MARCH 17 TRANSPORTATION

We are on our first train trip - from Nanjing to Yangzhou - just about 50 minutes! Lily, parent of my “Chinese daughter” Cecily who was my student in 2004/2005 in 11th grade, and is now at Harvard Law School, is picking us up at the station. I tutored Cecily when I was here for an English Speaking Contest in Nanjing. That was the last time I remember staying here in Nanjing.  Cecily performed really well; gave a talk about wanting to become a journalist in her future. In 2011 when I saw her in Beijing, she was a broadcaster working for CCTV! Now who knows what she will do in the future!!

Qin Hong, who was my “handler” the year I taught in Yangzhou, has a class this afternoon so I will see her tonight. We will stay at Ding and Wei Yuan’s apartment (6 flights, no lift!!) I think I will leave my suitcase in the ground floor storage unit!!

Anyway, the train station here looks brand new, is huge!! We checked it out yesterday to be sure we could come by metro with our suitcases, with elevators and escalators! I still had to do ONE staircase, fortunately going down, carrying my bag! The trains have very comfortable seats, like airplane, 3 across on one side and two across on the other. It looks like we will be the first stop. It all was pretty clear how to line up, go through the gate and get to the train. 

I remember my first train trip to Shanghai in 2004, after I’d been here a month. I went to meet up with Aaron and Marlo. On my way back, I had to change trains in Nanjing. The station was very old, small, and I saw not a single foreigner (saw no foreigners in this HUGE station today either!) In 2004 I saw not a single sign in English in all the windows, didn’t know which window to line up behind and felt totally lost! All of a sudden this monk approached me and spoke in English, asking if I needed help! I was so relieved and grateful! He went up to the window with me and got me the right ticket and showed me the right gate/platform to go to. When I turned around to thank him and possibly buy him some fruit or SOMETHING, he had vanished! I looked all over the station to try and find him and he was just gone!! 

We rode the Metro in Nanjing yesterday and today to get around. We also rode not a subway but a train system, light rail I guess it’s called, around Singapore. We will probably take a train, maybe the fast “bullet” train from Yangzhou to Shanghai on Tuesday for our last leg of the trip.

We’ve had many taxi rides - in Qatar, Myanmar, and elsewhere. There have been several car rides with Kim Tan and Kai Li in Malaysia, friends of Doug’s. We even did an Uber ride out and back in Hanoi to visit one of the sisters from Plum Village who was from Hanoi and we had tea with her. 

Also in Hanoi we rode on the back of a motorbike, GRAB BIKE it’s called! Long called the cycles for us! We held on and drove about 7 km out to the Ethnology Museum there, just for the experience!! Lots of fun!

Then there was the boat on HaLong Bay that we were on for two days and one night! And a tour van for 4 hours to get from Hanoi to the Bay and back. That was lovely!

In Bagan in Myanmar, we hired MinMin and his horse Lucky and a cart to spend the day driving around the ruins of hundreds of temples and pagodas (think Angkor Wat) in the hot sun! We even had to buy Lucky some oats for lunch when we took our lunch break! It was shady in the cart and very relaxing! Other people rode bicycles or bikes, but they look very HOT!! Or the air conditioned tour buses. I liked our option! MinMin said, however, that the horse and carts are going by the wayside - not too many hires!!

In Qatar we went out to a camel track to watch them train the racing camels but we didn’t RIDE one! I really wanted to rent a bike and bike the Xi’an Wall but it was pouring rain both days we were there so that didn’t happen. But Ding has two bikes waiting for us in Yangzhou. I LOVED biking around Y. early in the morning before my classes when there was little traffic. And I biked a LOT in Beijing when I would go up and visit Virginia. I’d get there on Friday at 6 a.m. and she always had class during the day. So I would leave my bag at the bike rental and wander on my bike through the hutongs, windy streets around and near the Forbidden City. That was one of my favorite things to do!!

Oh, I forgot we’ve had 12 air flights of varying lengths so far on this trip; two more - from Pudong in Shanghai to Toronto and then Toronto to Boston on Air Canada on 3/28. Then HOME!!! Yea!!

That’s all for now!