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Published: August 5th 2007
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This is the end...
I'm now back in England. What have I learned from my journey in the last 32 months? I've learned a lot but I've also learned that the more I know, the more I realise how little I know about the world.
At the end of the last blog
'Real Men walk the Wall' I left you in Beijing. On the 6th of July I caught the train to Shanghai, which was a 12 hour overnight journey. There were no soft sleeper places on the train, so I went by soft seat. In China the train tickets are soft and hard sleeper and soft and hard seat, rather than first and second class. It meant that I didn't have a bed for the night so I didn't get much sleep.
Shanghai
I spent 4 days in
Shanghai. The weather was unbearable. It was hot and humid and rained a lot. The humidity was the main difference between Beijing and Shanghai. It still remained hot and humid when it was raining. Walking in Shanghai felt like walking through a sauna. I explored the old colonial districts of the French Quarter and the Bund, but
Shanghai Museum
Yue (Bronze weapon) - Late Xia, 18th-16th Century BC the highlight for me was the
Shanghai Museum. The most stunning and famous of the collections in the museum is the Ancient Chinese Bronzes Gallery - you can see some photos that I took in the Gallery in this blog.. The museum has state of the art technology and spotlighting, it is a world standard museum.
Outside of the old colonial International quarter the city is impressively modern. Much of the skyline is the product of the huge growth of the city in the last 20 years. The Pudong District across the river from the Bund has had a 19.5%!a(MISSING)nnual economic growth rate for the last 10 years.
Guangzhou and Hong Kong
After 4 days in Shanghai I caught another sleeper train to Guangzhou in the South of China. (See my previous blog ,
'The Immortals' for my earlier visit to Guangzhou) It was a 17 hour journey, but this time I chose to book a soft sleeper carriage. That little bit of luxury allowed me to get a nights sleep. I only spent a night in Guangzhou before catching a 3 hour bus to Hong Kong. I was in Hong Kong nearly 3
months ago when I first arrived in China.
(See my blog, Dirty Foreign Mud) This time, I found Hong Kong to be very expensive after nearly 3 months on the mainland.
It was just a brief stay in Hong Kong before catching a flight out to London. I chose to fly from Hong Kong because it was so much cheaper than flying from anywhere else in China to Britain. I flew to Gatwick, London on the 16th of July with Oasis Hong Kong. The flight only cost £199, half the price of flying from anywhere else in China.
“To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest
(attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.”
Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu J. Legge, Translator
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Bobbie Nystrom
From a fellow traveller.
What else can I say than very well done. Almost three years on the road writing honest and informative blogs, taking better and better pictures. Thanks Stu. And a special thanks for the West Africa blogs ou wrote that we found very helpful while traversing the region our self. Good luck back home.