Travel

As I've mentioned here once or twice before, one of the really cool things about being in Shanghai is the myriad places within reach to which I assumed I would easily get to go.  Places like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Inner Mongolia, [Real] Mongolia, Chengdu and Sichuan Province, the Chinese beach island of Hainan, South Korea, Russia, Istanbul -- are just a few of the many places in this half of the world that I've never been that I would like to go.  It seems unlikely that I'll make it to all of them, let alone in just a year, but it would be nice to get to as many of them as I can.

Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when, on my first day of work, I was told that the Chinese celebrate their National Holiday by taking a week off of work surrounding October 1st (which is the anniversary of Mao Zedong's Communist victory in 1949).  After I got over the initial surprise of the absurd notion that the entire country would be taking off a whole week (and they do it again for the Chinese New Year!), I started eagerly planning how I would use my newly discovered week off.  I could go to Hong Kong, an easy two hour flight, and while there hop across the bay on a boat to visit glitzy Macao.  Maybe even check out the hustle and bustle of Shenzhen, the city just on the Chinese side of the Hong Kong border, known for its ample shopping malls full of knock off goods.  From Hong Kong, I could pop over to Vietnam, where I could visit my friend Sam in Hanoi, and maybe take a two hour train to the supposedly gorgeous Halong Bay, or up to Sapa, or down to Ho Chih Minh City in the south.  The options were endless!

Okay, so, yeah, that wasn't realistic at all.  To do all of that in a week would mean very little time in the actual places themselves, a lot of time in taxis, trains, and planes, and virtually no time to do what you're actually supposed to do on vacation: relax and enjoy yourself.  But even if time weren't an issue, China has graciously provided me with a whole host of issues to make this amazing free week off potentially more stressful than the past three weeks of work combined.  (Okay, that isn't saying very much considering I haven't really done a whole lot at work yet because they haven't figured out what to do with me.  But I digress).

First, I never really stopped to dwell on the fact that the whole country had the week off, and would therefore likely be traveling.  Had I done so, I probably wouldn't have been so floored to see the prices of air and rail fare for that week.  I'm on a fairly tight budget to begin with, so any delusion I had that I was going to make several international trips during the most popular travel week of the year pretty much evaporated after a few minutes (okay, a few hours) on travel websites.

Add to that another wrench thrown in by the Chinese Exit and Entry Bureau: they took away my passport AGAIN.  For those who don't know, I've already had to surrender my passport once as part of the ridiculous process of becoming a legal resident in China.  Well, on Wednesday, just as I was preparing to finally be done, they snatched it away again.  Fuckers.  I'm supposed to get it back next week, but you can imagine it being somewhat disconcerting to purchase expensive tickets, particularly international ones, without having your physical passport in front of you.

So after all that, I decided on a much simpler travel solution.  I'll go to Beijing for a few days, where my roommate Franco will be playing a few bluegrass gigs with his band.  So that'll be fun.  And I'll probably stop in Nanjing, conveniently located on the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railroad, on the way.

Tentatively confident in my travel compromise, I trudged over to the Chinese train ticket office near my apartment after work today.  (Of course, the only online methods of purchasing tickets either don't accept foreign credit cards or are international travel agents that charge exorbitant surcharges).  Except I didn't really get close to the office, because the line to buy tickets stretched about the length of a New York city block.  To make matters worse, I forgot to take a freaking picture. 

Win some lose some, right?  I have at least a modicum of faith that I'll get my train tickets eventually, and my passport, and have a good trip to Nanjing and Beijing.  Until then...fuckers.