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Published: June 19th 2012
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The bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing!
It cut down travel time from 14 hours to only 5 hours, now THAT is fast! After a weekend in Shanghai, we were a little more acclimated. It was an early morning as we made our way to the train station to hop on the bullet train for our journey to Beijing. We had gotten our tickets ahead of time to assure we could all get seats together and wouldn't get stuck on the normal train. The bullet train is a huge innovation in China. The trip takes a total of 14 hours on the normal train (the two cities are 664.85 miles away from each other) but with speeds reaching 309 km per hour, the trip on the bullet train takes only 5 hours total (including all the stops at the other stops along the way), that is far less then half the time of the normal train!
The trip was not bad at all and the scenery was extremely beautiful. We snaked through modern China and as soon as we were out of Shanghai we crossed through decrepit buildings, shocking poverty and vast farm lands. Five hours later, we stepped off the train in Beijing and got on the metro line to our hostel. Our hostel was located right next to Tian'anmen Square and
365 Inn
The bar attached to our hostel was perfect for meeting others and getting cheap drinks. the Forbidden City so as soon as we got out of the terminal, we felt we were in "real" china. The buildings looked traditional, people littered the streets with Tuk-Tuks, bicycles and cars, while many more walked on foot (of course ignoring all traffic signals).
Me and Jen had booked a room at 365 inn (a centrally located hostel near the forbidden city) while Chelsea and Connor had decided to book a hotel close by. Since we were all so unfamiliar with the area we decided to all stick together to find their hotel after we checked into the hostel. Our hostel turned out to be amazing, it was full of Chinese and foreigners from all over the world. The walls were covered with the stories of other traveler’s journeys, there was a mural which said "backpacking is life" and a fully stocked bar and restaurant in the front of the building. Our room was simple but nice. We had a 4 bed dorm room since 2 more of our friends from law school were to join us the next day from PDX, so after we settled in, we left with Chelsea and Connor to find their hotel.
Apparently their hotel wasn’t actually close to our hostel at all and we had to take two buses to get to where we were going (and no one spoke English so it was infinitely more difficult then we thought it would be). Once we got off at the stop, we wandered along the Hutongs of Beijing for over an hour. Hutongs are one of the beautiful gems of this city. They are basically small alleys filled with “old” china, each with a different name (similar to neighborhoods) where people ride rickshaws and the roads are made out of dirt. They are charming in a very different sort of way and it felt like we were in a 3
rd world county. However, Connor and Chelsea got increasingly more nervous as we walked further and further into the hutongs, winding our way around worn down locals covered in dirt.
It is often easy to forget about the poverty in China since so much of China has been built up to look like a modern city, however, you still cannot drink the tap water without getting violently ill. The difference between the area our hostel was in (which bustled with bars, foreigners, restaurants and paved roads) and this area was extreme. The only way we ended up finding their hotel was with the help of a random bi-lingual American walking by who was able to point us in the right directions with the aid of some of the locals.
When we finally found the hotel, the front desk spoke little-to-no English, there was a large shrine in the door way and the hallways smelled of bleach and urine. Connor immediately emailed Expedia to complain since it looked nothing like the hotel they thought they would be staying in. Needless to say, they did not want to stay in the area and chose to stay with us for the night (since we had 2 extra beds for the night) and try to book a separate room in our hostel the next morning.
So we returned to our hostel, ate a delicious meal at our hostel restaurant, hung out at the bar for a little while then went to sleep to prepare for a big day of exploring the next day.
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