We continued our tour of Asia by leaving Lhasa by train. We would be taking the Qinghai – Tibet Railway, which at 5,072m is the highest railway in the world. It also goes through the highest railway station in the world, Tanggula railway station at 5,068m. Fenghuoshan tunnel is the highest rail tunnel in the world at 4,905m above sea level. And the section up to Golmud, over 600 miles of track (80%) is at an elevation above 4,000m. That’s an impressive list of records. We left Lhasa at 10am. Because the train journey would be 46hrs we had chosen soft sleeper. The benefits include; a proper cabin with a door, only 4 beds to a compartment not 6, a power socket, complementary slippers and control over the light switch (in hard sleeper the lights are turned off at 10pm and the carriage is in darkness). Our compartment had us two, and a girl from Hong Kong who’d just graduated as a doctor. Her English was pretty good. We spent the first few hours watching the scenery out the window. The train seemed to climb quite rapidly out of Lhasa and by mid afternoon we had reached the high point of just over 5,000m. A few compartments down a woman got very ill from the altitude and the doctor was with her for quite a while. The oxygen content in the carriages is higher than normal air and there are oxygen outlets everywhere to hook oxygen masks up the the supply for pure oxygen. The train also has a doctor onboard at all times for such eventualities. After a few stops we met the fourth person in our compartment. She was Chinese, pregnant and going back to her family home in Chengdu to give birth. She worked in the civil service and was typical of the Chinese policy in Tibet. Han Chinese are offered good pay and jobs to move to Tibet. This is generally to keep the Tibetan People out of key positions and to slowly overwhelm the locals with foreign, Chinese people. Another form of repression. As a person, she was nice, sharing yogurts and tomatoes with us. The restaurant car opened for food at 5:30pm. We went in and sat down and we were ignored by the staff for ages. Finally, someone came over. She spoke no English and the menu was in mandarin only. This was somewhat surprising as I’d expected the train to have a tourist element to it and some English. Luckily, we’d downloaded a list of dishes with the Chinese translation and we went through the list until the waitress pointed to...
Read MoreGolmud Posted from Haixi, Qinghai, China.
Read MoreToday we are taking the infamous ‘‘, properly known as the Thailand-Burma Railway from Kanchanaburi to the end of the line at Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi. There are normal trains running, which are 100 baht each way, or there is a special train which only runs once a day on weekends which goes about 1km further (to ) and is 120 baht return. We wanted the special train but when we asked for tickets we were told the train will probably be full and we can’t book it. We argued it won’t be full and we should at least wait and see. There was also some mention about booking the tickets in Bangkok. That was 20 minutes before the train was due. The train was then 35 minutes late, so we spent quite a long time during around waiting. Finally as the train approached the station we grabbed our bags and went to stand on the platform. Our plan was to just get on and if anyone asked for tickets attempt to pay then because it seemed impossible to buy tickets for this train at the station. As we stood there the railway official (the one who wouldn’t sell us the tickets) asked if we had tickets for the train. Of course we don’t, it was him who wouldn’t sell them! He then hurried us to the ticket office to buy the tickets and ignored the other 6 people stood patiently in the queue. The train was only stopped for 3 minutes but luckily we bought the tickets and boarded, but not without a lot of confusion and pointless messing around. A couple of British tourists were also in the queue at the train station trying to buy tickets for the normal train. Imagine our surprise when they boarded the train by the bridge over the river Kwai, about 10 minutes up the line. It transpires that they had also been able to buy the tickets just as the train approached but the train was departing the station by the time they had completed the purchase and were ready to board. They grabbed a taxi up the road to the bridge to board there. A strange way to sell tickets indeed. Another annoyance is the timetables. Every train we have been on in Thailand is late. And they are consistently late by the same time every day. So the timetables should be updated to reflect reality. Today our train arrived 35 minutes late but got to the destination just over an hour late. Posted from Ban Tai, Kanchanaburi,...
Read MoreEn-route Posted from Hà Tĩnh, Vietnam.
Read MoreOur destination was Kunming which is 3000km south of Beijing. To get there we could fly, which is expensive or get the train. Plenty of online companies offer to buy you a ticket for a fee but that’s only five days in advance and we wanted to go in two. We arrived in Beijing at 14.08 on Monday 13th. We navigated to our hostel and after changing and getting that all essential internet fix we once again headed for the subway towards Beijing West Railway Station. Beijing West is not geared towards tourists as the trains there head to Southern China to the less touristy areas. This means the ticket kiosks are in Mandarin. However, between us we figured it out and due to the friendly and helpful nature of the clerk booked 2 tickets on the sleeper in the middle bunk to Kunming. (See other post on Beijing for more). We arrived at Beijing West on Wednesday 13th an hour before the train. We followed the crowd through the security check and thanks to ‘The Man in Seat 61’ we knew we needed to head for the allocated waiting room, which was numbered on the huge departure board as you came off the escalators. Entering the waiting room is an experience in itself. For a start it is huge. China has the most rail passengers in the world; that was clear as we stood waiting for the train. There were people everywhere, there must have been a few thousand! Thirty minutes before the train departed the display with English subtitles changes from ‘waiting’ to ‘boarding’ alongside a platform number. The best thing about this system is that unlike UK rail stations, Chinese Rail runs like an airport with the waiting area outside the platform. We booked the hard sleeper car. After looking at photos of the hard seat online we decided to pay more for a bed since we would have 2 nights (a total of 37 hours) on the train. In hard sleeper there are six open bunks and a ladder at the end facing onto the walkway. At the side of the walkway there are some seats, a (very) small table and bin. A carpet runs along the length of the corridor with overhead storage. The squat toilets are at the end of the corridor with three washbasins. It is fairly clean but there is absolutely no privacy unlike soft sleeper which has four beds in an enclosed cabin. Once you find your bunk and put your stuff away the attendant exchanges your ticket for a plastic card. We think the card had a WiFi password...
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