Long Vacation: Day 8

Travel day! But first a visit to the Yonghegong Llama Temple on the street of our hostel. It was an experience that smelled strongly of incense and was filled with too many Buddhas to count and just as many sneaky pictures of them that definitely weren’t allowed..


Enjoying our cultural experience maybe a little too much?


This would explain all of the incense being sold on the street of our hostel. Go figure!

And the Buddhas..




That's a big buddha!!


I still have no idea what any of that had to do with llamas. Oh well!

One last trip to Silk Street and we were going to be on our way to Xi'an. I had exercised self-control and passed up many things I wanted until a pair of perfect knock-off Asics were literally handed to me and I had to stop and barter for them. Amanda and I tried every tactic we knew, telling the lady Amanda had a student with her same name (which was completely the truth), getting a picture with her..

..and we eventually got them down pretty low. Just take the picture and give me my dang Asics!


Remember how the last train I took to Beijing was an awesome little experience on a sleeper seat, tons of fun and full of smiles and everything wonderful. Welllllll...

Enter the hard sitting seat. They are adequately named. I sat straight up on a seat sharing leg room with three Chinese men for ELEVEN HOURS. Hours that should have been spent in a bed of my own not smelling like a hundred Chinese people who haven't showered in days. It was so awful. The most uncomfortable thing ever. Almost unspeakably so. Not to mention other perks of the night.. trying to balance over a squatter to change into my pajama pants. Or waiting for the man with the noodle cart to come (he never did). This picture pretty much sums up the experience...

These are the two guys across from me. Obviously they found the only comfortable sleeping position. That black, blonde, and light green mess on the right is me laying on the little table between the 2 rows of seats, with the hood of my jacket over my head in an attempt to block out the light of the train to get some sleep. Yuck. After that the international flight home is laughable. I'm not sure where to end this post in terms of what happened last that night because it's all a jumble in my brain of waking up from sleeping on Amanda every 10 minutes to re-adjust, fall asleep, repeat, over and over and over, all the while trying to cuddle with a seat that stuck at a 100 degree angle. My back hurts just thinking about it….{shiver}

And I couldn't help but wonder, "How long have we been on this train? Is this ever going to end?"

Until then, I just tried to sleep and avoid playing footsies with the sprawled-out legs of the Chinese man across from me.

And to think I couldn’t wait to experience a train across China.