Garry and Joan; Travels for the less(or more) adventurous!: Shanghai

In 2016 we took two trips. One international and one within Canada. The trip abroad was our delayed China trip. We learned from our first failed plan and as soon as we knew that China would be our destination this year we chose a tour company and just had to pick which package we would opt for. We chose a 14 day tour of mainland China plus a three day add on in Hong Kong. This was not necessarily in my wheelhouse, as my idea of the best trip is planning and executing your own itinerary, but China was a different beast. A communist country, separate travel visa, and lots of other unknowns. We decided to leave the planning to the pros and just go along for the ride. This still left a lot of room for surprises as I hope you see from my original emails. Oh yeah one other thing. The first surprise about China was that I couldn't access my email until Hong Kong so these installments are time delayed twice if you get my drift.

First my Original travel warning and then the trip.

Garry Hicken

Sat 2016-04-09, 8:44 AM

You

你好！你好吗

For anyone who doesn't know, the above is "Hello, how are you" in Mandarin. I have no idea how to speak it so I won't be saying it.

The list of people that this personal travel blog goes out to gets longer and longer but as I have said before, I enjoy sending out these travel emails because when I'm writing down these thoughts with photos attached it helps to solidify the memories in my own head. I have also been asked by people to bring back pictures. Being as how I would be uncomfortable dragging a large photo album around Sunnybrook, ( not to mention the fact that some people on this list don't even work at Sunnybrook or live close by....... people I never see anymore living in Brazil or Sudbury !)) I find it easier to just show and talk about Joani's and my vacation adventures through this chat form.

We leave for China tomorrow (Sunday) and I've mentioned this, to several people already, both Joani and are more nervous about this trip than any of the others. Australia, Europe or Hawaii, all could be considered western destinations, but China! It feels a little like we will be foreigners in a strange land. Nervous about the hotels, food, washroom facilities, and oh yeah, did I mention the language barrier. In a lot of countries we visited English was either the first language or at least considered the second language. In China I think most people won't have a clue what we are saying, or trying to say.

I love the concept of adventure, driving or climbing up and down mountains, hiking crazy trails, riding camels, or in Joani's case, ( I can't leave this story alone, I am so jealous!) fighting with Kangaroo's. All of these things I have found so much fun, but in most of these adventures I have had a reasonable idea of what we could expect. Heading for China feels like we're going on an adventure blindfolded.

Wish us luck

Garry

Okay , 2 weeks into my trip, I'm in Hong Kong and finally able to get off an email, I hope. I have all along, been writing word documents so if the time frame seems wrong it's because the stories have been told as they happened.

On the Orient Express

What a 48 hours it’s been. I’m going to try to not bore you with too many details but I can’t start my description of our China trip without talking about the ordeal we went through getting here. We left home 9am Sunday morning. Our flight didn’t leave until 1pm, but we were leaving our car at park and fly and didn’t know what their Sunday morning bus schedule was, and taking an international flight. Neither of us likes to feel rushed or late so the extra time was fine. We could waste an hour at the airport.

Everything went smoothly until we boarded our plane. We were seated and buckled in, ready to leave when the pilot informed us that there was a slight problem with the aircraft, but it was really a small problem, maintenance was already looking at it, would have it fixed and we would be leaving in a couple of minutes. Well this ended up to be an estimate based on Sunnybrook time. In other words we sat waiting for liftoff for an extra hour. I’m never sure why they can’t do their final safety checks before people board their planes!! This is the third time Joani and I have had to wait in our seats for an extended period while repairmen did “minor repairs”. Joani kept telling me it was better than taking off without doing the repairs but considering we were scheduled to be flying 14 hours straight, this extra hour added to the torture!

When we finally landed in Shanghai, it took 2 hours to get through customs and another hour to meet up with our tour guide and the other 28 people we would be travelling with for the next 13 days. With the time change it was approx. 6:30pm here but we had been awake for more than 24 hours so we had a quick supper and slept for 11 hours.

If you’re still awake after that boring, somewhat tragic description of our first 36 hours I’ll give you a brief rundown of our first day in China. Our tour guide,

told us we had to take a ride on their Magnetic induction train, so we thought, why not… Top speeds of over 430 KMH as you can see

We then were whisked off to what used to be private gardens before the communist government liberated them so all the people could view them. Next 3 photos are all of that part of the day.