Sleeper Trains and Sleeper Buses

So, as most of you know we were pretty jazzed for the national holiday. Because we can hit a lot of things close by we decided to go far away for this vacation. And we did. Kunming was a 27 hour train ride from Yongzhou county (where I live). This had it's pros and cons. The pro is that I actually like sleeper trains. The con is that I hate using the sleeper bus.

Sleeper trains- When you want to travel really far, you take a sleeper train. Pretty self explanatory is that you can sleep on the train. The trains that cover big distances usually have a few cars of hard or soft seats. They also usually have a few cars of hard sleepers and maybe 1 or two soft sleeper cars, obviously a sleeper is more expensive than a seat, and soft is more expensive than hard. The seats are what you'd imagine them to be. The hard seats are kind of nightmarish. Some people will take the hard seats for 1-30 hours and sometimes they stand the whole way. So compared to that, I was in the lap of luxury. The Sleeper cars were rally awesome. They were just like bunk beds everywhere. It's pretty tight, you can't sit up on any of the beds except the bottom ones (There's top middle and bottom), but it's comfortable and I had no problem sleeping through the night, which is good since we were on a 27HOUR TRAIN RIDE. That's probably the longest anything ride I've ever had, and it was way fun.

Sleeper Bus- A friend once told me never to take a sleeper bus. Ideally, a sleeper bus works like so. You get on at night, go to sleep, and wake up in a new place. We wanted to save time since we only had so much for vacation, so once we got to kunming and had seen the stone forest, we decided to take a sleeper bus to Li Jiang. Good idea? Hard to say. Li Jiang was awesome, the sleeper bus was, well..., an adventure.
I posted pictures of the train and the bus. The bus is the one with all the metal bars the the yellow bed sheets. The train was about a billion times bumpier than anything I have ever imagined riding (Including a giant armadillo). Not only that, but it rolled you side to side into the bars through out the night. And we went with John and his two kids (Toddler and Baby). Didn't sleep much that night. We got on the bus at about 830pm. I fell asleep at about 11. Woke up at 12, and at 1230, I heard Brooke laughing a couple beds over. Someone said, "What's up with Brooke?" and Brooke said,
"Sorry guys, this is the only way I know how to handle this is to laugh."
This was followed by a lot more laughing and a lot less sleep. I'm pretty sure every Chinese person on that bus hated us by the time we were done. Stupid loud Americans, and yes, we were.

The train pics are first. The squatter toilet is on the train. I used it. Squatted and everything. You proud? After the squatter pictures are the bus.

I will say, I do still love to travel.

More to come.

3 comments:

Kristy said...

Hey Sam,
China China China- its amazing isn't it. What humble people. They are so close to God it makes me want to be better! It sounds like you are doing great! -- I'm excited because I will be joining the flagship program where the goverment will pay for me to go to china. So many great opportunities. Good luck on all you do, Love Love Love those people!

ClaireM said...

Sounds like fun, I thought that the 13 hour plane from from LA to Brisbane was bad, seems like you win, and besides I really don't think that I could be brave and do a squatter toilet, looks like I will never go to China!

Unknown said...

On the record, I hate squat. I'd rather dont drink anything during my travel than using a squatter toilet. I guess I am too westernized. haha