I'll start at the beginning. We had 2 train tickets to get us there. One from Suzhou to Nanjing, leaving after school on Friday, 4:40 PM. Then our train from Nanjing to Beijing left at 9:50 PM that same day.
The problem is, Meagan had to be at the school until 3:50 PM, which gave us just under an hour to make it to the train station.
Normally, driving there takes about half an hour, so we weren't too worried. I guess we forgot to take into account that it was a holiday, (Quingming Festival aka tomb sweeping day aka Chinese memorial day), and traffic would be insane. We did think enough to send Maddie and Abby there ahead of time to pick up our tickets, however.
Once Meagan was done at the school, the rest of us grabbed our bags and BOOKED it to the corner where our DiDi driver was scheduled to meet us (DiDi = Chinese Uber). Then we got a message saying she would be a few minutes late. That worried us, but we still had hope.
She finally arrived, 8 minutes late, and was perhaps the slowest, most timid driver in all of China. In her defense, there was quite a bit of traffic. We spent the whole car ride searching for new train tickets to Nanjing, because we weren't sure we'd make it on time. Then we found one! 5 seats left. But there was 6 of us.
We called Abby with our Chinese phones, told her to give Maddie our passports and jump onto our train by herself. That way, we'd buy those 5 tickets and meet her at the Nanjing train station. Abby shoved our passports into Maddie's hand and ran to find our train, staying on the phone with us as she went. Due to technical difficulties, we weren't able to purchase those tickets. So, we told her to stop right there and wait for us. She was understandably pretty angry, and everyone was really frustrated at the situation, but it only got worse from there.
Meanwhile, our Didi pulled up to the train station, train leaving in 3 minutes, we RAN to find the other girls, but the driver dropped us off at the wrong side, so we were doomed.
Once we faced the fact that we missed our train, we found Abby and Maddie and decided to order 2 DiDi's to take us to Nanjing, fully knowing it was a 2 hour drive and would be very expensive. But if it meant we could go to Beijing, it would be worth it. As we waited at the corner for our cars to arrive, we were approached by a different driver.
His English wasn't great, so we typed out translations on our phones back and forth.
"You need a car?"
"Actually, yes. How much would it cost to take us to Nanjing?"
"All of you?"
We looked at his car. It was a typical 5-seater small car so we were kinda confused by that.
"...Can you take all of us..?"
"Yeah! Get in!"
He told us the price. I don't remember what it was, but it was almost half the price of 2 DiDi's. So that was nice. We showed him the address we were going to, and he said "ah, yes".
He popped the trunk, we threw our bags in, then Abby and Lindsay crammed into the passenger seat, and Meagan, Maddy, Sami, and I piled into the back seat.
The driver drove for only a couple minutes before pulling to the side of the road. "5 in the back" he typed on his phone.
"what?"
"police man ahead. Need 5 in back, one in front."
So Lindsay got out of the passenger seat she shared with Abby, and into the back seat. So yeah, we stuffed 5 full sized humans on a bench made for 3. Every time we got to a toll booth or passed a police man, our driver would tell us to put our heads down. It was hilarious.
The GPS said we would make it to the Nanjing station 2.5 hours before our train left to Beijing. Nice! We'd have time to stretch our legs in between our squishy car ride and 12 hour train ride. Then we got stuck in traffic, and time kept counting up. We payed him extra to take us on the side roads, which saved us about 30 minutes. But in the end, what was supposed to be a 2.5 hour car ride turned into a 5 hour car ride.
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| 5 girls, 1 bench, 5 hours |
It was the most uncomfortable 5 hours of my life. I didn't have it as bad as the other girls though. Abby got the comfy front seat, but she had to pee SO BAD. We didn't have time to stop, so when we got stuck in a traffic jam, she was seriously considering jumping out and peeing on the road. One of the other girls who will remain anonymous started her period, and like I said, we didn't have time to stop, so she was dealing with that.
By the time we got to the train station, we had 15 minutes to find security and get to our train.
The driver dropped us up at the wrong side, so we RAN all over the train station looking for security. But since it was late, only one section was open, so it was like finding a needle in a haystack. As we were sprinting around, One of us was trying to hide the fact that she started her period and carrying her suitcase. Abby had one backpack on front, one on back, and was about to pee herself. Sami was carrying her suitcase in her arms as well, and I had my huge duffel bag. But the worst part was all of our legs were asleep from our squishy car ride, so we were running like a bunch of idiots. But Lindsay is super fit and runs marathons, so she pushed us to the limit. And we were HUFFING AND PUFFING let me tell you. I don't think I've ever ran that hard in my life. The Chinese people were staring at us. We looked like a bunch of maniacs.
We FINALLY found security with 3 minutes to get through, run down to our platform and board our train. There was no line! We could do this. We handed them our tickets, and they laughed. We were kind of upset and confused by this, so we just told them to hurry up, and they pointed at our tickets and said "Nanjing south station." Our train was for Nanjing station. Our driver had taken us to the wrong station entirely. Even though we showed him the address and our train tickets multiple times and asked if he knew it, and he said he did.
After that, we stepped outside of security and just plopped on the floor to drink water and catch our breath. I had a huge headache and I was devastated because I thought this meant we wouldn't be able to go to Beijing at all. After we soaked in the defeat, we all went to McDonalds to get WiFi and figure out a plan. I thought the plan would be to spend a nice long weekend in Nanjing. But when we met up, we looked at trains to Beijing for the next afternoon. It was a lot more pricey than the other ones, but we found one! Then, we found a place to sleep in Nanjing that night and got taxis to take us there. The hostel was super cleanly, and had some yummy candies in a jar. The perfect end to a perfect day!
So yeah, getting to Beijing ended up being way way way more expensive and frustrating than it was supposed to be, and everything that could've possibly gone wrong went wrong. But the next day, we had some time before our new train to Beijing, so we explored Nanjing a bit and went to a cool temple/museum in the rain:
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| We found a door shaped like a frisbee! |
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| On the steps with Lindsay |
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| Cool |
K trains are pretty gross. People will hock loogies right onto the floor, smoke cigarettes, and they're always very loud. People are constantly yelling angrily on the phone or at each other. Sometimes it can be scary. But we survived the over night train ride without a scratch, and made it to Beijing the next morning! The End. Getting there was chaos, But it was so worth it. You'll see why in my next post :-)
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