So 10 hours of travel, not sure why we thought that was a fun idea. We could have flown home in that time. But Datong was definitely worth the visit. Our first train was in a soft sleeper. This means there are two bunk beds facing each other, with soft seats and sheets and pillows. Sarah and I had a disagreement about the top bunk, bottom bunk, so that was fun. And after the train started moving, a little old lady came in. She was something else. She looked at us and talked to the other girl in the cabin, laughing as she did so. She was wearing the leggings where you have a diamond crotch shape. So, not the kind you should be wearing without a long top to cover it. Her seat was on the upper bunk but she sat on the girls bunk until a train lady came and basically pushed her up top, just after she started eating and spitting sunflower seeds (at least I hope that's what they were). Then, as she's laying there on her side staring at us, she whips out a giant sausage, opens the pack and just starts eating away. The whole cabin smelled like garlic sausage, and not in a good way. Especially since the whole train also smelled like cigarette smoke from the people puffing away between carriages. She finally puts it away and started playing a game on her phone, music up nice and loud. She decided to sleep. You think she'd be quiet right? Wrong! She snored away like a freight train (pun intended). I sat there with my mouth hanging open, how can one person be so ridiculous. Towards the end of the train trip, after I'd finished one audio book, made it half way through another and watched three shows on Netflix, the climbed down and sat right on the girl below her's pillow. The girl pushed her off. That was after she'd put her foot there. Some people.
After arriving back in Beijing, we headed, by subway, to the west station where our train was departing from. Thankfully we had 3 hours. It took about an hour to get there, after we stood in a massive line to buy tickets. We arrived, grabbed some food and sat for a short while, in a packed waiting area the size of 2 school gyms, while people stared at us. Once it was time to get on, we headed to the train and were in second class, which is your typical train seats. We were front row which was nice. The seats were not comfortable though, but the 4 hours passed quickly, since we were on a bullet train!
Once we arrived in Luoyang, we went and stood in a massive line up for a taxi. The line moved very quickly, until there was about 10 people in front of us. Then the taxis were arriving one at a time. It was funny watching one arrive as they have to snake through about 3 tight turns to get to the area for picking up. We got in when our turn came and the driver took us to the hotel, after some searching on google pulled to the side of the road. Once he pulled up, he tried to charge us more, so I had to roll down my window to open my door from the outside. We walked into the hotel lobby, which smelled of stale cigarette smoke and found 2 girls working, who don't speak any English. We hand over the booking sheets and they seem really confused. After several phone calls to someone, they have a key ready. They ask for a $500 deposit (that's in yeun, not Canadian dollars). The form we have says $200. Then they change to say $200 each, which for most of us, does not equal $500 (200+200=400}). We refused and they took the $200. We also asked about a tour, since we only had one day there, we didn't want to miss out because we didn't have the information the night before. A lady came out and told us it would be 2000 yeun or $258 US dollars. Which is just ridiculous since the day before we had spent 420 yeun or about $85 CAD dollars to have a driver take us to 3 sites over 9 hours. We said no thank you and started to head to our room when she called us back and started saying we hadn't paid and we are foreigners, we have to pay and deal with hotels.com ourselves (and when they dial the number it doesn't work since they are using our sheet with the North American phone number). We stood there arguing and she's refusing to let us into the room. At this point, I feel very uncomfortable with the whole situation so I tell Sarah to start checking out other hotels (since we had some wifi), I got the money back from the deposit and I told them to call us a cab. We had been dealing with this for an hour or more at this point, and it was approaching 11:30 pm. We'd been travelling since 8 am and we were tired. The woman then started backtracking and saying that we can stay, we will deal with payment in the morning. But something felt wrong. Did I mention all this talking was mostly happening over a translator app...great fun! They wouldn't call a taxi and had us standing on the side of the road. A taxi didn't come or wouldn't stop so the girl told us to cross 4 huge lanes of traffic and try to find one down a different road. Are you kidding? Around the corner there was a few shops, or restaurants and we asked a lady standing outside if she would call us a taxi, when one drove by. We had selected a hotel on the hotel.com app, and gave him that address. We arrived and were checked in within 20 minutes. We were both pretty wired and feeling frustrated so we didn't end up getting to bed until 1:30am. What a day!
Once we arrived in Luoyang, we went and stood in a massive line up for a taxi. The line moved very quickly, until there was about 10 people in front of us. Then the taxis were arriving one at a time. It was funny watching one arrive as they have to snake through about 3 tight turns to get to the area for picking up. We got in when our turn came and the driver took us to the hotel, after some searching on google pulled to the side of the road. Once he pulled up, he tried to charge us more, so I had to roll down my window to open my door from the outside. We walked into the hotel lobby, which smelled of stale cigarette smoke and found 2 girls working, who don't speak any English. We hand over the booking sheets and they seem really confused. After several phone calls to someone, they have a key ready. They ask for a $500 deposit (that's in yeun, not Canadian dollars). The form we have says $200. Then they change to say $200 each, which for most of us, does not equal $500 (200+200=400}). We refused and they took the $200. We also asked about a tour, since we only had one day there, we didn't want to miss out because we didn't have the information the night before. A lady came out and told us it would be 2000 yeun or $258 US dollars. Which is just ridiculous since the day before we had spent 420 yeun or about $85 CAD dollars to have a driver take us to 3 sites over 9 hours. We said no thank you and started to head to our room when she called us back and started saying we hadn't paid and we are foreigners, we have to pay and deal with hotels.com ourselves (and when they dial the number it doesn't work since they are using our sheet with the North American phone number). We stood there arguing and she's refusing to let us into the room. At this point, I feel very uncomfortable with the whole situation so I tell Sarah to start checking out other hotels (since we had some wifi), I got the money back from the deposit and I told them to call us a cab. We had been dealing with this for an hour or more at this point, and it was approaching 11:30 pm. We'd been travelling since 8 am and we were tired. The woman then started backtracking and saying that we can stay, we will deal with payment in the morning. But something felt wrong. Did I mention all this talking was mostly happening over a translator app...great fun! They wouldn't call a taxi and had us standing on the side of the road. A taxi didn't come or wouldn't stop so the girl told us to cross 4 huge lanes of traffic and try to find one down a different road. Are you kidding? Around the corner there was a few shops, or restaurants and we asked a lady standing outside if she would call us a taxi, when one drove by. We had selected a hotel on the hotel.com app, and gave him that address. We arrived and were checked in within 20 minutes. We were both pretty wired and feeling frustrated so we didn't end up getting to bed until 1:30am. What a day!
What a day!
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