But wait... there was more...

Just when you thought I forgot... 

So... off the train... the not entirely or remotely warm and inviting face of mother China... into the station and through Chinese immigration, again... waiting for a tap on the shoulder and being led away into windowless rooms... but no... through without drama and only a few suspicious looks, and out into the crisp (I am not going to say clean) air of Shanghai. A couple of animated phonecalls later debating which was the left side of the station and looking through crowds of small people with black hair for a small person with black hair and a familiar face... and then there she was, our Shanghai saviour, our beacon of light and comfort in a sea of the unknown... my friend's ex Auckland girlfriend and Shanghai native... except despite growing up there, she really knew Mission Bay better than Shanghai, and we were still pretty much none the wiser. 

We found a Chinese version of... well, a Chinese fast food chain that was based on something western, decor a la KFC... across the inevitable square that is in front of every train station in China, and we ate the Chinese version of fast food... I wasn't overly craving anything so ate a relatively bland sounding beef noodle soup... to find the only beef was in fact chunks of beef fat, floating lazily in an oily broth... we chatted with our little hostess and she listened eagerly as we caught her up with the happenings in her beloved Auckland, and looked out at the grubby 1980's era pedestrian mall, complete with masses of somewhat derelict rural looking locals in ragged clothes, milling around selling fruits and generally looking... derelict... then made our way to the road to find a cab, talking our way past several clutching beggars. As we were to find out frequently, having a Chinese-speaking, and in fact Shanghaiese-speaking (because it is a whole other dialect) hostess/guide was a blessing and a curse, as she could tell people to leave us alone, but they also knew we "must" have bags of money, and could demand she tell us what they wanted... 

Finding a cab that would take us was the next mission... in China most things seem to be a mission, but taxis are a whole league of their own... finding one... then finding one that will actually take you... then figuring out where we are going... then surviving the ride... but that is other stories... and then off in the (rather unique) cab. It's hard to describe China from what I have seen. The midwinter sky is stark and the sun still seems harsh despite having no heat. The city just looks faded, the odd newish corporate tower mixed with buildings of all ages, all dusty, all looking washed out.. passing a Range Rover dealership, white and pristine inside with shiny vehicles behind smeared, filthy windows, streaks of dirt and congealed smog running down over the brickwork... The hotel when we got there was 10 floors of unremarkable brick outside but pretty much your standard western business hotel within. The staff were, as we had come to expect, unfriendly and unhelpful, but got us checked in, and we filled in our government "declarations of temporary residence" forms, got to the room and threw our bags down. There was considerable train-lag evident and with Nick once again complaining of no sleep the night before due to my snoring, we decided it was time for a nap (tragically for Nick, there was no door between the rooms in our suite, and within about ten minutes he was suffering serious dejavous).

We emerged from our cocoons later in the afternoon and wandered out and around, ending up not far away on The Bund, a stretch of old and rather grand grey colonial buildings and hotels on the corner of the river, built by the various German and French and English and whatever other empires tried to make China their own in the last couple of hundred years. From a large raised promenade stretching along the wide brown river we looked across to the towering office blocks and rather camp 70's sci-fi TV tower (think 'Thunderbirds') of the corporate downtown... all the while constantly accosted by hawkers, cripples, beggars, street children etc... etc... etc... who fill any such unpoliced touristy type areas. It's hard to put into perspective, suffice to say it is not how interesting the place is, but the level of harassment you can tolerate, which dictates how long you can stay in some public areas in China. 

The evening was blessedly unremarkable, a taxi ride to one of the small western oasises (oasees? oasi?) that exist in certain crouched and sheltered parts of the city, with a pedestrian strip of pubs and overpriced souvenir shops and a smattering of expats, where we sat and ate not-bad pizza at our little Shanghai friend's favourite pizza place (due to it being passably western) before a bit more walking on almost deserted Shanghai streets, and home to blissful (for me, I never hear myself snore.. but I gave Nick spare earplugs) sleep... 

to be continued... as always

And then a train to China... again...

And Friday it was, and we did some bits and pieces in the morning and then packed a couple of bags and headed to the big station... which as per usual was bustling and hectic. The Hong Kong - China trains are mostly full of mainland Chinese, as most of China wants to get into Hong Kong but not so much the other way around... As I have probably already mentioned, despite the handover of HK back to China, the majority of HKer's still consider themselves an entirely different country and opinions of their billion or so neighbours to the north are not always the most complimentary.

Once we got down to the platform we had to fight our way through the scurrying masses and were first directed to the wrong carriage (which happens a lot)... Nick got on a few people ahead of me and went off to find our bunks (on some of the trains it is first-in-gets-the-best-bunk, so train boarding sometimes resembles the running of the bulls)... the train steward lady then looked at my ticket and told me I had the wrong carriage. With various gestures and noises I indicated she had just let my friend on who had the same ticket, but she was quite adamant... I ended up having to walk down the outside til I saw Nick through a window, looking somewhat perplexed at the six Chinese people already in our "luxury" cabin. In a touching scene that could have been from a 1940's movie, or possibly an Asian remake of Schindler's List, we both pressed our tickets up against opposite sides of the glass and exchanged gestures and yelled things which neither of us heard. Nick turned and looked down the narrow train corridor, now flooded with people, and started trying to make his way back out to the door. Since Chinese people seem to have no concept of things such as... well, manners, and getting the hell out of the way, and the fact that people twice their size generally win in pushing matches, this also involved more than a little yelling, and at one point, Nickos dragging his wheelie suitcase up and over the luggage going in the other direction.

Down the train a bit we found our carriage, and curses upon Nick's friend who had booked our tickets turned into rejoicing as we discovered we did in fact have a luxury two-bunk cabin (just as well for the price we paid for it...), complete with our own toilet, mini tv's (which only played Chinese shows of course) and a little armchair in one corner...

We quickly set ourselves up with the bag of beer we had bought at the station and once underway, sat back to watch the world go by.

HK/China border

The trip was obviously a long one, around 22 hours... the train itself was great and we were well entertained with our supply of beers, rum and vodka brought from home, and spent many hours in the dining car with a couple of young guys we met at the station, one an Aussie/Canadian who had grown up in China and one a Swedish exchange student, both of whom lived in Shanghai.

While I say the train was great, this unfortunately does not include the staff, who were, putting it nicely, utter @ssholes to whom passengers were just an inconvenience. I could tell many a long story about our dramas... we asked for cans of coke (for our rum, not that we told them that at first), but there was no coke... or any softdrink... or any juice... or, in fact, any bottled water... on a 22 hour train ride... neither were there any snacks... You have to understand that this was in fact a very fancy train (by Chinese, or any Asian, standards), and we were in fact paying a lot of money for it... then we got into arguments about smoking, because when we entered the dining car initially about 20 crew members were sitting there smoking and lounging around, and we clearly disturbed them as most of them begrudgingly got up an wandered off... and shortly afterwards they tried to tell us it was a non-smoking carriage... Our Aussie/Canadian friend spoke fluent Mandarin, though he preferred not to let anyone in on this secret, and he ended up in several long and heated debates.

In the end we settled for mixing our spirits with beer and entertained ourselves by making up a comedy/drama based on the lives and loves of the staff aboard a Chinese long-haul passenger train, giving all the porters and attendants and cooks and other staff who wandered by names that seemed to fit, narrating all their conversations in English, and generally further pissing them all off by watching everything they did and occasionally breaking down into hysterical laughter for no apparent reason. The night wore on and Nick and I eventually headed back to the cabin to watch the vast countryside go by in the moonlight and polish off the last of our beer reserves.

The next morning we awoke to more vast countryside, the sun bright and the whole place looking kind of parched and washed-out, as much of China seems to.

Nuclear power(?) station, one of several en route

ENDLESS apartment complexes. Not many as nice as these.

We passed through various towns and cities, again mostly looking straight out of the 1950's, and one thing that struck us repeatedly was the lack of signs of life... the big highways were there, but there were no cars, just the odd truck and bus... the streets in towns that passed by seemed mostly empty... there were blocks and blocks of huge apartments in various stages of completion, all unoccupied. We never really did fathom this, unsure if mother China is in fact so efficient that they are building huge facilities even before the people need them, or perhaps that they are just building wonderful modern things that the people can't afford to actually use. Or, alternatively, that they have many great projects that never actually get finished. It's hard to know. Regardless, we pulled into Shanghai around 11am, cleared Chinese Immigration, and walked out into the clear chilly morning.

So where was I..?

... Ah yes, I was in Hong Kong, it was a Thursday, must have been the 11 December right?... first maybe a couple of photos from Lantau the day before...

Hyuuuuge cable car, looking back towards HK airport, Lantau

Another big Buddha... always with the stairs... why?!?!

For a guy who founded a faith based on abstaining from earthly pleasures and material possessions, he sure seems to have a lot of hot young chicks giving him stuff...


Stilt houses, Tai O fishing village

Abandoned Colonial Police Station, Tai O (not that I actually went there... honest...)

Thursday I actually tried to do some shopping, riding the MTR all the way out to Lantau again to try my luck at the outlet malls in the hope of finding some amazing bargains... sadly I am terrible at shopping and even with the discounts there wasn't much out there I could afford. I then mucked around taking a few snaps of the city, there are billions of photos so I can't really post them all up, which is a shame cause I like some of them. That night we were out for beverages again but didn't go too hard, with a big day ahead of us the next day...

Sup y'all

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years, I caught up with family and friends and got some beach time and chilled... feeling pretty much recuperated now apart from a pesky nagging cough... Blogging services will resume shortly, thanks to everyone who keeps telling me they are waiting for the next installment, nice to know people enjoyed it. From Monday I am back to work and life as usual... have to make some money for the next trip haha. Or possibly something slightly more responsible and grown-up... will see...