Shanghai’d
It’s been a little while since the last trip update. First things first. There’s somewhat of an airfare deal going on with Orbitz. Come visit! haha
Things are going very well in Shanghai. It was sunny and warm today with a cool breeze. There are tons of people here. It has a slight New York feel to it, but more intimate. There are so many more people, getting pushed bumped and shoved to get on/off the tube or even just down the street is normal.
I suppose I should back up a little bit! A few things have happened since the last email. We made it safely to Beijing and with much happiness. After freezing our arses off in Siberia we were greated with spring like weather and SUN! Everyone stripped their thermals and down jackets and ran around outside at one of the train stops to celebrate. It was wonderful, and anticipated as we watched the land around the trains go from white to brown/white to brown/green to mountainous and sunny. We were all laughing at how much sunlight and warmth can affect your mood. You just instantly feel happy and are wondering what is so exciting? Then you realize you haven’t seen or felt the sun in ages and it is so uplifting!
Beijing was fun. It’s huge. Looking at a map you’d think you can walk to places, but it’s so misleading. Streets have up to 5 lanes on each side! I’m talking streets, not highways. The subway and taxis were very helpful and necessary. If you’re feeling saucy you can jump on a richshaw and have someone bike you around, but they usually try to rip you off. I suppose that’s almost everyone selling something in China though. The automatic price raising because you look foreign to Asia. “Cheaper for you my friend” my arse. Thank goodness Nat can bargain with them in Chinese. It’s quite an entertaining spectale because he’s very funny about it. Yes too funny to explain in email haha. “Guess you’d have to be there” scenarios.:)
We saw some of the tourist attractions. A couple temples, the Forbidden City, The Great Wall. Which was in fact Great! The tour we took to the wall was off the beaten path. We took a 3 hour bus ride to the middle of nowhere. They dropped us off in some small farming villa and we had to hike our way to the wall for about an hour and then hike on the wall for about 3 hours. It was fantastic. Pictures are lagging behind the emails. I rode a zipline over a river down part of the wall. It was pretty slick to be suspended hundreds of feet over the ground flying at a modest pace.
After a lot of eating and a lot of walking around Beijing, we booked our train tickets and rode into Shanghai. The Chinese train was brand new with 3 beds on each wall in each cabin. We all had the very top bunks in two separate cabins. You need some serious climbing skills to get up there. Then there’s the TV that you can’t turn off! You can’t even turn the volume down! They blast you with ads, music, movie trailers, and bad episodes of America’s Funniest Videos until you think your head is going to explode. Then the lights and TV finally shut off so you can sleep at the allotted time despite your snoring cabin mates. I was ecstatic to find a pair of ear plugs in the bottom of my backpack. You then get rudely awakened by the loud TV early in the morning many hours before the actual stop so you can sit in misery until you show up at your stop. hehe. It’s very different than that Russian trains. The Chinese make sure you get off their train whereas the Russian’s don’t care if you end up riding and missing your stop and get strand yourself in Siberia. Right Joe? Oli? hehe
By the way, the word “Hello” here is more of a question on how people can exploit you for money or “practice their English.” Examples:
“Hello, Friend.” says a merchant pointing at his goods
“Hello, don’t worry I’m not a tour guide. Would you like to look at my art exibit?” - Answering yes will get you into an uncomfortably small room with people trying to hard sell their art to you. It’s not an art show.
“Hello, Watch” says a merchant selling watches
“Hello, DVD”
“Hello, CDDVD”
“Hello, CdDvdWatch”
“Hello, CdDvdWatchShoes”
Many products seem to be hybrids the way they speedily try to tell you about all their wares. And all the merchands seem to be greeting their goods rather than the buyers. Quite entertaining after you get over the initial confusion that they aren’t actualy trying to say “Hi” to you.
Oh my favorite, after all the above fails, some put on a funny grin and quietly ask?
“Sex movie?”
I put a few pictures up from the car rental adventure through France & Germany on the website. Still tons more to edit and sort.