Well at least I had a seat going to shanghai this time. But the journey was going to take like 43 hours. Yes that is right, that is nearly 2 full days. My seat was beside an older Chinese man and I had half a family on the other side of the table. I say half cause I later noticed there was a mom and dad and boy and girl. And I only had the mom and girl opposite me the first night. After that they tended to swap around seats between them all. I had gotten up to go to the toilet the first night and was standing up by the doors to stretch my legs and I got talking to a lovely guy I later found out was originally from Pakistan. He seemed to be the only one one on the train who spoke English and he spoke it well as he lived in England for a few years. He invited me for coffee that he had but I declined as it was to late and I wanted to sleep but I accepted the offer for the next day.
That night I had another lovely sleep hunched over a table.
The next day was spent reading and people watching and I ran into my friend again, his name was rocky ha ha so now I have met rambo and rocky! how many more Sylvester stalone characters am I going to meet. and had my coffee this time. We spent a long time talking as we had nothing else to do. I found a kindred spirit and we had a lot of the same ideas about life and religion and it was nice to talk to someone about it. And it was funny that I found someone like that, in what I thought was in one of the most unlikely of places.
He even invited me to dinner in the dining carriage which was really sweet. And he explained to me what the rings on the fingers meant. Cause ever since I have been in china, I keep getting asked am I married as I have a ring on my right hand. So he said that index finger meant your looking for a boyfriend. Middle finger means you have a boyfriend. The next finger is your married and on the pinky means you your not looking. He said the thumb means something as well but he couldn't remember what.
Well I said good bye to him that night as he was getting off in Xi'an and I had another night hunched over a table and half the next day waiting to get to shanghai. Especially since I had finished my book the day before. I have never seen so many kids bums cause they don't seem to use nappies in china. All the kids have no backs to their trousers so that when they are ready to go they just go. Strange thing to see.
Finally arriving to shanghai and I go get my ticket to go to hangzhou for 2 days time, as I was heading there to see romain and Vanessa. I was standing at the window buying my ticket and this guy comes up and asks does the girl behind the window speak English I said she did and he asks how did I know. I thought he was being funny so I gave him a sarcastic answer and said cause it says English speaking window above it! Pretty simple.
I go to get the bus to my hostel and I know what number I need to get. I go towards the stops and I ask at the window for the bus number and they wave me towards a bus that is already parked waiting to go. Its not the number I was looking for but they wave me towards it again and thought well they should know what they are talking about. And I get on. But no they didn't. The bus went in the opposite direction, it could have eventually made it to where I needed it to go but I wasn't taking the chance. I saw the metro from the bus and I jumped out and took the metro instead. I could have done that from the beginning but the metro station was further away from my hostel than the bus stop was.
I was pretty wreaked by the time I got there so I had an early night and man it was a great sleep.
Since I really only had one day in shanghai as I was leaving the next day again. I wanted to see as much as I could.
But I woke up and it was raining. It wasn't too cold though, well compared to urumqi, it was roasting. So I got my raincoat on and went walking. I wanted to go to the art museum. So I headed towards it walking through the main shopping street. I think I got stopped and asked like 6 times was I looking for bags and watches. I'm guessing they bring you somewhere to see them but really I don't think I looked like I had any money.
The art museum was closed because of the new year, so that was great. the place on my list was the shanghai museum. It was free in and pretty good. They had five floor of different galleries from old coin to calligraphy to old furniture. Quite enjoyable.
That evening I went to the acrobat show and it was amazing. It was a magic/ comedy/ acrobat show all rolled into one. They had an act where they got an audience member to come up and go through a knife act. But they blindfolded him and pretended to throw the knife but really just stab it in beside him. But it was really funny.
There was this one boy who did an acrobat show and he was just amazing the muscle you have to have to be able to do what any of them were doing. This boy did his whole act on a round platform and he would be doing the splits sideways and without using his arms and without bending or changing the position of his legs, he brought himself up standing by bringing his legs together. Can you even picture it? Just that alone was amazing. It looked like he was being pulled up by a rope of somekind. But he definitely wasn't.
At the show I was seated beside these two other girls, that happened to be at the same hostel as me. A girl from England cassie who was teaching in beijing for a few months and now travelling china and Lucy an Australian, guess from where? Yes that's right Melbourne.
After the show we all went back to our hostel and had a drink before heading to bed. Cassie was due to go to hangzhou also. So we were hoping to meet when we got there.
So that was my whirlwind stay at shanghai. The weather was crap so I didn't do as much as I liked but I was also train lagged ha ha. Well I wasn't on a jet :) I know there was no changing of times but it was a long journey and I never sleep as well. So I really spent that time recovering which was a good idea as I was heading to hangzhou to Vanessa. and romain and who knew what they had in store for me. All I know was that it was the nicest train journey I had the whole time I was in china. It took 2 hours and had nice comfy seats. I almost which the journey would have taken a bit longer.
