I couldn’t sleep, worried we would miss the alarm or have a hard time flagging down a taxi. So I was up at 3:30AM. I had my alarm set for 4:40AM.
Kaatje buzzed me to let me know there would be a driver vs a taxi, which eliminated a lot of worry. As I walked outside I was surprised how totally dead it was. Like Chatham dead 😉 For most of the day this street is packed with cars and people walking.
He showed up right on time at 5AM and off to the railway station (it’s joined to the airport). The driver walked us in to get our ticket and pointed to the gate to take. The train station is huge – we were at Gate 11 and had about 30 minutes to wait.
Here is the route, about 300km to travel (arrival at 7:40AM with about 4 stops)
At 6AM they started boarding and down we went. Since the tickets were purchased separately, Kaatje was in carriage 10 and I was in carriage 13. We sat together to start with. Some of the blurry pictures are taken with us moving, sorry.
The train was pretty smooth and as you can see, fast. It really didn’t feel like 300km/hr+.
One interesting thing I noticed is they have hot water dispenser in the areas between carriages. This is for riders to make those noodle soup packages as they ride the train.
There was very little open area along the way. Built up areas, then a little open/forest and then more built up areas. One thing you notice is when they build an apartment complex, they don’t build one, they build like 20.
We arrived 2 minutes early and walked out of the station to the client waiting for us.
More to come.