8 September 2012
Back to the start
Today was a long boring day getting back to Shanghai. I am now back in the same hotel as 9 days ago.
My train wasnt until 2pm, the earliest I could get, I guess a lot of people travel into Shanghai for Saturday night.
This meant I spent the morning waiting to go to the train, I couldnt get up to my usual activity style of getting lost, getting on random busses, walking 20 miles out of town etc. as there would be a chance I would miss my train.
I took a taxi to the train station which was an adventure, the guy drove like a maniac one handed whilst screaming on the phone. Interestingly all taxis are manual, so a lot of the time he was going no handed whilst changing gears.
A few times I was sure we were going to hit a scooter or cyclist, but we never did. His aggressive driving got me to the station a long time before my train, and what a crap station it is!
Apparently theres a flash new station already built which will start operation with the metro, much like everything else. As much as I thought Hangzhou was excellent, and worthy of its #1 tourist city status, if you plan to come, wait a year until everythings finished.
These are all glass, like expensive things people would have in their cabinets. Except they are outdoors in the open and anyone can smash them if they so choose. Yet no one does.
I cant imagine they would last 10 minutes in a drunken western city.
Just another random ominous looking building punching a hole through the smog layer, which was particularly bad today.
On the train ride between the two cities, it went from bad smog, to almost none, to bad smog again.
Chinas NBN. I bet no one complains about it here, super fast filtered censored internet.
This sign makes me want to break the law.
The train station has almost no food. Well theres a KFC but I stand by my statement! The best I could do was a slice of sponge cake and watermelon juice.
Meanwhile, this guy decided sitting on the floor like thousands of other people wasnt for him. Hes found the most comfortable cherry picker spot to take a sleep.