Leaving Jack Behind

So.. the plan was to catch a bus in Kunming and go directly to Dali. The only thing we’d have liked to do before was buy ourselves some tickets for a train ride 10 days later to Xi’an. We thought it to be a bit early, but because of the spring festival madness we were advised to be as early as possible. We found the train ticket office quite easily and after being re-directed about four times we seemed to have found the right line to be standing in. It took about an hour before we finally got to the ticket window where we got the great news that all the tickets for the coming 10 days were already sold out. What?! Sold out?! Yep. Guess so.. The only thing the ticket guy could sell us was a seating ticket, which somehow seemed not too attractive for a 36 hour train ride. We decided not to get down by this (and hoped for possible train tickets in Dali) and went looking for the bus station that would have rides to Dali.

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So..we got on the train Guilin –> Kunming without any difficulties. We already start to get the hang of all this shouting-and-pushing at the train station. At the station itself we ran into our very first Israeli backpacker – Neal, and we also met the same two Swedish guys (Viktor & Niklas) we had the bamboo ride to Yangshuo with. Apparently China is not so big after all…

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We’re not kidding. We’re litteralily ‘chilling’ over here, it is so c-o-l-d!! Shanghai was already getting much colder when we left it but it’s nothing compared to this…

We arrived yesterday by train, which went suprisingly well. Those Chinese seem to have it all perfectly under control – all is amazingly organized, clean and – even though most is in chinese – relatively understandible. The metro system in Shanghai is impressive and works like clockwork. Moreover, our train to Hangzhou left at 12:34 and arrived at 14:14 exactly – just as they said it would. Take that Dutch Railways!

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