03122016
Woke up early for a complicated route to the next step of our trip. We packed up and checked out of the hotel, swiping all the complimentary tea, coffee and toothpaste we could on the way out.
We headed to Hangzhou East railway station, which is not the one we came in through. We had to take the subway there, and given that we were leaving mainland china we wanted to use up all of our CNY. We took a "slow train" to Shanghai rather than the highspeed rails, it was cheaper, so we could spend more money on the route from the train station to the airport.
The slow trains are the older trains, the seats are described as "hard seats", "hard sleeper" and "soft sleeper" we went with the hard seats. The train station appeared as many of the Chinese stations do, very new and modern, the train was older, still in working order, but clearly worn, the passengers were more authentic Chinese. These were the Chinese citizens that paid 4USD to get to Shanghai fr the weekend, rather than 24USD.
There were a few smelly passengers (overall hygiene standards everywhere we were in China met with what we were used to, but it was clear that there are some areas of China that are either unable to meet "western" standards, or unawares all together), we were fortunate enough to get put in one of the last of the cars (there were atleast 16).
Being that these train cars were 20 or more years old, they reeked of cigarettes, no one was actively smoking on the train (i think it is prohibited) but it smelled very heavily of it.
The train got is into Shanghai a little early, I guess there werent many passengers getting on/off at intermediate stops. We took to subway to the MAGLEV to get to the airport.
The MAGLEV was a little pricey, but it got us there in 8 minutes 40 seconds. And more importantly we had seats, which is never a sure thing on the subway. It was really cool, we travelled at 300km/h, apparently the thing is capable of commercial speeds of over 400km/h.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train
The Shanghai Pudong Airport is also huge, on par with Seoul Incheon. We were checking in, and our flight was getting delayed, so they bumped us to an earlier flight (eventually our originally ticketed flight was cancelled). We are travelling with only backpacks, to expedite travel, so we neednt check bags. The ticket agent asked if we had any luggage, nope, just our backpack we responded. She then asked us to wiegh the bags...they were over twice the "limit" for carryons.
We were not ready to part with our bags, we had cash stashed away, our electronics, our books for airplane reading. They were not going to let us on the plane with our bags. So we gathered what we could, taking extra care to ensure we had the phone numbers for our Travel Insurance...
Later on, when we got on the plane i could not help but notice all of the people with their HARD SIDE ROLL-ON SUITCASES. When I saw this, i started crafting my complaint for the airlines.
Before boarding we stopped at another one of the Priority Pass Lounges, they didnt have food as nice as the one in Seoul, but they did have beer. And we drank beer, and ate instant noodles. I ate no less than 3 cups of Shin Ramyun cuo noodles, and we had a good 4 Heinekens in the hour we waited for our flight.
We did board our flight, and promptly fell asleep.
Waking up in the Special Economic Zone that is Hong Kong, we exited our flight, and entered customs without issue, and claimed our bags. Everything seemed to be fine (and now a day later, still have not noticed anything awry).
We hopped a bus right outside the airport, that basically took us to our hotel, checked in, enjoyed the full blown google-included internet and discovered a cell phone in the room waiting for us.
The hotel provides a cellphone for its guests. This phone has internet, mapping, and preloaded important numbers; the hotel; the police; consumer protection, tourist info, some other good numbers, it has some applications to help you shop. Also it has ads, but it is really great having an ACTIVE phone while oot-n-aboot.
We found a diner-esque restaurant nearby. Ate a bunch of greasy Asian food, and wandered around the neighborhood. Turns out there is a major university in this area, and on this particular saturday, a christmas bar crawl. So the bars were slammed with people, many of them in costume.
after wandering about, we got a little lost on the way home, but obviously found it (cause we didnt sleep under a freeway overpass) i updated the blog, took a shower and went to sleep.
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