Train to Kunming

My train ride from Beijing was 38 hours and I enjoyed about 37 hours of it. The hours sound much longer than they actually are. We boarded around 16:00 and I read well until midnight. Lights out are at 10:00 on all Chinese trains, so my headlamp came in handy. I climbed from the top bunk of our triple bunk beds around 11:00 the following morning. All of my bunk mates from the previous night had left the train and a new lot joined for our Kunming bound train.

Foresight prepared me with plenty of instant coffee, salami and baguette to make my way through the day. I finished Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country [not sun burnt!] and moved onto Paul Theroux's Riding the Iron Rooster, a book that I am immensely enjoying despite Theroux's occasional denigrating tone.

Also proving extremely useful on a train journey of 38 hours was a bottle of Captain Morgan's spiced rum. Over the evening, I managed to empty half the bottle while reading and scribbling in my journal. When I decided my journal could take no more rambling, I attempted the three bed accent to my bunk. Much to the delight of the police woman in our coach, I smashed my head into the overhead luggage rack while stepping from the floor. She replied with a sympathetic, "Ai yo." I looked at her with a goofy grin only alcohol could produce signaling that I was alright and honestly had really not felt a thing.

Gathering my belongings in the morning I waited for our train to pull into the Kunming rail station. As I waited an older woman obviously from one of China's less developed provinces, tried to start a conversation by asking me what I was doing in Kunming. I responded with the typical response of traveling. She asked me another question and I hadn't a clue as to what she was saying. I replied I didn't understand, and truly wanting to know, asked a nearby Chinese teen to explain what she was saying. Much to the delight of my Chinese speaking ego, he could not understand her.

Kunming is much as I remember and as much as I would like to elaborate, I cannot, as my Internet time, as well as my bed time is quickly approaching. Tomorrow evening, I will be on a bus from Kunming to Northern Laos. Twenty hours...