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Published: March 25th 2006
Great Wall
Great WallIt all started to go wrong when I decided to take a shortcut to the train station which I found by looking at the map.
We had an overnight train to catch to Shanghai, at 3pm, and left our hostel with an hour to spare. Plenty of time we thought. The normal route, without the shortcut, had taken us 45mins on a previous occasion.
We loaded up our backpacks (let me remind you that these are 20kg each + front loaded rucksacks) and set off. I should also mention that we could have taken the subway which would have taken 5 mins but ofcourse we needed the exercise...BOY did we get a workout. After about 30 mins we found ourselves lost, on a dual carriageway with no pavement. It was at this point we started to panic as missing this train would have meant money down the drain and the next train was in 2 days!
We tried to hale a cab but they just laughed and waved as they sped passed! We decided with 20 mins left that we had to choose a direction and RUN! We ran over the flyover and to our relief saw the
Overnight Train To Shanghai
Little Brian (Giraffe) is up way past his bedtime! station looming. However this releif was short lived when we realised we only had 10 mins to get to the actual train. It was then that the whole thing turned into some kind of reality game show as we began shouting for directions and people started running with us and pointing. Luckily the Immigration Officials allowed us to go through quickly as we were late, although I did get some funny looks (Later on I realised that my entire face was covered in dirt from wiping it from the barriers on the highway, onto my face!). We boarded the train literally with minutes to spare and sweating like pigs in a sauna!
Unfortunately due to another miscalculation we only spent half a day in Shanghai before we had to catch the next overnight train to Beijing. Finally we arrived in China's capital and headed straight for the sites.
We saw the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven and ofcourse The Great Wall which was one of my favourites on our whole trip. As we did not have very long in Beijing we can't comment too much although I would say we found the food much better in
Hong Kong. After a short but sweet stay we are off to Malaysia!
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