Bonehead move #1 by me occurred weeks earlier. I can't remember why I booked an overnight train from Beijing back to Shanghai. I mentioned before that saving the cost of two nights in a hotel were factors in my decision (then I said "fuck you, don't judge me"); but somehow I failed to recognize that we weren't saving any hotel costs in Shanghai since, well... I LIVE THERE. (The cost of a one-way flight was only slightly more expensive than a one-way train ride.)
So, yeah, I'm an idiot. But after I realized how dumb I was, I thought no big deal. We'll just take the train back, I'll get to pretend I'm five-years-old and on my way to Capitola in that ugly Toyota box-van we used to have, and we'll be in Shanghai for all of Saturday. Then I thought "I hope our tickets arrive at the hotel on Thursday!" Guess what happened.
If you remember the convenient experience of online purchases in China, you probably already understand where this is headed. I purchased train tickets three weeks earlier, but adherent to Chinese Railway's motto, "fuck e-tickets and fuck planning ahead", tickets are issued (physically printed) no sooner than ten days in advance, and must be issued and delivered in the city from which you are departing. So, when I purchased the train tickets, I had to tell the vendors what hotel I would be staying at, and they said they would deliver them to our hotel on Thursday, the day before departure. They were not there on Thursday. Luckily, they were also not there on Friday. My calls and email to the vendor that booked them for me were going unanswered. It was 10:15 am on Friday morning, and my blood pressure was close to making my ears bleed.
The train was scheduled to depart at 7pm. Okay, I figured. We'll head down to the train station, purchase new tickets, and get our refund from ChinaTripAdvisor.com later.
When we arrived at the train station, it was a complete mess. People. Everywhere. There was one ticket window (out of maybe one hundred) labeled "foreign guest ticket office", which took an hour for us to find. The woman barely spoke English (not her fault, mine, I know) and did manage to tell me that the earliest train from Beijing to Shanghai with available seats would be Sunday morning. Staci was scheduled to fly home (from Shanghai) Sunday morning, so that wasn't an option.We sat down on the curb outside the train station with most of our bags - we had already checked out of our room - and tried to come up with a plan. My internal dialog was very clear: "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck".
Staci was being a complete pro. If she was panicking, she didn't show it. We decided to head back to the hotel to make use of the internet. The internet fixes everything. We needed to figure out if flights were available on Friday/Saturday, and potentially find a hotel for the evening if we couldn't fly out on Friday.
We hopped in a cab headed back to the hotel. After one giant traffic jam, a few travel agency visits, an emergency phone call to a colleague in Beijing, some tense conversations (hard to believe it, but Staci was slowly losing confidence in my decision-making ability), and one business center later, shit was mostly figured out. We checked into a cheap hotel nearby, and later that night barely made it in time to pick up our boarding passes for Saturday's flight (hey, entrepreneurs of the world, introduce e-tickets to China, you're welcome).
Crazily, we still had time to visit the Silk Market on Friday, which were our only plans to begin with, so it was a success by most measures.
And because I can't stand the thought of writing yet another post about Beijing, let me just say that its too windy (and when its not windy its too polluted), and too crowded.
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