I left Hong Kong right away after receiving the visa, I had less than an hour to catch the train that goes to Shanghai, otherwise I would have to stay 2 more days for the next train. I found out later that a lot of people don’t know that there’s a train that goes to Shanghai from Hong Kong; thanks to the internet with a lot of research I am able to find a lot of the information that helped me throughout my journey. The trip to Shanghai takes 18 hours, it’s not a high-speed train, but the trip was comfortable and the train was clean. I stayed in a cabin with 5 other people. The cabin has 6 bunker style beds, 3 beds on each side of the cabin. There’s a different class that has 4 beds in each cabin but nothing different. The passengers were very friendly and one or two spoke little English besides my other roommate Chum who’s American.
It was really great experience and great opportunity to meet Chum. Chum travels the whole year except in December when he works as Santa Claus during the Christmas season. He’s been traveling for the past 17 years and really shared some of his experience, very fascinating and inspiring person. Some of the passengers when they saw him, they’ll tell him you look like Santa and his response is always “I am Santa” and he will pull a picture from his pocket that shows him wearing as Santa Claus.
Throughout the trip, we passed by many little and big towns. In the big cities, the cranes were everywhere constructing buildings but I saw many residential buildings that were empty. I remember reading few weeks ago about people complaining about the high prices of real estate in China. It seems there are many people who are buying condos in order to sell them for a profit in the future and that explains why a lot of these buildings are empty. In the small towns we passed by it seems people are still very poor, as if they haven’t been touched by wealth that has been created from the economic expansion that China has experienced for the past few years.
Finally, we arrived at Shanghai Central Station; it’s as big as an airport. This is not the only station; I heard there are 3 other stations in Shanghai, it’s a huge city. I really enjoyed the train ride and although it took 18 hours but I preferred it more than a plane flight.
It’s unbelievable you took the train to Shanghai, 18 hours!! Though, I think you might have enjoyed it as it should be more comfortable when you compared it to the 19 hours traffic you had suffered in mini-van during your tour in Indonesia.