#hard sleeper

[sleepybluehaze]

[philipmitton]

Fallt live series 0004, NI, 2004 Live performance at Rausch, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2002

Listen/purchase: Land by Hard sleeper.

[pervysagelady-blog]

I had a dream that I was a water elf in Rapture and I'm so sad that I'm awake now.

[littledaddyred]

[wowagirldj]

John Heckle // Hard Sleeper

[chinatime-blog]

she's the cutest.

Emily fell asleep holding my hand last night.. so cute.. I was talking to her boyfriend/fiance for like an hour and she was snoozin hard.. my lil baby.. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

[emmaindalian]

Long distance bus travel done wrong right.

[xnotjustadream]

Finally! A Hard Sleeper Train Experience (& First Impressions of Shanghai).

We did it! After 4 night train experiences in the hard seater compartments, and 2 equally as uncomfortable (due to the lack of seat numbers and being pushed out of our seats) day journeys we FINALLY got to enjoy, and experience, a hard sleeper  train journey. We had planned majorly in advance and bought the tickets in Chengdu, when we dropped Leigh off at the airport. Go us!

We left Hong Kong (still very upset about that) and after a small walk across a bridge and through immigration we were back into the mainland. And you could tell. Now I love China, and this is probably because I had just literally left Hong Kong, but boy did it take some adapting again. The shops were dull and cheap looking, selling the usual; instant noodles, bottles of flavored tea, dried beef, tofu and fish. It was once again loud and noisy, wet and dirty. We clambered onto the train at Shenzhen station, weary and sad. Luckily the hard sleeper didn't disappoint.

Now please don't expect much by what I'm describing rather lovingly - we are comparing it with rows and rows of uncomfortable seats amidst the rowdy and sometimes smelly masses of night train goers. Instead it was 3 beds in a row, one above the other. Clean white sheets, a pillow, a bedcover, air conditioning, a window, nice lights, 2 extra seats adjacent from the beds - heaven for us! I had the upper bunk, and Brian the lower. It meant we could sit together, relatively unbothered at the bottom, and then I could squeeze up to my bed through the tiny gap between that and the ceiling.

It went fine. An afternoon nap killed 4 hours. Dinner and finishing both my paperback book and iBook novel brought me up to bedtime again. Lights went out at 21.45 and then it got quiet. The previously horrid nature of the train jolting and moving disappeared. My bed was tightly packed into the wall and I felt nothing more than a slight rocking sensation. Lovely! Fair enough my legs were a little too long for the bed, and I couldn't lie with one knee bent at a 90degree angle like I normally do, but it was FAR better than any hard seater journey experienced.

Was woken up at half 5 by the little boy next to me talking loudly in Chinese and opening the curtains. No-one seemed to care I was still asleep as they began animatedly discussing something, eating their instant noodles for breakfast. I got up begrudgingly, but luckily we arrived at Shanghai a couple of hours later. Success! The time had flown by!

Then the stress began... First we struggled to lift our heavy suitcases down from the high rack, in a tiny narrow space. We had the conductor rudely shouting 'Go!' 'Go!' to try and get us to leave faster, I could feel my blood starting to boil... He even shouted it as I struggled to lift one down the stairs from the train to the platform. Hm, perhaps if he'd been a gentleman and helped me I would have been faster?

Then after passing through the ticket barrier one last time we were met by a barrage of tourist touts, taxi and minibus drivers all shouting in our faces for business. We wrangled past them and made our way through the Metro (which is a joke by the way, lots of stairs, hardly any escalators, no lifts that we could see = awful, when you have suitcases) and finally got out at the stop recommended by our hostel.

We managed to leave the wrong exit of the Metro station and got completely lost, and ended up having to get a moderately expensive taxi to the hostel. We were at least relieved at the idea of setting the bags down, and finally have a shower... but Shanghai had other plans for us.

The girl at reception told us she didnt have any mention of our reservation, even though I had corresponded with someone both in June and only a few days previous to our arrival via email. She didn't care. She kept saying 'I'm sorry but we have no rooms' and doing absolutely nothing to help. It was seriously ridiculous. We asked, perhaps were we at the wrong Le Tour Hostel (as there are two) and she said no to that. Finally the owner, or manager, said he would drive us to the other hostel as they had available beds for us there. It was free, so begrudgingly we left.

On arrival it turned out that YES we were supposed to be staying at the OTHER hostel, except the idiot who I was emailing told us both the WRONG name of the hostel and even sent a bloody map of the WRONG hostel. Seriously, what chance did we have of getting to the correct place? The hostel was a complete downsize, it had a tiny 'bar' and a menu featuring 5 items, compared to the other hostel that even had a cheap breakfast buffet. I had requested a mixed dorm but this hostel was split into male and female... I was told I could stay in the male dorm but would maybe have to move.

I'll leave it there but yes, Shanghai did not give us a good first impression in the slightest. We hoped that evening and the next few days would pan out better...