We got on a sleeper bus from Beijing to Xi'an on Thursday and it was literally a sleeper bus! The entire bus was full of beds- 32 of them. It was one of the funniest things that we'd seen! I got a bottom bunk and Sean a top. Our "pillows" were these metal bumps that the person behind you could slide their feet under. It was pretty comfortable but not nearly long enough for either of us and Sean's shoulders were totally crunched together. About an hour out of Beijing, our bus broke down. We should have expected it I guess. We all piled out of the bus and the girls headed to the bushes to pee while the guys stood around and looked at the engine. One of the passengers dove right in and emerged about an hour later covered in grease- but the bus started right up!
Our next stop was for 'dinner'. We walked into a trucker restaurant where everyone stared at us the whole time. For dinner, we had our choice of duck heads or an entire fish, scales, head and all. We went back out to the bus and went to sleep.
We both slept for the majority of the night which was pretty good considering the amount of snoring, smoking and LOUD farting that was going on! What got us though, was the horn. The bus driver would lay on his horn for a full minute before passing anyone- I guess that was because everyone drove in the center of the road and he needed to tell them to move over. He had like, three different types of horn that he would use, they were all loud. We gave up at about 6am and got up.
We stopped a couple of hours later for a bathroom break. I wouldn't 
have gone if I had known what I was about to find but I didn't. It looked a lot like the image to the right except that there were no dividing walls. There were a bunch of women all squatting together and, you guessed it, watching me! Terrible!
have gone if I had known what I was about to find but I didn't. It looked a lot like the image to the right except that there were no dividing walls. There were a bunch of women all squatting together and, you guessed it, watching me! Terrible!We finally rolled into Xi'an, about 18 hours after leaving Beijing (this was to have been a 12 hour bus ride). We were both very happy to check into our hostel. It has great food, lovely courtyards and we're VERY happy to be off of the bus.
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