Off on our travels again

Off on our travels again, originally uploaded by sazztastical.

After arriving in Pingyao late at night (well it was dark anyway and no one was about) we decided we'd get our train tickets then and there for the following day while the ticket office was empty. It was only then that we found out that you're unable to buy anything but hard seat tickets (basically think cattle class and then minus about 100 from it) - people hanging out of windows, sitting on top of each other and smoking the whole way. We could get those tickets no problem - and sit there for 10 hours.

So off we trundled with no tickets in hand wondering how on earth we were going to get out of Pingyao. We thought we'll leave it to the hotel, they'd definatey be able to get us some 'soft-sleeper' tickets.

No they couldn't - apparently Pingyao station isn't allowed to sell them. For whatever reason I can't imagine - maybe they've been bad in the past or something, but there you go, the station is no allowed to sell soft-sleeper tickets so every poor sod that leaves Pingyao by train does so and ends up with an achey arse and probably quite a few new friends.

We decided that our only option then was to get a plane from Taiyuan - about 50 miles from Pingyao and the only way to get there was by taxi. So that's what we did. At 2.30pm on Friday we were picked up by a lovely taxi driver and all the girls from the Yide Hotel came and saw us off and waved us goodbye and off we set on our travel again.

It was quite a nice journey for the first half an hour and then we noticed, in the mirror, that our driver was falling asleep. I guess we'd not really noticed before that he was changing lanes a little erratically because, well, that's just very normal here. But then we saw him in the mirror and his head was dropping and his eyes were completely closed until he'd snap his head back up and pull the car back over. Problem being, just as this started to happen we also found the motorway to be much busier than it had been.

Hmm - what do you do when you have a driver you can't talk to in order to keep him awake? Well I started coughing quite loudly and we both started talking much more loudly and laughing at completely inappropriate moments but I guess it just wasn't working so in the end we did the only thing we could think of and just as he fell asleep and looked destined to go up the car in front's arse I shouted "Wooooooaahhhhh". :)

It seemed to do the trick and then we got our phrase book out and in our best Chinglish accent asked him if he was ok, was he tired and did he need to stop. He seemed pleased that we were talking to him anyway and so I took the opportunity to get him to teach me my 1-10 in Chinese. I already sort of knew it anyway but he seemed more than happy about it and I don't know whether it was the fact that at 37 I was only just learning how to count or if it was my very odd accent that did it but it made him laugh anyway.

Luckily we didn't have far to go and he took great pleasure in pointing out the countdown in KMs to the airport until we finally got there. I hope he got back ok .... we told him to be careful and to have a sleep but he just laughed and drove off.

At least I learned how to count to twenty though :)