Our day started off uncharacteristically early at 6am. We were packed, showered & checked out by 7am. Leaving our present for Li Hong on the front desk. We walked to the edge of the walled city & then got a taxi to the train station.
Our first train was a bullet train from Pingyao to Shiazhuang, leaving at 8.40am & arriving at Shijiazhuang at 11am. When we got onto our train there was people in our seats & lots of people sitting on the floor & standing around. We thought the seats on the train had been double booked until someone explained those people brought standing tickets & that we just need to show our tickets & the people should get out of our seats. Sounds easy enough! There was a bit of resistance by the 2 middle aged women sitting in our seats, but eventually they moved. After taking our seats, the rest of the journey was uneventful. I slept the whole way & Tom watched Netflix.
We then had a 4.25 hour stop over in the busy station of Shijiazhuang, but easily found our departure level & gate. Which thankfully were not at a seperate station. The train from Shijiazhuang to Taishan was a slow sleeper train. When we first brought these tickets online, there was a problem with the processing which resulted in only 1 soft sleeper ticket being issued to me. Overnight the rest of those tickets sold out. Tom had to buy a hard seat ticket & sit 9 carriages away. It was a long, lonely train ride for me. The train left at 4.15pm & got into Taishan station at 1.10am. Officially the town is called Tai'an & is situated at the base of Taishan, also called Mount Tai.
Another taxi took us to our hostel with no issues. We had been in contact with the hostel admin requesting a late arrival between 1am - 2am & we were assured someone would be there for us. On arrival, no one was there, the lights were off & there was a note on the door to ring a contact number. Neither of us have a Chinese number so Tom walked down the road & found a drunk man sitting in his shop front listening to loud, sad music. He rung the number for us & before too long we were checked in! It is a really spacious room with a large bathroom & the fanciest toilet I've seen in China. To fully appreciate this revelation, the past 2 weeks have been all squatty potty toilets, this toilet is exciting! We still can't flush our toilet paper though.
Finally it was sleep time for Tom, while I downloaded a new fantasy trilogy to start reading. It wasn't long before I joined Tom in the land of dreams.
- Alli
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