The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Today's adventure was to get myself from Shanghai to Harbin. I'll write more later about Harbin but today was strictly about getting to it. Tomorrow will be about actually seeing it. Unlike the last few days when I had China-savvy friends to assist me, today's adventure was done entirely solo. And like my adventure of plunging into Cambodia on my own, it worked out. And was probably just as dumb.

Well, I'm joking. It's just travel - there's nothing innately hard about traveling. You pretty much just get into your vehicle and wait for it to reach its destination. There's not much else you can do. The hard part is just managing to put yourself in the right vehicle...

If this all sounds like foreshadowing, it's not. I did get myself into the right vehicle(s). I just wasn't entirely sure that was the case at various points...

I started out catching a cab from the Super 8 in Shanghai. One of the cleaning women there made it her personal mission to help me out, taking it upon herself to carry my suitcase down the stairs, running out to hail me the taxi... Then I worried that the cab driver and I were not of like minds as to the destination. I wanted to go to the airport "Maglev" train (the high-speed magnetically-levitated train). However, apparently in Chinese it's not called "Maglev," so giving directions was sadly not so straightforward. But I got there, and I boarded the train, and then I figured out how to check-in for Shanghai Air. It wasn't too bad flying them, actually. There was sufficient English to help me out, there's nothing tremendously different about flying in China than in the US, and on a 2.5 hour flight they served a hot meal (ok, that part's different...).

All that was the easy part of my day. More complicated was trying to figure out what to do with myself upon reaching the Harbin airport, which is nowhere near Harbin. My Rough Guide said there was an airport bus but otherwise gave no information. So while shooing away eager cab drivers who wanted to drive me (which, according to the guidebook, would have cost 150 yuan), I tried to find the airport bus, which would only cost 20. Eventually I did, but the lack of any English signs attached to it had me worried for quite a while that the bus I had boarded would deposit me somewhere other than where I wanted to be. Fortunately it eventually put me exactly where I expected. And the girl next to me, whose English vocabulary was twice the size of my Chinese one, was eventually able to reassure me that it would so I didn't spend the whole ride stressed out. (Only the first third of it.)

Then I caught a cab, which I was now able to do like a determined pro, also because my friend had written my hotel's address in Chinese for me. Not having to actually speak to anybody in China makes traveling there so much easier... Of course I'm joking, because I would never recommend being so uncommunicative as a deliberate strategy. It's amazing the amount of communication that can pass between two determined parties, whether it's the girl explaining the bus stops to me or the maid telling me to be careful because the stairs are slippery. For that last example I have no idea what she actually said, but I do know what she said...

I'm now ensconced in an over-priced Holiday Inn near the neighborhood I'll explore tomorrow. At $50/night it's practically a fortune in China, but the creature comforts it offers are nice to enjoy right now. Besides, when you consider that in the US a Motel 6 costs about as much, it's practically a steal...