DAY 4
The next day, we woke up at 9ish, had a quick breakfast at our hostel, and then went out with the plan to see the Great Wall (about an hour outside of Beijing). There are many tour busses that take people from right outside of Tieneman Square to several parts of the wall (there are many parts of the wall set up for tourists to visit). Instead of waiting an hour for a bus to leave and having to spend the entire day stopping at several other places, we got a driver to take us there and back for about the same price as the “tour” would be, which worked out very well. We were at the wall by around noon and spent several hours walking/hiking/climbing it. We went to one of the less touristy parts of the wall (no Starbucks or KFC on it) that hasn’t been renovated as much. It was a grueling, yet very cool experience. The wall itself is pretty incredible. It rises from between a few feet to several stories off the ground and stretches for as far as you can see. At times the walls height changes drastically. Over only a few yards, the wall can virtually drop, with countless uneven stairs (in width and in height) making our tour extremely strenuous, but still incredibly exciting. By the end Scott’s and my legs were actually shaking when we were standing still. After our time at the wall we had a late lunch (around 3:30ish) at a highly-reviewed restaurant famous for its Peking Duck, which is of course what we all had. It was amazing, definitely one of the more memorable meals that I’ve had in the last four months. It starts with the chef rolling out a cart with the duck and carving it at our table, making sure to keep all the skin. You eat the duck with tortillas, a duck sauce, and various vegetables that you roll up together. And the skin… wow. Incredibly crispy and delicious, like little chips. After our terrific meal, we had a couple hours to kill before having to head back to the hostel to pick up our stuff to go to the train station, so we went to one of Beijing’s large shopping malls with the hope to see a movie. They had lots of current American movies; unfortunately they were all dubbed into Chinese. So we just walked around for a while, sat in space-age massage chairs for a while, and had ice cream. Once we left the mall, instead of going straight to the hostel, we stopped at a night market on the way. In addition to there being many vendors selling lots of small things, there was line of street food vendors and cards, probably a two blocks long, selling some of the most unknown and scary things I’ve ever seen. I’d tell you what they are, but I don’t even know (you can try to guess from my pictures later). While there were lots of things that looked delicious, knowing that we were about to be on a train for 13 hours, we refrained from trying anything. Eventually, we made it back to the hostel, picked up our stuff, and left for the train station at around 8pm. Even this late at night, the station was incredibly crowded, more people than were there a couple mornings ago. And did I mention there was nothing in English telling us which of the dozens of “gates” was for our train, especially since there were 4 trains leaving for Shanghai in a span of 45 minutes. Eventually we saw several other groups of SAS students also looking for the same train and were able to create a big enough group that someone who spoke Engligh came to help us. I was incredibly impressed when we saw and got on the train. Looking incredibly futuristic on the outside and very clean and modern on the inside, we found our way to our “cabin,” a moderately sized compartment with 2 bunk beds, each with its own controllable TV screen, light, and slippers to wear. Each car had a nice bathroom and sinks to wash up at. There was also a dining car (I had a decent bowl of noodles) and a lounge car. However, pretty tired from the long day, we passed out pretty early and before we knew it they were saying things on the intercom in Chinese and we knew we were almost there when we heard the word “Shanghai” in the middle of the speech.
DAY 5
We arrived at 7:30am, took a cab to the port, where the ship had literally just arrived. Unfortunately, we (and an increasing group of SAS students arriving on other trains) had to wait for the ship to clear customs at around 10am before we could get on. Once we were allowed on the ship, I rested for a couple hours and at around noon went out with a bunch of people to get rail passes for Japan. These are passes for unlimited usage of the long-distance bullet trains in Japan for a one week period. They are only sold outside of Japan and are meant for tourists who will be visiting the country to allow them to affordably travel throughout the country (individual train tickets can be between $50 and $150 each way). Right outside of the building where we got the passes, we had a delicious street snack that was an egg/pancake/crepe/wrap-thing. Once it was covered in a hot chili sauce, it was delicious. Afterwards, we went to the enormous Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s (and probably China’s) largest shopping area, with a combination of hundreds of outdoor small craft stores mixed in with more upscale stores, all surrounded by lots of restaurants, food courts, and food stands. We spent several hours walking around, shopping, and eating. We eventually made it back to the ship, rested for a little, and then headed out for dinner at around 9ish. In a fairly large group, we went to a restaurant where we met one of our friends on the ship and her older sister who is in Shanghai teaching English. We had an amazing all-you-can-eat and drink tepanyaki dinner (for only $20). We all sat around a large table with a hot grill in the middle where we cooked our food on ourselves. We could have any of dozens of things, all brought to us raw on large trays, ranging from chicken, to several kinds of beefs, to various vegetables, and to scallops that came on individual oyster shells to put them on the grill over. They even had a small sushi and sashimi selection that was pretty good. After several hours consisting of trays and trays of delicious do-it-yourself food, lots of beers, and several pitchers (yes pitchers, not the little white ceramic things) of sake, the 15 of us headed to a nearby bar/club where we’d meet up with A LOT of other SAS students.
DAY 6
After a relatively late night, I woke up at 11ish and went out with Jonathan and the Table Mountain crew. Since we were leaving for Japan that day and had to be back on the ship by 6pm, our lone goal for the day was to go to a famous dumpling restaurant/stand, the one that Anthony Bourdain went to when he was in Shanghai. We learned that Shanghai is known for their dumplings and that this place is supposed to be the best. After getting dropped off at the dumpling place (which ended up being in the middle of the huge shopping street we went to the day before), we were met with an enormous line, with no less than 100 people (all locals) in it, all waiting for these dumplings. The restaurant has a take-out window and a inside dining room. So after our jaws-dropped from seeing the line, we checked out the inside, just to be told that the wait would be at least an hour and that you have to wait there the whole time. So instead we decided to walk around for a bit and try again in an hour hoping that the line would die down. While we were walking, we noticed an abundance of Chinese police and security and a large wave of people moving towards us with lots of people taking pictures of someone or something in the middle. The herd passed us, and there was a large security detail around someone in the middle, who we unfortunately never had the chance to make out. Soon after, we learned that it was Musharaff, Pakistan’s President. Later on while walking around, we saw his wife, with a much small security detail, shopping. Eventually we decided to head back to the dumpling place, where the line had quieted down a little, but was still pretty long. We waited in line for about 25 minutes with lots of people looking at us before making it to the window which reminded me a lot of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. You order at one side; they only have one kind of dumpling and you can get a reused ticket for either a small or a large, and them very systematically, you hand them the ticket and pay for your dumplings as they are handed to you. We all silently ate our dumplings sitting on some steps by the restaurant, as we saw everyone else doing. You eat them with vinegar, which goes surprisingly well. They were absolutely delicious, besides being molten hot. Afterwards, we continued to walk around the area for a little; (we wanted to go to the top of Shanghai’s largest building, which we’ve heard has amazing views, but it was and had been extremely overcast the entire day), so we headed back to the ship. By 8pm, much of the ship was outside by the pool taking pictures of Shanghai’s skyline as we were pulling away.
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