3 May 2018
The long view of the amazing blue
HSR from Wuhan to Hangzhou
The last of the long train rides, I still have one more transit from Hangzhou to Shanghai but thats only an hour, todays journey from Wuhan to Hangzhou was just over 5 hours. You know what that means, boring picture day!
The boring pictures were made a little better by the amazing blue sky and very green scenery. This persisted for the entire journey, and its very clear now outside of my huge wrap around corner window in my hotel room.
Going back a bit in time, Wuhan has successfully connected their high speed train station to the subway and allowed me to leave from the same one I arrived at, amazing. The same thing will / has occurred in Hangzhou, double amazing. Both cities easily sold me a stored value travel card which I collect. This completes the triforce of amazement.
Last time I was in Hangzhou was in 2012, back then they had no subway, now they have 4 lines and 83 stations, all completely underground. Amazing progress. Oops, I reamazed.
Anyway, my train journey was the same as the others, comfortable, long, fast, the first half was 200 km/h but once we went through Nanjing they wound it up to 300. Enough of that, the hotel tried to call the police on me.
When checking into my hotel here in Hangzhou, I had to hand over my passport, as you always have to do. They looked at this in some detail, others were called to look. My Chinese Visa has an enter before date of 20 April. No problem, I entered China on 15 April. It then has 30 days validity. Which means I must leave before 15 May, which I plan to do. My visa was in order.
It would seem the hotel staff do not know about Visas, they thought the enter before date was the expiry date and that I had overstayed my visa by 13 days already. The English speaking clerk, the poor young girl surrounded by men in suits tells me 'your visa expire, we very sorry, must keep passport, must call police, do not attempt to leave'. My response was 'Cool'. She was very surprised by this so I just stood there smiling. No one would speak, so I asked in Chinese if they would like me to explain to them how to read a Chinese visa? They agreed to this and I pointed out that I believed that character is BEFORE, and this is VALID FOR DAYS (30) and that 20 April plus 30 Days is 20 May, today is 3 May, where is the problem? Problem is with you? Problem is with your understanding of China visa? OK, I can have a room key now and my passport returned?
They were very embarrassed and as I went to the lift I heard a great deal of commotion at the person who incorrectly decided my visa had expired, she has been retired back to a rural area for retraining via wheat harvesting.
Here is the Hankou Wuhan high speed station. A nice station from the outside.
The inside is an older style, but still large, larger than it looks here, some good stores for a snack and a sit down. I somehow again had a very good mcdonalds coffee in China in a spotless huge store with plush seating.
Now its time for some view from a moving train, random village with nice forest area surrounding it. Most of China is forest!
A nice lake with some hills. I suspect its a reservoir because of the treatment of the banks.
And here is the reservoir / hydro electric dam.
You see a lot of really nice looking highways from the train window, all elevated like this one. The trains are all elevated as well, which makes for a great view.
We went through a number of large cities, well, we more accurately visited the edges, this is the edge of Hefei, a very large city. We also went past Nanjing where I have also been before. You can see a lot of solar cells on everything, I also saw solar farms out in the countryside.
My hotel room is very large and has a strange separate office area with a divider you can run laps around. I have been running laps.
My room also has a really great view, and its still so clear and blue. I bet it wont be tomorrow when I want a clear view for lake photos!
Bonus photo of the bathroom. I did not take many photos today so as a special treat, a bathroom photo. It has a full huge bath and a huge shower. I took this by photographing the mirror.