Train Catching

The bus ride to Suzhou was interesting, everyone was hot as there was no air conditioning and we were in a bus that had exactly enough seats for the whole group. Needless to say it was a small bus, more like a large van if anything. So we were all on this bus for like 2+ hours. Where were we going, you might ask? Well to Suzhou, of course, the city known for its Chinese gardens. We were all relieved to get off the bus. The Chinese did a really good job at designing this garden. Every view was carefully planned. I suggest you look up Chinese gardens, it's pretty fascinating stuff, but too long to get into here. We got a chance to wander around these gardens for a bit, then we were free to wander wherever we liked in the city, until we all met up at a different garden.

After some time, and a few closed gardens, later we all ended up at a zoo, the saddest zoo in the world. It’s here that the story gets interesting. You see, now the group splits up and some go back on the bus to return to the hotel. A few of the more “adventurous” people stay behind and plan to take the train back. Really, it was just a mis-communication, no one really knew what the other group was going to do or where they were going to go, so everyone had to make a split second decision with little information to go on. I was in the group that stayed, because I didn’t know what was going to happen on the return bus trip and the train held more appeal to me than the bus. This new smaller group became even smaller when it split up again and three people went off on their own to shop while the five remaining, including myself, went to a pagoda.It was really cool and gave an amazing view.Soon it was time to go to the train station. We walked over and met up with the other three who'd gone shopping. They had already bought their tickets. We tried to get tickets for the same train but ended up getting them for the 8:45 instead of the 7:30. In the end we got into some taxis and went to get dinner, leaving the other three to go on their train. For dinner we had noodles and dumplings.

Now the story gets even better. We headed back with only a little time before the train left. Since there were 5 of us, and a taxi only holds 4, one person, Edwin, took another taxi by himself. He happened to get into his taxi after us and got dropped off at the station further ahead where we couldn't see him.

Edwin had all the tickets and the four of us in the other taxi had no idea where he was. After some quick thinking I suggested that we head over to the gate because that’s the most logical place to be. Then across the square, like a game of Where’s Waldo, I spotted Edwin. Looking at my watch I realized that we had about 7 minutes before the train left. I took off running, hoping the guys behind me were still actually behind me. We all ran through the bag scanners and down to the gate that said Shanghai. Unfortunately there were two gates that said Shanghai and we just so-happened to be at the wrong one. Once again, we dashed down the aisle and got through the next gate just as the guard was about to close it. Suddenly we were running down a set of stairs, through the underground hall and up another set of stairs.

Fortunately for us the train wasn’t there yet. This allowed us enough time to dash to where our car should be. It was car number 14 and naturally that would be as far away from us as possible. Just as we started to sprint toward the other end of the platform the train showed up and we all hopped on in the nick of time. It was an adrenalin rush to say the least.

The rest of the story is more relaxing. The train ride back to Shanghai was less than an hour and then we took the subway to our end of town and walked to the hotel. On the way was something that I thought was kind of cool. Right outside of the subway exit there are these big buildings for shopping. On these buildings are huge screens of ads. But on this screen there was a mistake, as you can see.
If you can't read it it say's... "It is now safe to turn off your computer"
All in all, I found that it was the perfect day and was happy that I had stayed behind. It also makes for a really good story.