20
minutes early, which we thought was good time to sort ourselves and
what not, but at this time already the train was absolutely packed.
People sitting on every seat and even more people standing in any free
space they could find. And then there's Colin and I squeezing our way
through with our big backpacks and train food and a sleeping bag to
sit on. I could hear people tutting and getting annoyed as we
struggled through bumping people on the way. Then we get to our seats
and there's 2 old ladies sitting in them... we showed our tickets and
asked them to get up. That's right, you read correctly, but before you
judge us let me say that I bet you'd have done the same, you wouldn't
want to stand for 16 hours. Once we'd finally sorted space for all our
stuff and we settled into our seats we saw that we were the only 2
westerners in our carriage and everyone was staring at us. A young guy
sitting next to us spoke a bit of English and started laughing. He
apologised and then explained that the train we were on is the worst
in China and that he'd never seen westerns on it. He obviously
insisted on taking a photo of us amongst all these people, saying it
was a once in a lifetime occurrence. The rest of the journey was
uncomfortable and impossible to sleep, but not too bad.

We had a hotel booked (due to the National holiday, everywhere was packed) 
so knew we could look forward to a nice shower and a nap after our long
journey. We arrived in Xi'an South station, a bit later than scheduled and
found out that we still had a two hour drive to Xi'an centre. We'd
looked at a leaflet that suggested we catch a bus to the centre, but
the buss attendants didn't speak English so we couldn't be sure that
the buses would take us there and then we had taxi drivers telling us
that we had to go with them because only they would take us directly
to the centre.

We decided to take the cheaper bus option and a guy on the bus told us
we needed to change at some point, but that he would show us where to
go. It's so strange and at times scary trusting random people that
don't speak your language, but when you have no better options, then
you kind of check out the person and if they seem fine, then you just
hope your gut instinct is right.

Eventually we do arrive at the centre and find our hotel pretty
easily, but our nightmare was just beginning. The hotel had no record
of our booking and they were fully booked. We struggled to find
accommodation in Xi'an and were relieved when we found this hotel, so
we knew that it would be near impossible to find somewhere else and at
this point it was after 5pm. The hotel staff tried to be helpful and
rung a few places they knew of and at about 6pm Colin and I were
driven to another hotel. We couldn't believe our luck, but as it
turned out, it was too good to be true. First the price kept changing,
then we were told we had to leave our bags in reception at all times
and then we found out it was some sort of funny bath hotel where you
could sleep in a bath house or something, we didn't quite understand
as everyone only spoke Chinese. We both agreed that we didn't like the
sound of this place and were so fed up of people wasting our time,
time that we didn't have as it was now after 7pm. So we walked, we
didn't know where we were going or what we were doing. We were both
extremely tired having not slept for about 36 hours and not eaten much
either. We managed to keep each other going because luckily we seemed
to hit our lows at different times. When we spotted a McDonalds we
grabbed some food there, which we hardly touched because we felt too
stressed to eat the food. Then we started walking again, just walking,
not able to think properly or come up with any sort of plan. And then
we bumped into a man that we'd met on the train from Russia and twice
randomly after that. He could clearly see the desperation and worry in
Colin and I and him and two of his friends took my bag from me and
took the lead in helping us find somewhere safe to sleep. It was
exactly what we needed and we were so grateful for the help and
friendliness. After a few of what would have been expensive calls from
his mobile we still had no luck, so we went to his hostel to use the
internet. We spent 2 hours calling hotels and hostels and after going
to the lady at the hostel to use her phone for about the 50th time I
begged her to please let us sleep on their floor in reception or
anywhere they'd have us. She felt so sorry for us that she agreed to
let us sleep on their roof top on sun loungers and offered for us to
use the staff bathrooms. So Colin and I slept outside, on the roof in
our sleeping bags and this was absolutely perfect.

The next day we booked a comfortable sleeper train out of Xi'an and we
are now in Shanghai, away from the madness.