high road to china

I’d apologise for the unoriginal title of this blog, except that I’m not sorry at all as it’s actually an accurate description of Matt’s and my adventure to China.

Our story begins over a month ago on a cold, wet and windy London morning. Armed with a completed Chinese visa application form, my passport and a passport sized photo of my head showing my ears I marched down Regent Street towards the Chinese embassy.

The embassy opens at 9am and my thinking was that if I arrived at 9am I’d be in and out and back into work at 10am. All I needed to do was hand in my documents and be given a collection ticket which would allow me to collect my passport in three working days time, complete with a visa.

Little did I know.

More importantly, little did I realise that suddenly China has become the must-go tourist destination of the year (something about Olympics?). People even more crazy that me were queued by the 100’s down the street and around the corner.

I looked at my watch (9.03am), sighed and stood at the back to wait my turn.

At 11.03am I glanced again at my watch and then at the measly 3 feet I’d managed to move in the last two hours and contemplated giving up my mission and returning earlier another day. But my stubborn nature just wouldn’t allow this opportunity to pass and even more importantly wouldn’t be beaten by all these other people trying to destroy my very exciting holiday.

And so I waited.

12.03pm (and the embassy officially closes at 12.30pm) I was inside the building. A little worried that I couldn’t feel my toes and that my hands had a slight purplish tinge, but what-the-hell, I was inside the building.

As I handed my documents over and received the little, pink collection ticket I felt such a sense of accomplishment as well as a tiny sense of dread of the pick-up procedure I’d be going through in three working-days time.

Fast forward to Monday morning (the 21 April to be exact) as I was on my way to work when a slightly concerning thought run through my head. Matt and I were going to China on Thursday and apart from a flu shot I had when I originally came over to London I hadn’t had any immunizations recently.

Not sure of what’s needed exactly for China and even more aware that we were flying out Thursday afternoon, I consulted the fountain of all knowledge - Google.

And as always, Google didn’t let me down. I found that 1st Contact, who originally helped me set up my bank account when I first arrived in London, also offer travel clinic services. I consulted with Matt and managed to make an appointment for the both of us on Thursday morning in Oxford Street.

Thursday morning and armed with massive rucksacs and a parcel to send to Australia, Matt and I wandered into Brixton Road Post Office. I’m sure we looked ridiculous and the facial expressions of the people inside seemed to confirm my suspicions.

After making our travel clinic appointment exactly on time and getting two “suggested” vaccinations, Matt and I stopped for a brief coffee at my favourite coffee shop in London, 1882 and watched the rain stream down Charing Cross Road.

And then we were off, on the Piccadilly Line towards Heathrow Airport.

We arrived 40 minutes later at Heathrow Airport a little tired and sick of the tube and headed to the Emirates check-in desk.

As we passed the departures board, I glanced up and scanned my eyes down, looking for a flight to Dubai that left at 2.15pm. Not seeing it, I shrugged and continued behind Matt to the check-in counter.

Handing our passports over, I heaved my pack up and onto the scale. The girl behind the desk looked a little confused, pushed another couple of keys on her keyboard and grabbed the flight confirmation document that we’d placed on the desk as well as our passports.

“This plane leaves from Gatwick,” she said slowly.

“WHAT?!?” Matt and I replied in sync and a little less than calm.

She pointed at our piece of paper - “Gatwick.”

Oh crap!

After a little panic from Matt, a lot of panic from me and a £150 cab ride, we arrived at Gatwick Airport and actually managed to check-in.

First leg of flight was from London to Dubai and this was about seven hours worth. There was then three hours in Dubai before boarding the next plane from Dubai to Shanghai for the nine hour flight. Needless to say, my short attention span made the flight quite tiresome especially if you speak to Matt.

My auntie Ruth had given us instructions on how to get from Shanghai airport to Shanghai Railway Station so that we could catch a train to Nanjing, where they are living. At the station (after some intense searching for it) we found the Maglev train.

The Maglev is a magnetic train that does 30 kilometres in eight minutes.

It got up to 450 kilometres per hour which was really cool. What was even better was that it actually displayed the current speed of the train.

I tried taking a photo but couldn’t hold my hand steady enough once it reached the top speed. I did manage to get one earlier.

From the Maglev station we had been instructed to catch a taxi to Shanghai Railway Station. Looking back, after the one and a half hour taxi ride through Shanghai during peak hour (we had arrived in the city at 4pm), we should have really braved the Shanghai Metro as it’s not nearly as difficult as I originally anticipated.

After being swindled at Shanghai railway station and almost ending up staying in the city as we were informed that there were no trains to Nanjing until 9.50pm, buying train tickets and not knowing where we actually get the train from and a two hour train ride we arrived at 9pm in Nanjing Railway Station.

Matt and I learnt the Chinese art of the non-queue quickly and pushed our way through a very long taxi queue, where we showed the email that Ruth had sent through with where we wanted to go. Later we were glad that Ruth didn’t have too much of an evil streak and given us characters that read the Chinese equivalent of “Your Mama”.

And so we arrived; a little dirty, somewhat bedazzled and incredibly tired. But oh so ready to start our Chinese adventure.

Author’s note: For those who are a little movie trivia-challenged, the title of this blog refers to the film High Road to China starring Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong.

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