The flights here were fantastic. A 7 hour flight to Singapore then a 5 hour flight to Shanghai. The late departure from Brisbane meant we actually slept as well. With the time difference only 2 hours behind, we felt fantastic when we got off the plane and safely through customs and quarantine, even though we were two of only ten non- Asians on the flight. Now that’s the good part!

Perhaps it was ominous that there were dozens of people with signs held up for the arriving passengers. More transfer companies than we had ever seen at any other airport, but we had a plan to catch the Maglev, the very very fast train and to then use the Metro. We knew the two lines we needed on the Metro and even had the direction of how to walk from the station once we got to it. How hard could it be?

The Maglev did not take long to reach its top speed of 300Km and we arrived in town where we needed to be in just over ten minutes. The challenge came for us when we were told in broken English that the Metro line we needed was not running and we should catch a 581 bus downstairs. Well we walked around in the chilled, but sunny air and somehow found a stop for this bus. 

We climbed on the local bus dragging our bags, with Michael armed with a map and a rough idea of where we had to get off. It took a few stops for me to work out how to pay 2RMB each for the trip. Now that’s about 50c each. It looked as though it did not matter how long you were on the bus, you put your cash into a box or swiped a card. No tickets were issued. 



Once we arrived at our stop we proceeded to walk in the direction of Ren Min Avenue. After about 15 minutes we could not see anything like a hotel. Thankfully a nice young Chinese couple who could speak English stopped and offered to help. In fact, we were in the government area and our hotel was in Ren Min ROAD, not Avenue. They walked us the 2.5 Km there through back streets and across huge overpasses until we were safely there. 

This was some of the traffic we had to dodge. Note the lights are red!



This final photo was taken on the bus ride. It was a beautiful day for a walk. Thank goodness.