We made it back to Beijing safe and mostly sound on Saturday morning. The train rolled into the station at approximately 9:25 local time. One of our traveling companions had asked me to describe the trip in one word and I said surprising. The first surprise came about a month ago when our boss had told us that she had contacted a travel agent about setting up a trip for us (and two other teachers to Shanghai) since Julie and I had mentioned that we might want to travel there for the holiday. Due to our language barrier we didn't receive a whole lot of other details. For instance, about two weeks before our trip we were told someone from the travel agencies was coming to pick-up the cash for our trip that day and of course we didn't have time to go get the money out of the bank. Luckily a fellow teacher fronted us and we were able to pay them back. Then nothing else about said trip until a couple of days before and we were told our traveling companions would pick us up at 12:20 on Tuesday.
12:10 on Tuesday my phone rings and our traveling companions have arrived and are waiting for us at the gate. We are driven to the subway station by the husband of a our fellow traveler and the other fellow traveler realized she doesn't have her phone once we get into the subway. She frantically races out to get back to the car only to realize the phone was in her other bag all along, tragedy averted. Smooth sailing to the train station and we arrive in time with no issues. At this point we learn that to get a train ticket for this time of year the agency had to buy the ticket long ago under a false identity and it works perfectly. Actually, the only time the whole trip we need our passports is when checking into the hotels. Around this time we also learned that we would be making our first stop in Suzhou.
We hoped on the bullet train and five hours later we were in Suzhou. (Bullet train topped out at a little over 310 km/h. Was very smooth wouldn't have known we were going close to that fast w/o the digital speed readout at the front of the car.) In Suzhou we were taken to see the Tiger Hill tower - the leaning tower of China, was built around 700 AD. It was very cool and a great way to start our trip. (PICTURES WILL COME LATER.)
Onto the tour bus we were swept away to Wuzhen. Welcome to the country of 1.3 billion people and a lot of people means a lot of lines. This was a very cool old river town but there were so many people you could barely move. walking down the street was a human can of sardines. This was a sign of things to come.
We jumped back on the bus and headed to Hangzhou and a wetlands national park. Welcome to gigantic line number two of the day. They have a very cool boat ride through the wetlands, so cool that 100,000 people want to ride it. Thirty minute ride and a hour and half wait to get there. Beautiful, but we are learning about travel (especially to tourist locations during a national holiday in China). After dinner we were taken to an amusement park where we went to a haunted house (the Chinese have somethings to learn from the US about haunted houses, but our traveling companion was certainly scared) before going to a wonderful show about the history of Hangzhou. Hangzhou was the capital during several of the dynasties. Come 11:00 pm we pull into the hotel. We head out in 7 hours.
Hangzhou's most famous attraction is the West Lake. We first went for a ride on the lake (yes there was a line to get on the boat). That took us to an island in the middle of the lake (yes there was a line to get back on the boat to get off the island) that was very nice. Then we walked along the lake until it was time for lunch. After lunch we headed to Shanghai.
The first stop in Shanghai was a shopping street - the name of which I can't remember. It was quite interesting and all of these people would subtly come up to the white folks and ask if wanted watches or bags and then point to the dark alley and show us there laminated picture cards of all these random of products. Went to a food court that had the longest buffet of Chinese food I have ever seen. Shame we can't read the language so we could've known what we were picking. It worked out pretty well for me. After dinner we met back up with our group and headed to the harbor for a cruise down the Hangpu river through the center of Shanghai. If you get the chance I recommend you go. It was spectacular. After that we head off to the hotel.
The next morning we got to sleep in until 7. After breakfast we went to the Saudi Arabian Pavilion from the 2010 World Expo. It was quite impressive. Then we went to the Nanjing street. Which is like a giant outdoor shopping mall. Thinks a six lane road closed down and filled with people and lined with stores for several blocks. Julie and I were able to find a nice restaurant with seating on the roof and enjoyed a very nice afternoon. Come two o'clock it was time to get on the bus and head to the train station. Our train was leaving at a little after 6 - we aren't taking the bullet train home. This is called a hard sleeper. Cabin is six by six with six beds. I slept pretty good, except some guy came into the cabin in the middle of the night. Not sure what was all about but we were told to sleep on our valuables, so the brain goes to the most negative possibility. We didn't lose anything and fifteen short hours after we left we were back in Beijing.
Hopefully everyone has had a wonderful week.
Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment