couple years ago we landed in pudong shanghai from hong kong and took the maglev train to the city center for a few bucks. no fuss no muss. got there in no time. our two months in china was spent using either the domestic trains and metros and the planes. from hangzhou back to shanghai we took the train again in their new terminal. no problemo.

the only problem i had was the cryptic instructions hostels gave on how to get to their locations. we had some scary times in which we wouldn’t be able to find our hostels and it was getting dark. but somebody or something would pop out to lend a hand. it was absolutely magical. the scariest was nanjing because the airport bus did drop us off on the side of the freeway and our hostel didn’t get back to us via email to let us know that they would wait for us. luckily the hostel courier was there waiting with a big sign with our last name on it. then because it was a busy time of the day he said it might take a long time to get a taxi. lo and behold a man in a van pulls up, offers to take us to the hostel for a few yuan and we were on our way in a few minutes. when we talked to the hostel clerk she said she didn’t know where we would be because there’s 2 different places the bus could have dropped us off on. she just made a guess and sent here courier. if that ain’t luck i don’t know what is.

all i can say is that our mindset was totally flexible, our baggage light (one backpack each) and we were open to whatever happened. all in all a magical summer for me and my wife.

aloha!