The Train to Chengdu and the Toilet of Doom

We settled into the two top bunks in our 4 bed berth and lay back in our beds reading our books and playing Nintendos while the two guys on the bottom beds invited all their mates in and had a bit of party, guzzling sunflower seeds and chortling in Chinese. Come tea-time we left the six or so of them to their shindig and headed to the buffet car for a bit of food lottery, pointing to the random Chinese characters on the menu and hoping for the best. Once again we came up trumps, further ensuring a food disaster to hit us in spectacular fashion later if the Karmic laws catch up with us.

An hour and a half later and we returned with a bottle of warm beer to settle in for the night and hoping maybe the party had ended. It hadn't and further more we weren't going to be allowed to avoid it anymore as they all insisted we sit down beside them and have a good old social time together. Out came the phrase book and for the next hour or so we stumbled through niceties with next to nothing of each other's language until one by one, everybody seemed to get bored with the effort and slinked away with their mobile phones never to return. It was all fun enough, especially when we discovered they were officers in the PLA and we quickly changed our job description to Students. We then all settled down for the night and had a good sleep until I woke up about midnight needing the toilet, with the train stopped at a station. An adventure seemed inevitable.

The trains in China are much better than Vietnam so this time no acrobatics were required to climb over sleeping people in the aisle but when I reached the toilet I found a rather distressed fat American waiting outside the locked cubicles, in a state close to bursting. It turned out that the guards had locked the toilets shut because we were stopped in the station and so that no-one would leave an unpleasant spectacle for people on the platform after the train moved off. We had been stationary now for about half an hour and it didn't seem likely that we would be moving for at least as long again yet.

Outside, a couple-dozen guards were now standing on the platform spread along each carriage smoking and making sure no-one got on or off the train while the odd other guard would periodically come wandering through the carriages to make sure nothing suspicious was happening inside.

It seemed likely that there was soon going to be an unpleasant spectacle of our own inside the train if a solution was not quickly found for my new friend, who was only ten minutes or so further into his personal crisis than I would soon be too. By chance, and in keeping with all good action movies, I happened to have a Kirby hair grip in my pocket and prepared to put it to good use trying the lock from the outside. As I struggled, we heard a guard coming down the train and we quickly stopped, pretending to be looking interestingly out of the windows, post cigarette. The guard passed and we resumed but it was to no avail. I then crept back to our berth and rummaged through my bag trying not to wake the PLA and returned with my multi-tool. With a quick flick of the wrist the door released. It only seemed right to let the fat American go first while I once again assumed the idle looking out of the window position while another guard approached. The guard banged and slammed the doors as he passed between the locked carriages and after another five minutes or so I assumed the American must have left during all the banging. Sure enough when I looked at the door it was unlocked so I opened to enter. The Fat American was not finished, he wasn't even close and what was worse, he was doing exactly what they had tried to avoid by locking the doors. I quickly closed the door, did everything I could to prevent the memory from sealing in my brain and waited a further ten minutes until a very embarrassed but still just as fat man made a sharp exit leaving me to face the disaster zone.

When I had first unlocked that door it still had the sterilized notice over the toilet seat, meaning it had remained locked for the whole journey and he was the first to use it but by the time I entered, it looked as bad as if it hadn't been cleaned for a week. I couldn't use the cubicle on the other side of the train because that was the platform side and the guards would have seen me and I didn't want to have to unlock carriage doors and use the next carriage because that just seemed like a bit too much to get caught doing. I braced myself for the worse and got through it, returned to bed and lay in shock until we arrived at the station around 5 o'clock in the morning and got harassed off the train by the cleaner who couldn't understand why we weren't pushing with all our might to fight through the crowd and get off before our turn.