So this is it. Today is our last day in Beijing with Mike and with everyone together. It was actually pretty sad to say goodbye to everyone. I may have actually cried.

The morning flew by! We dint get up until 10 am, then it was a quick dash to pack and check out. Then we had to wait for Mike to arrive to take us to the Train Station. There was one train leaving at 3:20, one at 4:20 and one at 8pm. My train was at 4:20. All trains were at different stations.

Anyway when Mike got to the hostel, we said thank you to him and gave him a clap. He decided that he would stay with Gina, Emma, Harriet and I as we were catching the train from a difficult station. So 12 volunteers had to catch the train by themselves, which they missed. In all fairness, it wasn't exactly they're faults. When Mike got to the Hostel, we had to flag down taxi's to take us and well, it didn't exactly go to plan because a lot just drove past or they were full. So that took a good hour. We only just made it to our train.

So we said goodbye to mike and made our way to the train. You don't understand the amount of security there is at Chinese train stations! We had to put our bags through an x-ray machine and walk through one of those door things they have at the airport to get our tickets, then we had to walk back through that to get out. Then they had to check our passports, tickets, bags (through x-ray again), and we had to walk through that door thing before we got to the escalators. Then upon getting to the right door, they had to check tickets and passports again, before we finally got to another set of escalators that took us down to the train. Looking back, that was the highlight of my day.

After they checked our tickets ONCE AGAIN! We made it onto the train. And i wanted to get straight back off. When i was told of the sleeper trains, i actually didn't know what to expect, but i definitely didn't expect this. Along the trains corridors were little doorways which had three beds stacked above each other on the left and right sleeping six in one room. We thought that the four of us would be together, we were wrong. Harriet was in the first room with 5 strangers. Emma and Gina were in the room next to mine with four strangers and i was in a room by myself with 5 strangers. We had to try and ask which room/bed was ours and where do we put our luggage and we literally got started at. Nobody on our carriage spoke English, but after a lot of work, we got there. Turns out you put luggage under the bed, if it fits, which mine didn't so it looks like i'll be sleeping on the damn thing. There was this lady on the bed opposite who had a friend that came into our room, plunked herself on my bed, pointed, laughed, tried to speak to me, then tried to shove some of her homemade food down my throat. And when i got my book out to doodle in, she took it out of my hand and started to talk to her friend about it. I got the impression she was taking the piss out of me. She then kept patting me on the leg. Very odd, didn't understand a word she was saying. The worst part was, she left and i tried to get some sleep, and i got rudely awoken when she came back in and moved my legs OFF MY BED so that she could sit there. RAGING FUMING TAMPIN! Really didn't like her.

Harriet basically fell asleep from the moment we got on the train, but Gina, Emma and i were awake, so we went to explore. We found an English toilet at the far end of the train, so we were happy. We bought some noodles to eat for tea. They were quite spicy, but better than eating biscuits constantly! So we sat in the corridor, where they had little seats to sit on, but it got annoying because we had to move our legs for people to walk past constantly. So i decided to go to sleep after i had finished, and the women had gone thankfully!

In all fairness, i slept quite well for most of the night. Woke up a few times due to coughing, but sleeping on the train wasn't too bad.

Nineth day in China - Sleeper trains aren't so bad.