Dennis and Sue Travel Blog: New Adventures

We have continued our adventure, so I will continue our open letter.

Allow me a chance to start with; we are doing fine and enjoying our adventure. Allow me another chance to say without hesitation that I did not give up my retirement to go to work as a teacher, but we are on vacation for Chinese New Year; this combined with an additional 2 weeks of student testing so we are off for 6 weeks.

So our adventure starts; we are waiting for the bus at 5:30 AM that doesn't start its route until 6:00 AM so we hail a cab and off we go to the long distant bus. After questions and the majority 3/2 is what we went with. Leaving the yard quite slow; we watched the street vendors setting up for the day. About a mile later; the warning buzzer went off and off we go. Now much faster, it is necessary to use your horn. Approximately ½ hour outside the city, we see a sign that tells us we are going in the correct direction; so lean back and relax. Going through the country, we see some drained rice fields waiting for planting and flooding. I expected to see many more factories of assembly plants considering the flood of “Made in China” products,

At the 2 hour mark, we stopped for fuel at $6.00 per gallon, although I just found out that there is liters and meters and Chinese liters / meters apparently are smaller (we discovered this when buying strawberries) and a bathroom break. (More about the bathroom later.) Another hour and into a big city; the bus parked and we follow the crowd into another crowd. We look for a 15 – 25 year old because typically they have the best English. We have found that it is hard to talk with one person; either they are concerned about making a mistake so they say no or we are flooded with several; some trying to help and some curious about us and the crowd.

We used a 3 x 5 index card to write our destination in English and also Chinese characters. This particular time; we had a man maybe 50 years old write on our card; more Chinese characters including a number 517; with a point in that direction. Off we go and a shuttle bus is parking with a 517 in the window. We sure are happy to be some of the first on because this 30 passenger bus had 40 plus people all with luggage headed towards the train station. The problem is now in reverse; we are one of the last off this shuttle and our crowd is too dispused to get a general idea of what way to go. To add to the entertainment our bus was in an accident with another bus. Nothing serious but it caused a delay. After some circles we get to the ticket window in order to locate what track or gate our train is leaving or better to say left. At this point; the train has a 5 minute head start; so running to will not help. With some generosity at the ticket window we were told to go ahead to track 18 and we could get on the next train at no extra cost. The ticket taker at the turn style stops Sue to tell her we are late and we must go back, I scoot through without my ticket getting checked because they were (3 of them) busy with Sue. Sue tries to pretend all is OK, saying ting bu dong which translates I hear you, but I don’t understand. Ting bu dong; ting bu dong and off we go to track 18. Rushing with the crowd; we find a lady that works for the train and show her our ticket; she said to get into this car (approximately 20 to choose from.) Inside we find seat number 4D and 4F and sit down. The train leaves a minute later; OK we hope this is really what we wanted. We showed the ticket to the passenger across the isle and she nods yes.

We did buy a map of China that is in English before we left and this map would be quite helpful, unfortunately we left it in Wisconsin so I am frequently lost and don’t know it. After the stop in the next city; a new passenger tells me I am in his seat. With a little comparison of the ticket; we discover we are in the wrong car. So with suitcase in hand; we are headed 4 cars back. I hadn't mentioned yet that this train is called the Bullet train and travels at 234 Kilometers per hour or about 140 miles per hour, I am not sure if this is the smaller China kilometer or if that is only used when purchasing something. The walk is actually easy; the train is quite smooth. OK from track 18 headed towards Shanghai in car 15 and seat 7 and 8; now everything is good. The next city; another bump from our seat only then do we realize we are on the 10:30 AM train not 10:00 AM, so we take another empty seat. The next you would maybe guess, ha ha you are probably wrong. The conductor is coming down the isle checking tickets. We start to guess what may happen . . . maybe we must buy a new ticket, maybe we must pay a fine for being on the wrong train, and maybe we must get off at the next stop. Across from us a young Mother with about a 2 year old boy that wanted to see more of the train then his seat; I guess this distracted the conductor and we where not examined. I was bumped from my seat 2 more times but we made it. Now outside Shanghai Train Station we are looking for hotel; Holiday Inn. We see a shuttle driver for Super 8 so we ask him, he is willing to help us get a cab for 350 RMB or almost $60.00; we guess this is a type of scam so we lost him. Another person told us about subway. They said to take line 2 to line 1 and this would take us to ZhongXing Road which is where our hotel is. While at the subway ticket office; we showed them the card with the name of our hotel on it and we were told that we wanted line 2 to line 8. We got on the subway with our luggage; changed trains; and were finally at our destination. Under the city and out the other side; asking again where is this hotel / street; the first person said about a 30 minutes walk after sitting on a bus and train for 6 hours; a walk may be good. After 20 minutes; we pass a subway entrance #3. Maybe the other user of the subway did know best. Several more responses were ahead a little, being you, don’t know but we found it; thanks to the big green H.

Let’s admit our experience on the subway the next few days. One morning while trying to find a store; we only made 5 changes before knowing where we were. Part of this problem started because there are 2 airports and I assumed we were at the other one. Please note that I am not admitting that

I made a mistake but instead that I expanded our experience and adventure.

Another experience was not realizing that there are several exits from each stop and some stops have transfers multiplying the available exits. As you may guess after a day of sightseeing upon exiting the subway we did it wrong but with some inquires and seeing the large green H we got home; so we thought. Who would have guessed that there are multiple Holiday Inns? Yes thing looked different but we assumed that we arrived by the back door, in fact our first clue was that our elevator key didn't work. As human nature goes; I opted for not asking for help at the front desk. A traffic police helped us pointing that way. Off we go, arriving at a guard rail dividing the Y in the road; we went for the one with fewer cars; but the police using his whistle advised us the other side of the guard rail with heavy traffic. As we continue towards the other green H; we go over multiple subway and train tracks. I guess between sight seeing and getting to the correct hotel we walked over 6 miles.

You may assume that we would be more careful not to make the same mistake, I would not want to disappoint you but we didn't. We realized our error at the door not all the way to the elevator. And because the bridge over the tracks had very long approaches; we went back into the subway area and exited an alternate route. Surely lightening doesn't strike the same place 3 times, well we did notice a clock tower the following evening that we hadn't seen so we turned around as entering the subway court way.

Things that we saw were Yuyuan Garden is kind of like “China Town” with traditional type buildings, tea houses, elaborate decorations, and stinky tofu and wow does it stink; we had to get a block away to avoid nausea. Also we saw People’s Square, a very nice city park. Yuyuan Bazaar is 1.5 mile pedestrian only shopping strip with porcelain, musicians, pearls and of course trinkets. Another city about 1 hour bus ride that we visited Zhujiahiao known as the Venice of China. This city has sections of walking only; shops, restaurants, museums, and of course water, bridges, and rutter propelled boats. We also toured a traditional Chinese garden and monasteries; it was very interesting.

After one of our hard walking days, we saw a Pizza Hut and thought; after 5 weeks without pizza even BAD pizza would be good. We were quite surprised that the menu had pictures; always a good sign when you can’t otherwise communicate. Also the menu was bi-lingual; another even better help. As we were paging through; we discovered a choice of pizza, steak, pasta, salads, soup, fish; chicken and pie for dessert. What a pleasant surprise; we plan to hunt out Pizza Hut whenever we feel that noodles, rice, and vegetables is at its limit.

Chinese have many sayings so I will try to pass these to you; by the way this first one is from Dennis:

Edit your goals for tomorrow if today or yesterday had no chance of accomplishing it.