To Chengdu

(Pictures will come later, I am writing, and posting this, in a Hostel In Xian)

Zeneta and I are finally on our vacation. We started a bit late and the first leg did not go as planned; however, it worked out. And, for a bit more information, I am writing this on my new toy.

Zeneta and I had listed a number of items that we were interested in doing at the beginning of winter vacation. However, there were a number of limiting factors, Then, both I and the
dog were sick. The dog being sick is an issue because I was not willing to leave Gao Jing in a position where she was trying to both deal with a sick puppy and prepare for her exams. My illness was just a cold; but, I was not interested in traveling while under the weather.

once we were all better Zeneta went to get tickets. The problem was that the tickets were not available so I quickly came up with two alternate itineraries. The first alternate was a no-go; but the second worked.

The plan was to go to Chengdu then Xian. The reason for Chengdu was simple. It was to see the pandas. Getting to Chengdu involved taking the D train to Hankou, or, what most people think of when they think of Wuhan. The second leg was a twenty five hour ride from there to Chengdu.

The stop in Hankou was an eleven hour layover. We had some concern because, while we were coming off of a D train, the next leg was hard sleeper. Very simply, we did not want to spend the eleven hours in a hard waiting room. Well, I had no real trouble getting them, the functionaries at the train station, to let us in the soft waiting room, which was, albeit poorly, heated. This lasted for several hours. we used the, clean, if Chinese, facilities, enjoyed our tea, I plugged in my PDA and charged it while reading a book on it.

Then, about midnight, the soft waiting room closed and they sent us to another room. This room was not bad and was not excessively crowded, like the hard waiting room would have been; however, like the hard waiting room, it was very cold. To put things in perspective, it was well below freezing (apx. -2c) and all the rooms, but the soft waiting room, do not have doors. They open directly to the outside. As stated, we were cold.

It was a bit of a relief to get on the train. At least it was heated. Both Zeneta and I had top bunks, which I have talked about before. Further, we were on opposite ends of the car. However, we both, quickly, went to sleep.

As usual, the trip itself was uneventful. The next day the lights were turned off early, about 9:30pm, because Chengdu was the end of the line and it was scheduled for 5:30am.