There’s been anxiety and mild depression, a great wall and forbidden cities. I bit a strange chinese man, but that’s another story (lesson: don’t get in the way of me when i’m cranky).

We’ve arrived in Mongolia via the first stage of the Trans-Mongolian Railway across to Moscow, and it’s way more easier to get things done here than in China. We’re heading out on a 5 day tour to more westerly sections of Mongolia in a couple of hours so there’s going to be even more web silence for a while.

Don’t worry, there’ll be more posts coming soon and photos!

There are four classes of train tickets here: soft sleeper, soft seat, hard sleeper and hard seat. Soft sleeper and soft seat are the equivalent of first class with four berths at night and reserved seating during the day. Hard sleeper, despite the three-tiered bunks open to the corridor, is clean and calm, with tickets only sold for each bunk. Hard seat is a reserved seat if you are lucky; otherwise, it is just standing, squatting or perching rights within a carriage. Overnight, the lights stay on, music blares continuously, the toilets are filthy, it gets hotter and hotter and there is barely room to move. In the month we’ve been in China we’ve travelled in all of the classes at least once and after the first time, from Shanghai to Huangshan overnight, we swore that we would never go by hard seat again.

Except, we had heard of this great town called Pingyao between Xi’an and Beijing. The original walls still surround the old town and here are hundreds of examples of Ming Dynasty architecture. It is the China that you imagine you’ll see, only to end up disappointed by pollution, crowding, skyscrapers and traffic. Desperate to get a day or two in Pingyao before heading onto Beijing, we ended up taking the only tickets we could get – hard seats. However, we reasoned, this was going to be a long journey from 14.30 until 23.40, but not so long as to be overnight. We would survive.

In my mind, it was going to be pretty hard for last night’s train to be more difficult than the trip to Huangshan, but I was so wrong. We arrived on the platform at the last minute and were pushed into the carriage, embarrassingly large packs and all. The conductor, who appeared to get drunker as the journey progressed, yelled and shoved his way to where we were to be seated and yelled some more so that the people taking up our places stood up. Then, backpacks wedged into the luggage rack, we sat down.

Around us, people smoked and drank and ate, balanced their belongings and wedged themselves into even smaller nooks and crannies of the carriage. And then, they stared at us, played cards for a bit and stared some more.

There are always good things to come out of the worst situations and in between reading our books, cleaning under our fingernails and discussing what might happen on the next episode of our Lost DVD, we were able to stare discreetly back at our fellow passengers.

If you look closely at the faces of the men of today’s China, you can imagine them with their hair in topknots, swords, staffs or bows and arrows in their hands. Last night, the man seated opposite me had the same eyes as one of the Terracotta Warriors. His face was lean, strong jawed, longer and more distinguished than his travelling companions.

The guy on the train seemed to be a hard case. He was prouder and more reserved than his friends. His sleeves were pulled up to show faded tattoos on his forearms: Chinese characters and a panda with bamboo. On his right knuckles were even fainter marks from very crude tattooing, leading Dan and I to wonder if he’d been to prison. If Hard Case had lived 2000 years ago would he have been a bad guy or a warrior?

If it wasn’t for the hard seat tickets, we wouldn’t have noticed the similarities between the Chinese faces of long ago and today. The young woman squatting in the corridor beside us wouldn’t have given us two apples, a minute before she leant across six people (including us and Hard Case) to vomit out of the window. From then on, every time the food cart was pushed through the humanity and pot noodles were served, she’d vomit into the plastic bag we’d given her. We’d discreetly put the apples in the bag, not sure whether she was ill because of something on the apples, pregnant or just sick because of the heat, the stench and her position on the floor.

After midnight, we realised that we’d either missed our station or were running very late. Neither of us had eaten or drunk very much. We hadn’t peed at all. The good things we had experienced on the journey had begun to fade from our minds.

Almost twelve hours after we got on the train, we arrived in Pingyao to be greeted by someone from our hostel. There was a refreshingly cold motorcycle-taxi ride through deserted streets and then finally, an opportunity to pee and sleep.

The hostel we are staying in has only been open for twenty days and without hesitation I can say that it is the nicest place we’ve slept at yet. The rooms are in an old Ming dynasty courtyard home and they are beautiful and comfortable. There are old photographs on the wall and a beautiful antique mirror in our room. The water is deliciously hot and the drains aren’t scenting the room as they did in the last hostel we were in. The bed is not only comfortable, but also huge and part of a huge padded platform just perfect for reclining on whilst drinking tea.

Already the horrible train journey is beginning to fade from my mind, despite the nightmares I had last night in which people invaded my personal space and demanded that I get out of bed to go and book train tickets in the middle of the night. Just remember this though, this time I mean it when I say that I will never travel by hard seat ever again.

This travel thing may seem glamorous and exciting from where you’re sitting, but let me remind you that it can be very hard work.

I’m of the opinion that after about two days, whomever one is travelling with, the conversation will primarily be focused on toilets: proximity, cleanliness, paper quality, Western or squat and frequency of use. Successful travel is linked very closely to basic comfort, and basic comfort, in my opinion, is highly dependent on a healthy digestive track.

Travel with Dan is no exception. When we took our over Christmas, we both ended up with “travel lockdown” after the first 3 days. That first week was spent discussing about how much we needed to poo, in between drinking prune juice and strong coffee and driving along the Great Ocean Road. We were out of our comfort zones and eating an awful lot of pizza and deep fried roadhouse food. Luckily, we improved our diets (lots of fresh fruit and water) and things returned to normal soon enough.

Guess what, you know those dumplings I was raving about a week or two ago? Did you see this delicious pizza thing ()? And I haven’t had a chance to tell you about the delicious convenience of steamed buns with all sorts of different fillings!

Well, it turns out that for some people, if your diet is a consistent mix of refined white flour dough, meat and oil, you will get constipated. Yet it also appears that for other people who travel in China, and who eat almost anything (including dumplings), you do put yourself at risk of diarrhoea. A comfortable balance can be hard to achieve when you aren’t aware of which way the tide is going to turn at any moment.

The other night we were walking back from dinner (where we may have eaten dog due to an ordering mishap) when I felt that horrible lower back clenching sensation that reminded me of a night spent over a squat toilet in Turkey. Luckily, I got back to the hostel and up all million flights of stairs with time to spare. After I’d cramped and pooped and flushed, and come out of the bathroom looking kinda green and with a killer headache that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, dammed-up Dan had the cheek to say to me. “I’m so jealous that you were able to poo”.

So, jealousy might be the bizarre reason why he tried to flush toilet paper in the squat toilet yesterday morning and blocked the drain, before going off to explore Nanjing without fear of being inconvenienced. Which meant that I’ve not only seen my poo once, but repeated times as I had to find a plunger and unclog the drain.

I’m sure that there will be very many beautiful experiences that Dan and I will treasure for years to come, but I also know that there are going to be reminders which keep resurfacing no matter how hard one tries to wash them away.

As mentioned in earlier posts, we’ve been relying on the technique of “following our noses” and eating at small local establishments very successfully. So, it was with a little hesitation that I suggested to Dan that we hunt down 1221, a restaurant recommended by the editor of the Shanghai section of the China Lonely Planet. I’d paid attention to the listing primarily because of its proximity to our hostel and a description of the tea pouring technique. Tonight, tired from the trial of the Russian visa application process, eating close to our home-base felt like a very good idea.

Usually we’ve been taking the western exits of the Zhongshan Park metro station (Line 2), but this evening we left by the easterly Exit 5. We should have known that something good was about to happen, as this route led us past a barrow displaying Spooks on DVD. After organising to come back on Wednesday evening for a promised copy of the elusive fourth season, we turned south onto Dingxi Lu.

The magic of Exit 5 continued. Suddenly, a swatch of fabric in a window effectively winked at me, causing me to detour into yet another clothing shop and delay Dan’s dinner by another few minutes. I have to return to the nameless store tomorrow as the fabric in question belonged to an oh so simple, beautiful and affordable summer dress which may actually be by Cacharel. Given the probability that the dress in question won’t fit, there were a number of other beautiful items for me to try and squeeze into too.

But back to the food. We eventually found the street number we needed (1221!) and went down a lane underneath a red neon sign proudly sporting what could only be the devil’s phone number as it finished with “666666”. We must have unknowingly signed a deal with the bad guy himself because not only did we get a table straight away, but I reckon that tonight I ate one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Altogether the bill only cost just over AU$30.

Pan-fried crispy duck, deep fried white bait, stir fried garlicky snake beans and a hotpot with chicken, water chestnuts, ginger and black mushrooms were our initial choices, along with Tsing Tao beer and 8 Treasures tea poured from a two foot long spout. Unusual for a town where most waiting staff irritatingly hover from the moment you open the menu and ignore you when you do want their attention, the service was excellent. Thankfully, we left enough room to try the red bean sticky rice for dessert.

We have another two or so days in Shanghai and already Dan and I are working out when we can eat at 1221 again. It will be a challenge to not order the same dishes again, but luckily there are plenty of options to choose from.

Tel: