Day 7: Station to station

Turns out there were no places left for the night train from Tianjin to Datong so Bo worked his magic once again...making a dozen calls to ask Yaya to ask her friend's mother to get us tickets This meant going back through Beijing which gave Yaya the chance to come with us to Datong.

Arriving in Beijing, we took the bus - no taxis would take us for such a short (5 km) distance. We got off the bus and walked a bit to find the travel agency in the middle of no where where our tickets were. We grabbed a taxi and had just enough time to eat at the fast food ravioli restaurant (whose sign is a Chinese copy of Colonel Sanders of KFC).

Yaya met us and we grabbed the train....The train station was packed with people everywhere, lying and sitting on the floor. Jerome and I let out a "holy shit!" in unison when we saw the zoo. Yaya couldn't get a ticket so she had to stand for the 5 hour trip. Once on the train, our neighbors struck up a conversation with Bo and Yaya and after a while, we were all sharing the same seats. and Yaya could sit down.

After a few hours of boredom, Yaya decided she wanted a French lesson which Jerome provided - bonjour, ca va? un deux trois... Curious people were looking on, including the little boy in the seat next to us. And then a guy asked what "lovin' " meant; Rebecca immediately recognized the reference from the Chinese McDonald's ads visible all over Beijing - "I'm lovin' it". Rebecca explained that it was an abbreviation and he asked if it was the same for "Guns n' Roses". Then he asked what "colitas" was- Rebecca recognized the lyrics from "Hotel California" by the Eagles, but had to admit that she didn't know.

Xiao Wei and her brother were waiting for us in Datong, dropped us at the hotel and brought us out for dinner. As usual, we ordered too much including eggplant cooked with star anis, ginger and garlic cooked in sugar and soy sauce and the local specialty of "knife cut noodles" (more about these noodles later).