I've discussed many times that being flexible is extremely important, and I've tried my best to do that throughout, whilst also that I set more rigid targets of where I needed to be in certain moments. As I get down to my last few destinations there's going to be less wiggle room for me to change things and in the last month I have been pretty locked into my schedule and haven't deviated from it.
When I made my original plan it looked to be fairly optimistic, but I knew that I'd always be able to shrink it down if necessary, and I think that's much easier to do rather than extending things at the risk of more expense. Keeping a couple of steps ahead of myself has meant that the next destination (or two in some cases) has been confirmed with flights and hotels so I therefore have something to aim for meaning that my plans are usually pretty settled. There has been a couple of occasions such as in Kuching (Malaysian Borneo) and Thailand where I decided to stay for a little bit long (the stay in Thailand was enforced) but looking at what I wrote down in the beginning, the amount of time I have stayed in each place has pretty much matched up directly with what I scheduled for.
I'd like to think that once completed my travels around Asia will have been pretty comprehensive, and I think of the 'major' countries on this continent perhaps Myanmar is the only one that I have missed out. I've seen pictures, and it looks pretty incredible, but the political situation doesn't seem to be very stable at the moment so I didn't really seriously consider it when making up my list of places to visit - in the future, who knows? Twenty years ago situations in Vietnam and Laos were hardly stable enough and these days they are tourist hotspots.
Were it not for some research, then there could have been a rather large (is that an understatement for the most populous country in the world) and gaping hole in my journey plan, but after being included in my schedule originally and then being removed for issues relating to access, it was finally time for me to make my way to the People's Republic of China...
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As the night went on I started to feel rubbish again, and eventually had to take myself to bed as the sneezing was becoming slightly uncontrollable. As it happened I was up early this morning to leave Jeju so it probably wasn't a bad thing.
It was a sad moment that my time in Korea was over (once again), but I'd made some terrific memories and enjoyed coming back. It was one of the places on my list I had been looking forward to coming to, and I immediately felt a sense of excitement when I boarded the plane from Laos to get there. Both Jeju and Busan had been excellent choices, and I was pleased that I had got to visit them both.
Jeju was particularly interesting, as very similar to Busan it has lots of outdoor activities to participate in. Even though it's a volcanic island like Indonesia it seems very different and the choice of things you can do there were very diverse as you don't always have to be out exploring as there are plenty of museums as well as nature to explore.
The next stop on my journey was the People's Republic of China - originally scratched from my itinerary back in January because of visa issues, it had made a triumphant return about mid way through my time in Malaysia as I figured out how I could get around the problem of not getting any official documentation before I left.
I think I'd written in a previous blog that the days of needing to organise visas were behind me after leaving Laos, but that wasn't necessarily true as I travelled to the airport this morning. I left my hotel at about 7:45am and thankfully when I got to the bus stop just down the road from the hotel there was an airport limo bus waiting. It was quite full with people, although having looked through the Jeju magazine I 'acquired' on my first day as well as getting people to and from the airport, it is actually considered to be a public bus also, so there was some movement of passengers during the hour or so journey it took to get back to Jeju International.
I managed to find the actual international part of the terminal and went looking for the check-in desk for my flight. I think I was in a pretty unique situation as I can imagine there were very few westerners in the airport as it was, but how many of them were flying to destinations other than those which were either Seoul or Busan.
The flight I'd booked was with Spring Airways who had a couple of check-in desks which were stowed away in the corner. When I arrived it has just opened and was absolutely crammed with people. Part of what made it look so busy was that Asians don't really accept queuing as a common form of waiting your turn, but also there was a huge tour party of Chinese people who were organising passports and tickets right at the entrance point where all the others passengers were trying to get in. The queue eventually moved on to the point where there was actually some form of organisation to it all, but it took a while as the big tour party for some reason had all their tickets, but hadn't checked their baggage so I was probably waiting for a 35 minutes or so to get to the front.
Now is the time to explain how it came to pass that I was actually going to be visiting China when I'd originally taken it out of the rotation: Part of my grand plan in the beginning was to keep bouncing in and out of China in order to traverse the rest of the continent more successfully. I had scheduled to leave Vietnam and then go to central China before going to Hong Kong and Macau before going back to the mainland, back into Taiwan, then into the northern part of the People's Republic before moving on to Korea. Once I did some research I discovered that China is pretty strict on visas, and in the same way as Vietnam, you need to have one organised before you arrive. Unlike their border neighbours however, this can only be obtained in the country which you are from, and it has to have specific dates of when you are going to be visiting China stated on it; That's for a single entry visa. For a multiple entry visa - which I would have needed to conduct my grand plan - you have to state your every movement and write a letter to the Chinese consulate why you feel that it is necessary for you to have permission to enter and exit the country several times, and then this has to be signed by the immigration authority back in the UK and that would allow you to enter and exit their shores more than once.
I only discovered this at the turn of the year, and there was no way I was going to be able to get even a single entry visa sorted as it would have meant travelling down to London for a day to get my visa processed, so in the end I just figured that it would be better to leave China out of the equation and look to arrange a visit there in the future when I wouldn't need to be going in and out more than once.
Just causally reading through some travel information one day, relating to somewhere else on the journey, I discovered that there was actually a way to enter China for a brief period of time without the need for a visa - something which would be a perfect compliment to my journey. There are around 25 countries in the world who have set up an agreement with the People's Republic so that their citizens can visit for 72-hours visa free providing that their travel plans see them visit any one of ten or so cities. There are also some other additional rules which need to be followed in order for the exemption to be arranged:
- You must have a hotel and an outgoing flight booked before arrival
- You must stay in the designated city you enter into
- You must depart from the same airport that you fly into
- Your inbound flight must not stop elsewhere in China before arriving into the city you are visiting
- Your outgoing flight must not stop elsewhere in China when departing, and also must be going to a different city than the one you came from. So essentially wherever you choose to visit in China has to be the meat in the sandwich; Destination 1 - China - Destination 3
Provided you follow all of these rules and you are only planning to stay for a total of three days then you are good to go. For most of the cities you stay in, the 72 hours doesn't start until midnight of the day after you arrive although I believe in certain cities it runs from the minute your flight touches down.
With all this in mind I got busy with planning on how I was going to best distribute three days in the country, and after looking at it a bit more I thought that I might try to push my luck a little and do this twice as there doesn't seem to be a restriction on the amount of times you can do this, or whether than has to be a certain length time gap in your visits. On the list of cities which were available I felt that Shanghai and Beijing would be the two best choices so I managed to change the other bits of my schedule, and take some time off other countries in order to be able to use the 72-hour rule to facilitate a visit to a country that I have always wanted to come to.
I was supposed to come to China in 2008 but due to work being awkward and making a rule halfway through year that nobody could take a holiday in November (their busiest month) with no exceptions I had to cancel plans to visit Shanghai, but today was going to be redemption as from Jeju I was taking a flight to Pudong in order to basically spend a long weekend in China - not something that I ever thought would be possible.
Due to the amount of time it took to check in I didn't have to wait long in departures and pretty soon my flight was boarding. I had fallen victim to not realising that despite booking a flight at mid-morning it would still take require me to get up early this morning, and as I woke up feeling at about 50% capacity (recovering to 85%) yesterday there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would spend most of the flight sleeping. I actually think the lady and her daughter next to me dropped off before I did. Not that any sleep on the plane is actual 'quality' sleep, but I'd say it was about a two out of ten as I kept waking up every five minutes, jolted by the person next to me's elbow or just a little bit of turbulence making my head snap forward and giving me inadvertent whiplash!
We touched down in Shanghai about forty minutes early, and I immediately tried to find some signs for the 72-hour visa exemption desk which I'd been informed to go to upon arrival. I could see a sign for one, but the desk was closed so I went and queued up in the 'foreigners' line.
Pretty funny that everywhere else I've been the 'foreigners' queue has outweighed the citizens queue, but here the 'foreigners' line had only five people including myself in it.
I asked at the desk if this was the right place to go and the lady looked at my documents and asked to see the e-ticket for my outbound flight which I displayed on my phone. She called a colleague over who stared intently at my documents before escorting me over to another desk where I had my passport stamped and officially given permission to enter China.
As is often the case (usually because of my patience) my bag was the only one spinning on the carousel so I grabbed it and headed towards the exit where I'd plotted an enjoyable way to travel from the airport to my hotel.
Thankfully I seem to have put behind me the days of needing to get a taxi from the airport to my hotel (this might not totally be the case so hold that thought - all I know is that it's not my default method any more) as like Busan, Shanghai's airport is directly connected to different parts of the city using the metro service. It seems to be a little more extensive than the one in the southern part of Korea however, as it has about sixteen or so lines. I checked last night to see how close my hotel was to a metro station and it seemed to be a walk-able distance away, and as I plotted a route I saw that one thing which was suggested to cut out some of the time was to ride on the Maglev train from the airport to a central spot.
Having begun commercial operations over ten years ago, the Maglev train was the world's first high speed magnetic levitation train line in the world. It has recorded speeds of up to 431km/h and goes from Pudong Airport to Longyang Road Station.
Although it is still a little away from where I need to be I thought this sounded like an interesting way to travel and going that incredibly fast would certainly speed up getting from the airport to downtown Shanghai, and cut out perhaps the longer section of my journey.
When I got to the airport I managed to find the Maglev Train station, and after a couple of minutes wait we were ready to board. A ticket cost me Y80 which is just a little over eight pounds - it's a return trip ticket which can be used at any time in the next seven days so it has quite good value to it in my opinion.
Depending on what time you travel depends on how fast the train goes, but with a journey that would usually take about 25 minutes by subway due to take about ten minutes or so I wasn't complaining.
I can't claim to be any kind of trainspotter, but even from a distance the Maglev looked amazing. It has clearly been engineered to be aerodynamic and it just looked amazingly quick from glancing at it as I went down the stairs to board.
I wanted to make sure that I was travelling forward so grabbed one of the empty seats in a row of three and prepared myself for the journey.
Above the door at each end was a clock and a speedometer which tells you how fast in kilometres you are going.
It started out pretty slowly, but consistently accelerated all throughout the first couple of minutes until it reached an incredible 300kms per hour which it stayed at for the next ten minutes before we eventually slowed down into the station. It was definitely the most thrilling ride of my life and at times we seemed to be slightly tilting either left or right which I presume is something to do with the magnetic forces at work and how it turns corners without touching the track.
Coming out of the station I was now looking for the metro to complete the rest of my journey, and the regular lines are just across the road from the Maglev. As I was riding down the escalator I got the world's biggest electric shock as perhaps riding at that speed on a magnetic train had charged me up somehow!
The route I was taking would get me almost directly to my hotel and although it was quite busy at the time it was relatively easy to navigate my way around the stations as everything was in English as well as Chinese.
I hope that the language barrier doesn't become too much of a difficulty here although I have a feeling that it will because unlike in Korea where I could bluff my way through, I have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever in Chinese. I tried to learn a few words before I left, but I think I have completely lost all of them now apart from 'Hello', 'Goodbye' and 'Thank You'. I think I can also just about remember how to say 'My Name is Ben' also so I'm hoping that those are the main components of my conversations with the locals!
I had to transfer lines a couple of times in order to get to get to the correct station. I'd written down some instructions that someone had left in a review of the hotel I am staying at, and they were very accurate as about ten minutes after leaving the station I made it to the hotel and was able to check in.
It's obviously hard to judge after very little time here, but it seems to be in a reasonable location, and obviously the metro being near by helps a lot.
I think Shanghai was one of the longer lists I'd made in my notebook for things to see and places to visit so I will have to do some work later tonight try to investigate how best to spend my 72-hours or 'freedom' in this country. I'm hoping that Shanghai makes a big impression on me as it's somewhere that I have always wanted to come.
Aside from grabbing some dinner and going for a little walk around the neighbourhood I didn't really do much else after arriving so I really am saving the exploration for tomorrow.
Exploring a huge city like Shanghai can be a daunting prospect and with a population of around 24 million people I believe it ranks as one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet. I hope there's enough space to squeeze one more person in for a couple of days!
Speed of Sound
Coldplay (2005)
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