Finally Xi'an & the next part of our adventure. 
We managed to book our train ticket on the internet with no help! A small success in the scary Chinese internet. We are travelling just over 1000km's south by train into the Shaanxi Province. The journey will take about 15 hours by train & starts at 10.18am. For this reason we booked hard sleeper tickets, which basically means a bunk bed in a carriage. The soft sleepers are slightly more expensive and nicer, also sold out. Tom & I brought what I'm assuming were some of the last tickets as we were split up! Still in the same train carriage but 17 rows of bunks apart. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was happily surprised! My bunk was on the bottom & the sections of bunks were quite spacious, there was some seats & tables, a large window & curtains for privacy. In the first 2 hours, the section I was in seemed empty except for 2 other Chinese gentleman who weren't fazed by us at all. It's nice to be ignored! We've had a lot of attention in China, particularly at Chinese attractions, theres lots of pointing & people taking photos & videos of us.
Tom spent the first part of the journey sitting with me on my bottom bunk while we read & listened to music. Shortly after midday the 2 gentleman got off and a mother with a teenage daughter & a toddler hopped on. A different ticket inspector came by & I was pointed to move up to the middle bunk despite our English confirmation ticket saying lower bunk & the first inspector pointing at the lower bunk. This meant Tom had to go down to his section. I was later grateful for moving up a bunk cause it turned out the toddler was loud & naughty. At 3.30pm some more people boarded the train, filling up the section of bunks I was in. 1 man was angrily pointing at the middle bunk, that I was now lying in. The first and second ticket inspector came to check tickets and realised they moved me to a bunk that didn't match my ticket redirected the man to the bottom bunk that I started in. Bloody hell what a mess!
A feature of the Chinese trains is a hot water dispenser, which is handy for making your own tea & big bowls of noodles! We always buy plenty of snacks for these trips & decided to give sliced, dried kiwi fruit a go. Probably won't buy them again! They are really tart & not a nice texture.
Eventually we arrived at about 1am as sheduled & caught a taxi to our hotel. After the standard amount of difficulty locating the reception, mostly due to a massive construction site on the street, we checked into a different room than advertised, a large room with 2 double beds. Although this was an upgrade we didn't want and still had to pay for, it only came to about $6 more so no probs! We retired and tried for some more sleep.
- Hot tip for travelling to a new destination -
Before departing for our next destination we email our accommodation to alert them of what time our train/bus gets in & what time to expect us. So far we have arrived at all our destinations after dark. This has been very handy & someone is normally waiting in the area to meet us. Trying to find a specific address or entryway is never easy, especially at night. Usually your cab driver is happy to call the accommodation as you are headed from the train/bus. Or if the taxi driver is unsure of the address. Cabs are extremely cheap over here so we always tip a little if they are helpful!
Alway have the accommodations address & phone number translated to Chinese & saved. We also have a few other helpful phrases saved, things like "how much for a taxi" "please ring this number for directions" etc. Try to keep the translations short & simple as they easily become turned about in the format of the Chinese language.
We look up the train or bus station on Google maps and pin the locations, same goes for our accommodation, so we have a reference and know what direction we need to go (Google maps seems to still work as long as you are connected to a VPN when you open your maps connected to Wifi, Also seems to trick your GPS into working inside China). Most booking websites such as booking.com will have a map function that you can cross check google maps with to be 100% sure you have the correct coordinates & address.
Lastly, photograph the taxi registration plates & the drivers license number which should be on display, make sure the driver sees you do it. We haven't really had to do this in China & no one has tried anything dodgy. It's a very good preventative in places like India & if you are a solo traveler though!
- Tom & Alli
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