Advertisement
Published: August 19th 2008
Photo 1
At the Toronto airport before beginning our journeyToday is my third "full" day in China and we've been busy getting settled into our new temporary home. For those who don't know, "we" refers to my partner, in both travels and in life, named Jen. I'm sure you'll see lots of her in various photos. I'm really grateful she's able to come with me to China because I don't think it'd be nearly as much fun alone.
In any case, I'll try to summarize our initial foray into this new place as much as possible but there are a lot of details needing to be noted. Hopefully through the text and the photos you'll get a sense for what the last few days have been like.
To begin with, I have to admit it was a lot harder leaving home than I had expected. The combination of moving our belongings out of our condo (we're renting it out while we're away), saying goodbyes to friends and family, and reflecting on all the great things about "home" that we'll miss were among the more difficult things I think either of us have been through as yet. While I'm sure many of you have heard my gripes about Toronto
Photo 2
Travelling business class definitely has its benefits and, at times, about Canada, departing from the familiar isn't an easy thing. I've been away from home before of course - having attended university in both Halifax and Ottawa - but this is a move of a completely different magnitude, both in distance and in culture. Over the last two days in Toronto I probably slept about three hours total.
After saying our goodbyes (or I suppose "see you soons"), the plane ride was surprisingly smooth. We flew in business class (which was hands down worth the extra investment considering it was a 14 hour flight) and it was our first opportunity to relax in about a month, considering we had spent so much time packing and preparing to leave Canada. Some of the landscapes we saw on the flight were amazing too - we flew over the North Pole so we saw the barren mountains and plains of that area as well as ice-covered seas.
Our first glimpse of China was of a very stark landscape of flat land and farms. The weather was a combination of rain and smog. While we weren't allowed to take photos of the airport itself, I can tell you it
Photo 3
Now THIS is how to travel was a huge and beautiful building. We were picked up by a driver - who I might add was a little upset with us for bringing so many suitcases - who drove us to the hotel. On the way we were passed by the magnetic levitation train that takes you from the airport further into Pudong, which was amazingly fast. So a very stark landscape was contrasted with one of the most modern airports and trains on the planet.
Arriving at the hotel we realized they had put us on a smoking floor facing a construction site, when we had asked for a non-smoking floor facing north over a park. In trying to explain this to the front desk we realized there was a pretty big language barrier here. We were able to get our point across however and the hotel staff moved us to a more desirable room. Thankfully they were very friendly. I felt really bad for the bellhop though because we had so many bags and the poor fellow had to lug them around for us. I know it's not customary to tip people in China but I tried anyway. The guy was totally baffled as
to why I was trying to give him money, as almost all the staff here speak no English at all. Eventually I gave up, smiled and said "xie xie" and sent him on his way. We then passed out until the next day.
Now that I look back on this entry maybe I'll write Days 2 and 3 as separate posts. My goal is to eventually make these weekly postings but I think our first several days are going to involve a lot more detail as we get ourselves oriented here so bear with me for the multiple posts.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.042s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0222s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Tim Knight
non-member comment
Wow.
Your adventure looks pretty amazing overall. Excellent writing and I'll continue to look forward to future blog entries. Also I like the use of "as we continue to get ORIENTed to our new environment"