The original plan for the day was as follows: get up early and get a bus to the Shaolin Temple, see it and either get a bus to Luoyang or get a bus back to Zhengzhou and then a train to Luoyang. I had cramp in the morning though and spent far too much time curled up in pain. By the time we were checked out it was pretty clear the original plan was not going to happen. It was far too late! We made our way to the train station to get our tickets for Luoyang and I proposed a new plan. We could go to Luoyang right now, see the Longmen Caves that afternoon, and then go to the Shaolin Temple tomorrow. The plan seemed to make perfect logical sense so off we went to get the tickets. Sadly, the first train to Luoyang was at 1.40, and the arrival at Luoyang would be 3.40 so we wouldn't be able to do the caves that day either. So we decided we'd get to Luoyang today, see the Shaolin Temple tomorrow, and do the caves the morning after. We wasted time in KFC (particularly in the women's toilets, where the were only two cubicles and one woman managed to hold up one of them for at least 20 solid minutes - I got in the giant queue and by the time I'd got there and done she was still in there!). My cramp was pretty bad so we went on a quest to find a pharmacy for painkillers, which was fortunately a very quick mission. Back in the train station, I began writing my diary when I noticed a huge queue building up around us. It wasn't for our train, but when I stood up to check our train's departue gate I saw that our train's queue was also already snaking round the room even though it wasn't due to leave for an hour. We ignored it for a while, but then we got a bit antsy and decided it was wise to just go join the queue. Fighting through the crowd around us was no mean feat. Liam and I chose different routes and neither were especially effective. People here just aren't willing to co-operate! They go on about Confucius and Confucian values but they don't follow his teachings! He set up an experiment whereby three balls on strings hang in a well, and three people have to simultaneously pull them up. The first to get their ball out is the winner. Confucius found that those who were considerate to the two other competitors invariably got their balls out faster than those who were only out for themselves. Therefore, being helpful to others helps you. An American psychologist repeated the experiment and found out that it was completely true. So they're obsessed with his legend but do they follow advice like this? Of course not! If they had shuffled a bit, I wouldn't have had to violently force my bag and myself past them. I tried really hard but I was forcibly pushed into a little toddler and hit her head. I of course apologised profusely to her parents, but naturally no apology was forthcoming from the man who had pushed me into the kid using his refined method of grabbing onto my rucksack and shoving me with all his might. I would've slapped him but I had fallen out of reach!
After struggling our way through that crowd, the next task was getting through the ticket barrier (always a challenge) but this was surprisingly easy at they'd long ago started letting people through. And then onto the train itself, which was an entirely different kettle of fish. I have never seen anything so ridiculous in my life. Recall if you will the last most crowded train I had been on - the one where they hit people with sticks to get them on. Now let me tell you that said train was spacious and airy in comparison to this monstrosity. Getting on was hilarious enough - we were being pushed, pulled and shoved from all angles. I took my bag off my shoulders to make a little more room. The guard kept telling us to walk on but there was simply nowhere to go. In the whole journey I managed to move 3 metres from the door that we got on at. I ended up wedged next to a man who had to wrap his arms around me to haul me up from time to time so people could clamber past me. I had to stand on this thin metal ledge thing. When I say thin, I do mean like 5mm wide (it was a small divider thing to stop water from running all over the carriage) and I was not able to balance very easily so he had to hold me up. Liam was pushed against a girl who often screamed out in pain. People were LITERALLY using other people's bodies to climb; people regularly used my knees as a step and one guy actually used my shoulders. They seemed to take particular pleasure in stamping on my feet and ankles. Three men got on and demanded their way through as they had seats, which made everyone laugh because they simply were not going to get through. They actually did though; kudos to them for however it is they managed it. Oh yes, wait, I know how. They stamped on me.
Obviously the peculiarly Chinese stench of body odour, morning breath and stale baijiu was overwhelming. Poor Liam was stuck right next to a guy who was evidently off his face on baijiu and kept sinking to the floor despite the fact that in doing so, there was no option other than his being trampled on by all and sundry. Fortunately the person closest to my nose smelt like (slightly burnt (?!)) shampoo. To get out at one small station, people further back the train realised they weren't getting out the conventional way and one man got the ball rolling by climbing out the window, and his example was soon followed. At one point a guard decided to herd a crowd of people from carriage to carriage and cause unnecessary agony to everyone. He was shouting "walk forward" but they couldn't move because the person in front of them and in turn the one in front of them and the one in front of them and so on couldn't/wouldn't move either. Eventually he lost his rag and started shoving people and generally going a bit mental. Eventually he rammed the guy in front of him until the people toppled like dominoes - you could hear screams reverberating down the length of the train. I can't possibly explain just how crowded this train was; you'd have to see it to believe it. It puts all other Chinese transport to shame for its crowdedness. You have to laugh at situations like this and so I was, until a couple of smelly uneducated migrants were struggling past us and said "oh it's because of the laowai that none of the rest of us can walk forward." Erm.... WHAT??? It takes a few hundred more people than just two foreigners to fill up a train carriage! Plus we could not possibly have taken up less room given the volume of our bodies, which are not large! We were doing our best to always be polite and trying not to stamp on anyone or shove our elbows into their solar plexuses etc etc, and then someone comes along and makes an entire pointless offensive comment which really put my back up. I was suddenly no longer caring who I injured, if they were all going to laugh along with this idiot migrant then they deserve to not be able to have children in future if you get my gist... : )
Loads of people got off at Luoyang and we were two of them. Thank God. There were people on that train whose tickets I saw that were going to Xi'an. Which is not a short journey. It was nice to finally be off the packed train but we were instantly off the train to buy our tickets to Wuhan, as is our usual routine. We managed to get tickets for 1.38 for the day after tomorrow. We then got a taxi for the YHI hostel Liam knew of and it turned out it was literally round the corner. The prices of the rooms were really expensive as it was actually a hotel instead of a real YHI, with the exception of the dorm which was only 35 a night and we got a 6 bed dorm, hoping anti-socially that there'd be nobody else there. The room was in fact split into two separated by an open-plan doorway and as there was a rucksack in one room, we took the other. We tried to work out what nationality the other person was from their rucksack but it was a Chinese bag so it could be anybody.
We spent some time re-planning our route. We decided to switch the order of Chengdu and Chongqing; we'd originally planned to do Chongqing first, but now we decided to go to Chengdu first and also add a place called Leshan, near Chengdu, to the itinerary. This way we could see all the interesting stuff without time constraints and be in Chengdu for Liam's birthday on the 12th. We managed to waste a lot of time planning, messing about, and eating Oreos (our new obsession), and by then it had got dark so we decided to go out for dinner. First, though, I hand-washed my socks, underwear and tops as they'd have plenty of time to dry before we were next on a train and they'd have to be packed up in my bag. I didn't want another situation like Qufu where I'd had to desperately attempt to dry my clothes with my hairdryer before giving up and putting some of them into the bag damp.
Going out into Luoyang it was practically impossible to find a restaurant. The first one we went into was hotpot; incidentally we'd just been discussing how much Liam disliked hotpot (he never feels full after eating it) and how it wasn't worth it if it wasn't a lot of people sharing). After realising our mistake, we walked straight back out again. Eventually we found a place that wasn't hotpot (which was all that the restaurants were serving!) and it wasn't too bad. The waitresses seemed completely overcome that we were foreigners, and didn't know what to do about us until I got frustrated and spoke to one in Chinese. Suddenly, relieved that they could communicate with us, they directed us upstairs where we ordered a mystery dish and a vegetable one. They told us they didn't have the baicai so we got some tofu with chillies instead. The mystery dish turned out to be braised lamb with garlic. Neither of us are the biggest tofu fans, but it wasn't too bad. The beef was great! Shame about the slightly dodgy service.
After eating we walked back to the hostel looking out for an internet cafe should there be one, which there wasn't. At reception they told us where there would be one but we couldn't be bothered to go and look.
The owner of the rucksack had come in when we'd been eating our cookies and had said hello in Chinese but nothing else, then had gone to bed with the TV on, which was where he was, asleep, when we came in, so we didn't chat to him at all. Even though it was only 9pm, we followed his example (after I turned the damn TV off, how can people sleep with noise AND light?!).
No interesting photos for this day, just this: our marinated beef and garlic dish.
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