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Published: February 4th 2008
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Ok, its been a while I know, but we've been doing loads of travelling in the last 9 days.
We have travelled by Boat, Taxi, Metro, Ferry, Bus, Bike and Train
Firstly we left Chongquing, which after we found the nice part of town turned out quite nice to be honest. We left there at 7am to catch a bus to take us to Wanzhou to catch a ferry to Yichang. Complicated I know, not the greatest time to be travelling either seeing how the whole of China is going home for New Year, and the weather is awful. To put the weather in perspective. The Bund in Shanghai hasn't seen snow in 60 years. It is inches deep here right now. The weather is close to bringing the country to a stand still, and we have been very lucky to have made it Shanghai with relativity no hassle.
Anyway, the bus to Wanzhou was supposed to be 4 hours, it ended up being 15, from 8am to 11pm. This was because the expressways were all closed due to the weather. We sat at a stand still, with absolutely no ideas what was going on for probably
about 4 hours at some rural Chinese town, were people were madly dashing to train stations, taxis and generally anything that could move. We got oreo cookies anddecided to stick it out.
Finally in Wanzhou we had all of 6 hours in the City due to not arriving to a hotel until midnight, and our river cruise down the Three Gorges departing at 7am the next morning.
After 4 hours on the cruise and some immpressive photography of the scenary we stopped at a port. Ah, Yichang we thought. Alas, no a mere 20 minute bus ride followed by another hour cruise to transport round the Three Gorges dam finally saw us arrive at Yichang port. Another bus ride to teh centre of town, and we met our contact. Given that we had missed our criuse and trains the day before due to the epic bus journey we wanted our money back! We stood out ground at the office, and despite several lower totals, we eventually had the full sum returned, and cut our ties with the company. A smart decision.
No matter though, we were within a train journey of Shanghai, no ordianry journey though, an
over night one, with beds on a train. We were excited and thought it would take about 17 hours! We bought our tickets, checked into a hotel and settled down. This is when Ross decided to get ill off a dodgy egg. Now being on a cramped train with about a million other Chinese people for 17 hours and dead animals (yes really) is not exactly like having a lemsip and calling it an early night. Ross felt sick at even the sight of Chinese food, never mind the smell, and given we had eaten our 16 packets of Oreos and Lays we had to eat. It was less than pleasant. However we were suprised, and very excited at the prospect of sleeping in a bed on a train. We played cards, talked the evening away, got to bed and presumed when we next saw daylight, we would be in Shanghai. Perfect.
Except things don't always work out like that do they? Haha. 4.30pm the next day and we decided it might be an idea to ask a nice Chinese family next to us what time the train arrived. 1.30 they said. Late then we asked? No, they said,
1.30 tomorrow. Wow, we thought another whole day on the train! Bit of shock as you can imagine. This meant we were really sort of Oreos. The only way of getting food, was (and this is true) wait for the train to stop at a station, leg it off the train onto the platform having a blind guess that we could be stopped for 20 seconds or 20 minutes and buying pots of noodles off the vendors at the platform. Indiana Jones eat your heart out. Again we thought, ok we'll get a good nights rest, be fresh for the morning and arrive early afternoon, ready for Shanghai. No big deal. Ross was feeling better already! Tucked up in bed at 10pm and ready for a good night's sleep, we laughed at how we had no idea that it was two days.
Not strictly true. The train arrived at 1.30 AM! Woken up at 1.30am by my Mum is bad enough, never mind a shouting Chinese women who wants my ticket. This is a dream. This can't be right. But, sure enough everyone else is packed up ready to go looking quite amused at the fact 5 Westerners are
still in bed.
Shanghai train station is massive. It's like an airport, the ticket barriers were closed and we wanted to get a ticket to Ningbo and then Putuo Shan before returning to Shanghai for New Year. Ok, let's get some tickets and sleep in the station, I jumped the barrier, and my hand starting hurting. Blood was running down my palm, I had gashed my hand on the barrier, as I had failed to see the slit. I fainted on the bags and woke up a few minutes later to be told that Rick and Ross had gone to get a McDonalds, as we were all so hungry.
This is at 2am in Shanghai Train Station, the week before New Year.
At 6am they returned, with stale fries and burgers and a bill of taxis which could have bought us all a hotel room for the night. Turns out there is more than one train station in Shanghai and we were at the smallest one with 3 terminals, they had spent hours trying to find us at the main one with 12 terminals!!! Now was probably not the right time to try and work out the
Shanghai Subway system and find out hostel. So of course that's what we did, actually this wasn't too challenging, offered great early morning views of the Centrel shopping area, and we will definately not see Shanghai that quiet again.
A quick nap at the hostel later and we were out at the Bund, the walkway which faces over the River and offers the best view of the Shanghai skyline took lots of pictures, we then explored the shopping area and got ourselves some food, including prawns and a kind of egg pancake thing which is very nice. We decided to base ourselves in Shanghai go over to Putuoshan for a night and return the next day. Putuoshan is an island off the coast, a kind of holiday resort occupyed by Buddas. Think Jurassic Park/Center Parcs/Budda Temple.We‘d leave our big bags, and take an overnight bag. Perfect!
Putuoshan is a lovely place, full of character with great beaches and we enjoyed the walk around the island, and the hotel was very nice. It was nice to relax, and get away from the bustle of the previous week. The next day we awoke ro news that the weather was so
bad there was no ferry. Stranded on an island, with only the clothes we were wearing and Oreos.
We worked out the next day we could get a local boat to the next island and then a 7 hour bus back to Shanghai, which we did, we arrived back last night. Sorted our hostel dorm out, which the best so far by the way. The dorm is amazing. After a quick trip to McDonalds, in which we got some vouchers for free drinks and chips, a most curious thing happened. I had a voucher which said 2008RMB on, after inquiring at McDonalds, to was comfirmed I had won 2008 Yuan, about 180 Pounds!!! Awesome! Because of the hassle needed to claim, namely an address, I sold it for about 1000 Yuan to the manager, which sounds a bad deal but it was cash in hand. Roll on the Superbowl Breakfast the next morning.
Up at 6am, we headed down to Malone's Sports bar, where the New York Giants played the undefeated New England Patriots in the SuperBowl. The atmosphere was electric. The Breakfasts were huge, and all in all it was great to forget about China for a
few hours, watch the game and even more amazingly watch the supremely underdog Giants team win in the 4th Quarter over the Pats. Excellent, this really was a great morning. The rest might even know what a Shotgun is and why its a bad idea to Blitz on a 3rd and long, even if Jonny did ask at Half Time which team was which. A truely great game, which was appreciated by all even more when I treated them all to Breakfast.
Which pretty much leads me to here! I'll update again soon, and it would be great to hear from anyone reading this! J x
PS Pictures will also follow! The USB doesn't work here!
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Ian
non-member comment
Sounds exciting
Well it does! Keep us posted.