The big journey from Hong Kong to London began this morning. The first leg of the trip is one of the longest: a 33 hour train journey from Shenzhen (just across the border from Hong Kong) to Xining. And we have been expecting this journey to be the worst of the entire trip, because there were only “hard sleeper” class berths available.
Long-Distance Chinese trains have a few classes of tickets:
- Deluxe soft sleeper – 2 person private cabin with locking door and private bathroom – only available on limited trains from major cities
- Soft sleeper – 4 person cabin with locking door and shared bathroom
- Hard sleeper – 6 person bunk room, no door, shared toilet at end of carriage – apparently this is best value for money and what most middle class Chinese take if they can afford it
- Soft seat – a comfy seat, doesn’t lay flat
- Hard seat – like it sounds … not comfortable.
- Standing – never ever ever get this ticket – apparently people with standing tickets jostle to climb onto luggage racks or sit in the aisles!
Our plan was to take Soft Sleeper for the overnight journeys, and Soft Seats for the shorter daytime trips.
Unfortunately on this first train, only Hard Sleeper was available. The only other option that would work for our time schedule was flying from Hong Kong to Xining – and we weren’t going to do that! So Hard Sleeper it is.
Anyway, we’ve been saying that this would be the absolute worst journey, and it would only get better from here. I was imagining a carriage of 15+ bunk rooms, each with 6 berths, filled with smelly food, noisy people, crying kids, spitting, and not getting a lot of sleep.
We were in for a surprise.
Continue reading “Day 1: Shenzen to Xining”