Free Lodging on the Train

Hoping to be fully recovered from our unexpected Chinese Diet and still questioning whether our stomach was cramping from food poisoning or hunger, we got on a bus for a four hour ride to Liozhou where we would board a train for Chengdu. Thanks to a very kind english speaking chinese man we found the right train. Just when I think all my trust has been totally taken away by Chinese scammers on the street, it is totally restored by a kind gesture from another. We had ourselves to hard sleepers. In our little spot there were 6 beds (3 high each) and about 100 people in our car, 1,000 on the entire train. We got on our train and discovered met our other berth mates. One of who put our overloaded bags up, while we tried to squeeze into our berth. His 6 year old son gleefully asked us "how we were in?" in English. Our berths were in the middle and very comfortable. They were actually long enough for me. We seem to always have our mandarine phrasebook in tow and decide to give it a whirl. We have no idea what time we get in or where we are so we point to some phrases asking one of our neighbors what time we arrive. He writes it down for us and we are alarmed to discover that we cannot read his characters. He has written 2 characters and a 6 so we have no idea if it is 6AM or 6PM. We find out shortly. After 15 hours on the train, we discover that the train ride is actually 33 hours not 19 hours. We are getting quite a bit more than we bargained for. However, we try to remain up beat and tell ourselves it's another night of free lodging. Luckily there is no shortage of vendors as they go up and down the aisles selling everything from socks to noodles. We were given quite an elaborate sales pitch on the socks. I think though that we might have bed soars by the time we get off this train. Meanwhile the wild child is entertaining the entire train by running up and down the aisle and climbing up and down the ladders. I guess some thing are universal. Emily and I sit by the window, the two premium seats, that are not on a berth, and he poses for pictures with us, while his dad takes them on his camera (everyone is connected here).