Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 59 - Thursday July 7th 2016 - Yichang to Shanghai

So it was not too much of an early start with the alarm going off at 07:30. We had time to go down to breakfast and get ready. Our guide had told us that we needed to leave the hotel by 10:45 so fortunately we had time to try and find a chemist! Jonathan had woken up with the worst head cold and his nose was full of bad stuff and he was going through tissues at a rate of knots. Just what you need when you know you don’t have a bed to sleep in for the next two days and you you have to face busy public transport systems.

Breakfast in the hotel had actually been one of the worst we had encountered, made all the more disappointing as the hotel really is done up well and is without doubt the poshest we have stayed in this trip. Jonathan ordered two fried eggs and the egg lady tried to deliver them to me without the egg whites being totally cooked so it looked like a plate of snot, needless to say I sent them back with my best finger pointing for communication. Thankfully the second time around she got them just right and it made a

change from toast!

Visiting the chemist had been the same (once we found it). It was series of hand gestures and blowing nose signals that finally put a packet of tablets that apparently would make him feel better, he really needed them to do the job as he was really suffering.

The hotel porters got us a taxi off the street and we made our way across Yichang to the train station. The city really did stretch out in all directions and our journey revealed even more city that we had not seen before, such a shame that we did not really get to explore it in any way but we had other fish to fry like how do we get out of here.

We were really early to the station and our non-English speaking taxi driver demanded a further 5 yuan for his services and neither of us could work our why. The taxi meter was displaying 25 yuan but he wanted thirty, we could not argue with him so just handed it over like all ripped off tourists do. To be fare the guide had said that the journey would cost between 30 and 40 yuan so this was at the cheap end even with the extra 5.

The train station was really busy and absolutely nothing was in English so we really were home alone and using our instinct to work things out. Luckily numbers are the same, so with times, train numbers and platforms being in a form that we could understand we were going to be fine.

We sat upstairs in the waiting area for about an hour and a half waiting for our train to come in, watching the departure boards, not having a clue what they were saying. There seemed to be a traffic light system for trains. The information would be written in green, then amber then red…. red was bad, that was all we could really work out, thankfully ours stayed green, the train was on time and good to go.

Just before our train was due a train load of army personnel arrived on a platform at the station, we presumed they were here to be moved out to the flood areas that we would be travelling through on our train and in fact they were actually on our train, taking over two carriages. We joined the throng of passengers when our train call sign went to amber and stood on the platform to find our carriage and reserved seat numbers. The train was actually not that packed from this station, its first on the route it was taking so getting on and finding our seat was not a problem at all. We left our luggage in the disabled wheelchair space and sat down ready for the first leg that would take about five hours. Once again we were like a novelty act on the train, the only western white faces and whenever the ticket inspectors came around or the buffet trolley passed they ignored us. Obviously their English was as good as our Chinese and any form of communication was just not going to work at all! Now we just needed to get to Hankou our change station.

Our guide from yesterday (Fay) had given us a piece of paper with all the stopping stations listed on and the times that the train should stop at each so we didn’t really relax until we had made it to the second station, confirming that we had passed through at the right time and the station was as expected. After that we relaxed a little and just sat back and watched out of the window.

It did not take to long for the views to change from city scape and suburbs to real country complete with rice paddy fields and water reservoirs. We were on a bullet train again but this was what they called a B train which means that it doesn’t break much above the 200km per hour speed mark compared to the 300km that these trains can go.

There was actually not that much to see out of the window, one field just merged into another after a while so we started to watch iPads and read.

We hardly had the healthiest of lunches to eat, crisps and chocolates and other rubbish but we soon went through it. The one good thing about the train was that it was moving in the right direction, we were finally on the way to Shanghai and after yesterday’s events this was nothing but good news. Storms were still forecast to hit China with a Typhoon expected. The news was that whole towns had been evacuated and there had already been fatalities. As the train hurtled along we started to hit some of the flood areas, car parks covered in water, fields of crops underneath water and towns that had been hit.

We finally made it to Hankou, the first of our mammoth train journeys over. We had to leave the train station completely to go back in and go back through airport style security to get access to the platforms and the waiting areas. We had another hour and a half wait for the train, stood up in the waiting area as it was rammed. Eventually just like the train journey before we were called and made our way to the platform and our carriage and seats. We were due to arrive into Shanghai at 22:15 so it was another six hour train journey. Tiredness was starting to kick in as was the lack of a proper meal but there was nothing that we could do about it, again, at least we were on the move.

This train journey felt the longest of the long! Having already been on a long train journey we were getting restless and bored and this train was a lot busier in terms of number of people on board. We pulled into Shanghai on time but both a bit fed up.

The next job was to find the coach stop to take us across Shanghai to Padong airport.

The train station that we terminated in was actually at an airport but not the one that our next flight went from. It was a serious walk through terminal after terminal with the signage being non-existent and at times we moved before floors going back to where we came from and walking around in a few circles but finally after nearly an hour we found the coach stop, bus No. 1 to Pudong Airport.

The bus driver was insane. He drove at god knows what speed but also weaved in and out of the traffic like he was riding a motorbike not steering a large coach on a motorway. By the time we got to the airport we were both glad to get off. We had just managed to get the last link coach between airports and arrived at Pudong just after midnight, 18 hours on the go and it was not over yet.

Our flight did not leave until 0600 so we still had at least four hours to kill before we could even get rid of the bags. We tried to find a quieter place in the airport, away from all the cleaners and other passengers that were all crashed out over the sparse seating areas around the place. Eventually we found a row of four seats and we tried to sleep, well rest at least. Falling asleep over the top of your cases is never a good look and being honest by now we were absolutely exhausted, staying awake only through fear of falling asleep and missing the flight so when it came to three o’clock in the morning and the check in desks opened it came with much relief that we had made it but we still had time to kill and stay awake for.

Once again we found ourselves looking for a quiet space to sit and relax and hopefully nap. We went down to the gate and let ourselves in only to be asked to leave about half an hour later. Nothing was open at the airport just yet, we had even had to wait for security to be opened for us as we were the first flight through of the day.

Finally, we got on the plane and took our seats in the front of the plane, Air Asia business class (well flat bed, not really business class). All we wanted to do was get up in the air and fall asleep, please please please let us just go to sleep! This leg of the flight was to Kuala Lumpur and we were only up in the air for about six hours…..how we wished it could be six hours of sleep.