The 1000 Day Holiday

According to “THE BOOK”, there is 10 million Chinese on their train system at any point in time.

And unlike India, there is no foreign tourist quota of tickets.

So some routes can be quite difficult to get a sleeper berth. I was at the ticket window in Kunming, looking for a sleeper berth to Chengdu. One of the most heavily booked routes.

No one was in that queue, I guess because most people know it would be booked out. The supervisor came and looked up my queries. “No sleepers. only hard seat.”

After visiting the long distance bus station to see if that was an option (nope!) I returned.. I had also heard about a different train. So I asked her about it.

I didn’t think this was going to work, since it was a ticket tout who told me about the other train, and offered to sell me a sleeper on it for a 50% commission on the price.

She got very flustered and was shouting at me that “I tell you already, no sleepers, just seat. I tell you already.”

I asked her about the other train.

Again… “I tell you already, no sleepers, just seat. I tell you already.” But while she was saying this, she banged a couple of keys and suddenly

“1 sleeper ticket, 215 Yuan, 8pm, very lucky”I quickly gave her the money, got the ticket, she rolled down the window blind and stormed off!

The ticket scalper was also amazed that I managed to get a ticket from the window.

Karma is a good thing to have sometimes. glass between you and the ticket lady, priceless as I’m sure she wanted to throw something at me.