Sleeper Train Beijing to Xi'an

I'm going to make a video about this with a lot more detail, but I wanted to post here with some pictures too.

We took a sleeper train from Beijing to Xi'an. The trip took about 11 hours. We left at a little before 9pm and arrived in Xi'an around 8am this morning.

Beijing West was a confusing madhouse. There were so many people sitting around in what we thought was our waiting room. Announcements were made in Chinese, it seemed like platforms were being switched, and we started just looking for other tourists to follow. But nobody really knew what was going on. In the end, we were in the right place all along, and we came down the stairs to our waiting train.

We boarded the train and found our room. We booked a z-class train soft sleeper. Z-class trains are direct, with no stops in between. This is nice because there are no interruptions or announcements that wake you up in the middle of the night.

A soft sleeper room has four beds and a lockable door. It's semi private, perfect for a group traveling together. We shared our room with two nice ladies that gave us some fruit to try. It was yummy once I knew you're supposed to take the skin off it before you eat it.

The train car has a long hallway down one side and the rooms line up down the other side.

The room is decent sized. Isa and I paid a little more for the bottom bunks, but when we got to the room, we switched with the ladies because we're younger and could get up top easier, and we liked the top bunks better anyways. There's enough room to sit up, and there's a platform over the door for your bags.

There's a lady that went around with a cart full of food Hogwarts Express style but mostly packaged foods with no pictures on them so we had no clue what they were. Most people brought ramen or fruit for dinner. There's a faucet with boiling hot water which I'm pretty sure is specifically for ramen because I didn't see anybody use it for drinks or anything else. We just ate Pringles and other snacks we picked up at 7-11 earlier tonight.

The beds are comfy and they give you pillows and a nice thick blanket that kept us nice and toasty. The ride was fine. Mostly smooth with very few noises or bumps. Isa slept well, but I didn't. I'm a little paranoid about overnight trains after some people in our Europe group had some bad experiences. But the trip was completely uneventful and there were no issues at all.

I woke up around sunrise and watched the foggy countryside blur by the window.

Around 7:15/7:30 everyone started waking up and getting their stuff together, brushing teeth and whatnot. We rolled into Xi'an early a little after 8am and walked to our hotel, which is a story in itself.

Bullet Train from Shanghai to Beijing

This was our first experience with a bullet train. We had toyed with the idea of taking an overnight train, but the bullet train was about the same price and it was twice as fast.

We had tried to purchase our train tickets ahead of time, but the satellite office we went to seemed really sketchy, so we decided to buy the ticket the day we went.

We arrived at Shanghai's massive Hongqiao Station and stood in line for about 20 minutes, only to find out that they don't take American credit cards, only UnionPay, a Chinese credit card. So we went and got cash, got back in line, and when we got back to the window, somehow all the trains for the morning were sold out. We ended up having to wait 4 hours for the 3pm train, which wouldn't get us to Beijing until after 8.

So we wandered the station a bit...

And finally got on our train. It was smooth and comfortable. The train traveled around 300 km/hr, which is about 188 mph. My favorite part was watching the sun set across the Chinese landscape.

The trip goes by fast and the seats are comfy. Isa and I just played games and watched some tv on the iPad Mini.

When we arrived in Beijing, we took the subway from the train station directly to the Airbnb apartment we'd booked. The location was perfect, but the apartment was ghetto. It was very shady and uncertain coming in in the dark, and when we got to the apartment, no one was there to let us in (which is understandable since we were a few hours late). Our hosts had left a note with a phone number, so I ran through the streets looking for a pay phone, only to find out that the pay phones don't take coins, only UnionPay. I returned unsuccessful, to find Isa and our bags gone.

After panicking for a quick second, I heard noises from within the apartment. Luckily, one of the other guests staying there had come home and let Isa in.

Once inside, we were able to email our hosts and let them know we had arrived. They came over to introduce themselves (apparently they live about 5 minutes away and rent out this entire apartment to tourists). Including Isa and I, there are 5 people staying in this three-bedroom apartment.

We settled in and then went out for a quick bite on a cool lantern-lit street nearby...

...which we found out afterward is Ghost Street, which is on our Beijing to-do list. Check!

From Tokyo to Narita

Man. That was difficult.

We fly out of Tokyo tomorrow at 8am, which means we have to be at the airport at 6am, but Tokyo's public transportation doesn't start until 6, so that wouldn't work. So we had to get up to a hotel close to the airport today and just take the free shuttle tomorrow morning.

Since we've done everything we wanted to do in Tokyo, all we had to do today was laundry and get to the hotel, but both of those things took up the whole day and well into the night.

First, laundry.

The apartment we've been staying at has a washer/dryer. Unlike the washers and dryers in America, this one was just one machine that did both. Front load washer, then it just keeps the clothes in there and spin dries them. Like this.

We used it last week, but we just put the clothes in in the morning and then went out for the day. When we came back at the end of the day, the clothes were dry. It was miraculous and wonderful. But today, we found out that they actually take all day. We tried to open it after the wash because there were a few things that couldn't be dried, and that only made it worse. All the buttons and dials were in Japanese, so when we paused it to get certain clothes out, it blinked something at us and then shut down. And then we had to unplug the thing to get it functioning again. Which I'm sure put more time on it.

We ended up taking things out after a few hours of "drying" and just packing them damp and now they're hanging all around our hotel room to finish actually drying. Meh.

So we finally got on a train to head out toward Narita around 4pm, which is right about rush hour, so we were fearing the worst because Tokyo is the city that you hear about with crazy packed trains. But luckily it didn't happen today. Or any day for that matter. Either we were in the wrong stations or that's totally a myth.

We took the subway to Oshiagi, the location of the newest addition to the Tokyo skyline, the Tokyo Skytree, the tallest tower in the world right now. It's pretty impressive.

Then we went down and got on the Keisei line which was supposed to take us to Narita. So we jumped on the first train we saw and went up to Aoto, and then we had to switch to the main line that would take us to Narita. But the trains that were on the track that were supposed to go to Narita weren't going there. They were stopping early. So we waited at Aoto for a while, but all the trains kept saying Sakura, which isn't far enough. By the way, this is the map we were working off:

I know, right?

So we finally got on a train going the right direction, but it only took us to Funabashi. Then we got on another train which got us to Sakura, where we got off and saw people with megaphones and announcers over the loud speakers announcing stuff in Japanese and guiding everyone away from the platforms. We looked obviously lost and confused, but nobody spoke English, but they were nice and genuinely concerned about us. We eventually worked out that we were going to Narita Station (not Narita Airport, which was a big point of confusion for awhile). Another lady pointed to herself and excitedly said, "Narita Station!" So we blindly followed her onto a bus, which took us on a roundabout way to the right place.

Come to find out, the typhoon last night which apparently destroyed the Philippines and ravaged everywhere around Tokyo but left the city center where we were at completely unscathed (it was windy last night and a little rainy at times, but it was never typhoon-scale), it flooded the tracks between the city and Narita. So that's why the trains weren't running. So it's a good thing we came through tonight and not tomorrow morning.

The hotel has a shuttle that actually went to Narita Station, so we took that and finally got to the hotel around 9pm. Luckily there was a convenience store next door, so we were able to get some dinner.

Isa thought the mirror in the bathroom was pretty amazing. The part around your face didn't get foggy (or around my neck, but Asian's faces).

I also ate a strawberry Kit Kat for dessert, which was amazing.