Alright, so it is time for some updates. In this post I am going to update you on our journey up to arriving in Xi’an.
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One of the warnings that we got while we were doing our training in Shenzhen was to not expect that things will go as planned. Planning for this trip was evidence of that. On Thursday night last week we finally decided on our tickets and contacted Stone to have him purchase the tickets. After being told that there were ticket available and then that there wasn’t and then that there were only standing tickets, we decided on a route that would allow us to one, travel and two, not stand.
Originally we were going to from Jishou to Xi’an through Nanyang on Monday morning and arrive Tuesday morning but that didn’t work out and we settled on another way that would get us there a day earlier. On Monday at about 12:30 pm we jumped about the Stone express, aka Stone’s car. After about an hour and a half we arrived in Stone’s hometown, Xuishan and then board a bus.
At 2:30 pm the bus we were on left the station en route to Chongqing. After about five hour on that bus we arrived in Chongqing and had our other adventure. Because our train was leaving the next morning, we needed to find this hotel that Stone recommended for us. Once we got off the bus we saw a line of taxis and we were told by the drivers that it would be 100 RMB to get to the hotel. Knowing that they were trying to rip us off, Stone told us to go down the road and there we got a normal priced taxi.
Once on the taxi we had some really great views of Chongqing and the tall buildings of this city with 3.5 million people. The taxi then dropped us off at this shopping area in this town and we didn’t know what to do. After waiting a while, a short Chinese girl (eh, they are all short :P) came up to us talking only Chinese. Confused at what she was trying to say or do, she eventually pulled out the two train tickets that Stone got us and we knew that she was the right lady. So went with her and checked into the hotel. The fun thing about the hotel was that we were on the thirteenth floor and we would light and throw these firecrackers about the window. You will need to watch videos yourself to see how loud these are but they are louder than any I have heard in America and it would echo in the whole city center of Chongqing.
The next morning we repacked our suitcases a little and headed for a taxi to the Chongqingbei or Chongqing North Rail Station. That was quite experience. But it must wait, because this post is getting long in the tooth, as the saying goes.