The second leg of our journey started the rail-trip properly. After being detained, inexplicably, at hong kong immigration (something that has happened frequently ever since my first trip to hong kong in 1992), we took the airport express train to kowloon station. The first thing we both realized was that, even on such a modern train, public wifi access would be intermittent. Having handed in my blackberry the previous day, my last day at Prudential, we would either have to wait for public access to wifi or risk large data charges on my iPhone.
From Kowloon we took the k1 bus to hung hom station, arriving at 2.15, precisely 60 mins before the train departure. Surprisingly it was very easy to pick up the tickets (which I had ordered on the internet) but we were encouraged to go through immigration and board the train, the t98 express to Beijing. In hindsight we should have used the time to fill up on junk food and change some money into renminbi.
Booking early meant that Robert and I had excellent seats - the first two couchettes in carriage 10. Carriage 10 is the deluxe-soft sleeper, with ensuite wc and an a lcd tv (with two channels of Chinese cartoons). Our carriage was very near the dining car and the supply of hot-water, which would get frequent use on the 24 hours to Beijing. The carriages are very clean, the aircon cold, and the passage-ways totally silent. A very different experience to my previous train trips in china in the early 90s.
Having ignored the Siren call of McDonalds in hong kong, we were both pretty hungry; however a 3 hour wait ensued for the restaurant car to open. After scouring the somewhat limited menu, and realizing we didn't have any renminbi to pay, we extracted ourselves and bought some instant noodles and cashew nuts using half of the hong kong dollars I found at the bottom of my wallet from a previous trip to hong kong in April. We feasted on the cashews, the lukewarm noodles and a muesli bar, and watched the grey-green afternoon blur into a rain-filled evening.
We played with our iPad, iPhone and read, before settling the gadgets into chargers and calling it a night ourselves. The Rythmic rolling of the carriages soon had us both asleep, very comfortably, despite the rumbling in our stomachs.
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Location:T98 from hong kong to beijing
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