Sleeper Train

We've always wanted to experience riding a sleeper train. It was a lot of fun. Traveling overnight from Turpan to LiuYuan station (near Dunhuang), we shared our compartment with Neal and Jolene Thompson from New Mexico who are teaching in Tian Jin. He is about 6'6" and I felt sorry for him, trying to scrunch into a 6' compartment. Surprisingly, no one snored -- at least that I heard. The train made several stops and the bed was hard . . . hard.

Laraine slept well.

I (Chuck) forgot to check the latch on the door to know how to open it in the darkness. As usual, I got up once in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and because I had forgotten to see how the latch works, I stood there jiggling and pushing the latch. After a while, I heard a male voice on the other side of the doorway, in the outer hall say, "Just pull it towards you." It was Tim Pelton, another China teacher who teaches at Beijing University. He was standing out in the hall with several other  men from our group, all waiting for the bathroom. It was kind of surreal.

At 8:30 a.m., when we arrived in LiuYuan, a tiny town in "Black Gobi" where the dirt is black from minerals, we had to wait for another train carrying the rest of our group. But we had no bathroom, and because we had already exited the station, we could not convince both sets of security guards (it was a two-layered system--get through one checkpoint, then walk about 50 feet and do it all over again with a second checkpoint) to allow us back in without a "valid ticket." Showing our just-used ticket didn't work. So a few of us were desperate for a bathroom and we walked across the street to a hotel called the "Grain and Oil Hotel" (I'm not kidding). They informed us they had no bathrooms for non-guests. But just then, a Chinese couple from Beijing walked through the lobby and invited us up to their room to use their toilet. What an amazing couple. The problem was that three people turned into 5, then 7, etc. We thanked them profusely.

About 90 minutes from this little train station was a town called Dunhuang. It was an incredible place . . . huge sand dunes, camel rides, and more. . . 

Roommates--Jolene and Neil Thompson on Sleeper Car between Turpan and LiuYuan, China. They were great roommates. We had no problem with them, as they kept the partying to a minimum.