July 26-27, 2009 – Day 213-214 – Guilin, China

This was a very bad day because we had to leave today and forgot to book ahead of time for our night train to Kunming. The 18 hours it was scheduled to last turned into 25 hours due to a landslide in this rather unpleasant seasonal weather (humid, hot, rainy, and generally shitty summer).

Yeah...thats ramen soup

Since we had not learned our lesson about booking ahead yet, we were stuck in a 6-seat grouping in a train car with one seat-set too many resulting in legroom only ample enough for someone without legs and seat backs only wide enough for half of an average human body sliced longways. In addition to these conditions, Saben was caught in the middle seat between a crumpled Lindsey and another woman’s rather large ass who was sharing a seat with a short, stocky old man (who was the actual ticket holder of the seat) and Saben’s knees were wrestling of their own will with those of the skinny and moderately lanky guy stuck in the middle seat opposite to Saben. Lin was caught in a subtle leg fight with the same sized opponent opposite her who alternated between spitting grape skins (why don’t they eat grapeskins?) onto her foot when she was looking out the window and shoving the trash can (which would have happily accepted said grape skins) so far toward Lin that it was actually lying on top of her grapey-shoes and against her legs. Until she flung it back at the bastard.

Of course, in 25 hours, people board and exit the train, they trade seats (there is something about the Chinese that make them unhappy in their own seats and frequently want to trade seats all over the compartment) and we received a new set of neighbors sitting opposite us although the stocky old man and large assed woman remained for many (too many) more hours. These new neighbors were, hmm…how to put it? Let’s call them offensive-smelling-puckered-orifices so as not to upset the firewall at your place of employment. It was a family of 4 sharing 3 seats that were already too small for 3 people but this wasn’t just any family of four. This was a family spawned from a brief romance between Satan and Hitler. The two sons were roughly ages 7 and 10 and wore matching hawaiian flowered and dragon-ed (where can you find such fabric?!) cotton shirts and shorts and simmering red demon eyes. I believe they even had the beginnings of fangs and claws too. For the last 7 or so hours of the train ride/halt for the clearing of the landslide, the little buggers spent terrorizing us as we tried (oh, we tried so hard!) to get a few hours of sleep. The oldest one whose legs were long enough decided it would be fun to swing his legs back and forth. Fine and dandy, ok, except that back and forth meant into Lin’s shins! When these little demons were bored, they whined and cried, they screamed and fought with each other, slapped their parents and ran around the car while their parents did nothing, absolutely nothing. Sometimes the parents even laughed at the horrid ways the kids were acting but not one word of reprimand or any disciplinary action. Amazing!

Contemplating how best to land after jumping off the train

Well, finally those little shits, er, kiddies, went to sleep but first thing in the morning the oldest one knocked over one of our beer bottles (yes, we tried our best to drink away the pain and misery but Chinese beer is sadly “underpowered”) so that it landed with a loud crash on the floor. Then just a couple hours later, when the parents had tried to abandon their kids in the seats across from us while they themselves tried to find other seats (the musical chairs thing the Chinese enjoy so much), the youngest demon opened a bottle of water and promptly spilled the entire thing all over us, and yet did not get a single drop on himself. He just stood there looking at us. I guess he was trying to figure out what we were going to do or what he should do since he is apparently not accustomed to having to clean up messes or deal with consequences. With both of us at our wits end, we sulked off to the smokers’ area between the cars to try and rush the rest of the train ride from hell. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, no matter how much cursing and muttering we did. By the time we reached Kunming, it was early evening and all we could do was shower and eat a big meal that was, thankfully, not ramen soup.

Travel Tip:

Do not EVER under any circumstances book a seat on an overnight train. If the spoon in your ramen soup tub is sharp enough, you will probably kill yourself.