Travel Tale

Unfiltered, unabridged stories of my travel adventures. This is my travel diary, which covers my holiday and field work experiences across the world.

Shanghai: A Breath of Not-So-Fresh Air

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I arrived in Shanghai in the early evening and took the subway to my hostel. I had arranged to meet a friend from Tokyo there so after dropping my stuff off in my room I headed up to the hostel bar and we had a few beers on the lovely roof top terrace. I was noticeably warmer in Shanghai and I was enjoying for the first time in my trip not having to wear a scarf and hat in the evenings (and early mornings). I was pretty tired from travelling so went to bed fairly early, and set my alarm for a sociably late time in the morning (I was sick of early starts after 3 days on the Yangtze river).

My first morning in Shanghai I had a lovely lie-in and a leisurely breakfast before doing a little work. In the afternoon Sam and I headed out to explore Shanghai. I wanted to see the famous bund buildings and the pudong sky line across the river. It seemed a fairly simple walk from our hostel, so we wandered out. Instantly, the pollution was noticeable. It was a particularly smoggy day and my sinuses and eyes were hurting and my nose running within minutes of leaving the hostel. When we got to the river bank the skyline, although impressive, was very, very smoggy. Some buildings were difficult to make out behind the pollution.

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Cruising the Yangtze River

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After a wonderful but all too brief couple of days in Chengdu, I caught a train to Chonqing. I departed from Chengdu’s shiny new train station, Chengdu East, which was a stark contrast to the somewhat run-down station I had seen in Beijing. The train too was fairly swanky, and a fast train that runs up to 200km per hour, meaning you can get to Chonqing in just 2 hours. I was exhausted, and slept for a little on the train, but when I awoke about an hour in I tried to force my eyes to stay open and witness my first real view of rural China, with the ramshackle houses and terraced farms. The extremely hilly, lush landscape was really pretty.

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Chengdu: Home of the Giant Panda

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After a short flight I arrived in Chengdu and felt immediately happier – my hotel was located on a delightful old traditional street full of tea houses and ornate buildings, the type of thing I had imagined when I first thought of visiting china, and infinitely better than the character-less hotel I had stayed at in Xi’an. Somehow I felt instantly calmed. After settling in I headed out to explore a little of Chengdu – just down the street was wenhua park, known as the culture park. I had a little stroll around the lush green park, and watched the local people engaging in the popular group dances, and old ladies playing Mahjong (a traditional tile-based game that I am yet to fathom) and sipping green tea. Exiting at the south gate, I then headed into the neighbouring Taoist temple Qingtang Temple. I have never been anywhere that felt so calm and serene. It was exactly the antidote to Xi’an that I needed. The temple was beautiful – a series of small shrines filled with golden Buddhas, nestled amongst lush green vegetation and beautiful incense burners. Definitely the best 10 rmb I have spent so far.

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Xian: Not My Cup of Green Tea

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As a traveller it as much about the experience of another culture as it is about the sights and views, and I always try to enjoy immersing myself in a new place. However, I’m afraid there is little good I can say about my experience of Xi’an.

I arrived by sleeper train around 8am, bleary-eyed and looking forward to checking into a hotel for a few nights of luxurious solitude. I had arranged a driver to pick me up from the station. But when I got off the train and emerged into the crowds of beggars, touts and everyday Chinese travellers in Xi’an, he was nowhere to be seen. As it turns out, his company had told him I was arriving on a later train, and it is only because my train was delayed, and through the kindness of my sleeper train bunk-mate, that I was able to survive this experience relatively unscathed. When I got to my hotel, I was absolutely exhausted and in a pretty foul mood, so I went up to my room for a nap. I awoke refreshed a few hours later and went to explore the city. My hotel was located right next to the famous Bell Tower, with the Drum Tower just down the road. So, I explored the area a little and found a bustling street market where I was able to get some street food to fill my stomach – fried quails eggs on a stick and some very spicy, but tasty, tofu. Although there was lots of meat available as well, I didn’t much fancy it, and figured I was being smart to avoid it and the potential food poisoning it promised.

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Beijing: Welcome to Red China

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On my final morning in Japan I lugged my bags over to Kyoto station and caught a train to Osaka Kansai airport for my late afternoon flight to China. Knowing I would soon be stuck behind the great firewall, after checking my bags my next priority was to find some free wifi and get my last fix of social media. Thankfully this turned out to be fairly easy, and I spent an hour or so making final contact with friends and making sure I had everybody’s email addresses so that I could stay in touch during my 3 weeks in China. I left it quite late to go through security, unsure as to whether there would be wifi on the other side. As my flight drew nearer I finally persuaded myself to let go of the internet and go through airport security. When I arrived at the correct security gate, liquids and tablet in hand, I discovered that they were not providing free ziplock bags for your liquids. They directed me downstairs to a drug store where I could buy one. So, rather briskly, I headed down to the shop, and bought a ziplock bag. I rushed back upstairs and across the airport to security, anxious that time was now running quite short. As I unpacked my belongings into the plastic airport security tray a chill ran down my spine. Where was my purse? I knew it had been in my hand when I first approached security. I frantically checked my bag and my pockets but it was gone. In my haste, I must have left it downstairs in the shop. So for the second time that afternoon, I dashed across Osaka airport, now panicked both due to the lack of time, and the possibility that I may never be reunited with my purse (containing many, although not all of my cards – I’m not THAT stupid!). When I got to the shop the girl, who had served me previously, looked relieved and together we ran up the escalator to the information desk where she had handed it in. I breathed a deep sigh of relief as the lady handed me back my purse. But time was now running desperately short and so I ran back over to security for the third time. Red faced and out of breath, I put my belongings into the security tray and headed through. They had a pretty good look at my e-cigarette and the spare oil I brought for it, but let me through no problems. I made it to my gate about 5 minutes before boarding. Turns out there was free wifi on the other side.

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Kyoto: Overdosing on Temples

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My trip so far has been extremely busy and I am now painfully behind on my blogging, so as I write this post I am sat on a bus to visit the Great Wall of china. However, this post is about my wonderful 3 days in Kyoto, and the second half of my Japanese experience.

On my last day in Tokyo I awoke early and packed up my bag (how is it that luggage always seems to expand as you travel?). I had planned to take the Shinkansen (bullet train) down to Kyoto in the afternoon, but before I left I wanted to check out one last shrine – the Sensoji shrine about 30 minutes walk from my hostel. So I stowed my main bag at the hostel and headed out. The walk was fairly straight forward and soon I found myself at the end of a long narrow street lined with stalls, and decorated with the beautiful orange and red Japanese maple leaves that make Tokyo so beautiful at this time of year. The street was absolutely rammed with people, and it took a further 10 minutes to get through the crowds to the shrine. It was Saturday, and it felt as though everyone in Japan had come here. Amongst the ornate buildings were large incense burners which are used as a form of prayer to make wishes for luck and prosperity. Inside the temple itself people followed another Japanese prayer ritual practised at many Buddhist shrines – you first offer a small monetary donation, then bow twice, clap twice, bow and then clap again. This also is thought to be a way to make wishes. Around the temple were many other forms of entertainment, including a group of around 20 girls doing gymnastics.

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Totally Tokyo

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First stop on my Asia adventure was Tokyo – land of technology, anime, and sushi. I arrived at 9am after an 11 hour flight in which I achieved a grand total of 3 hours sleep, exhausted, confused and desperate to find my way to my hostel and my bed as soon as possible. After a fairly smooth passage through immigration, I managed to find my way over to the train station where I was confronted for the first time by the Japanese rail (JR) and subway system. Thankfully, two years living in London prepared me well for following the transport system and I have subsequently found it pretty easy to get around, but in my sleep-deprived, jet-lagged state it was all a bit much. Eventually I found a manned ticket office and the lady there was able to sort me out with a ticket and pointed me in the right direction for my train. Which I missed by about 30 seconds (typical!) and had to wait 40 minutes for the next one.

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Aracaju Weeks Three and Four: The Home Straight

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The last two weeks of my Brazilian adventure began much like the previous two – work, work and more work, with the additional strain of trying to organise a trip out to the field. It seemed everything was against me – in order to get out there I needed one professor, one technician and transport. However, the professor was on holiday, the technicians were on strike and the university refused to rent a car to me. In the end, it only took 1 full day, 2 native English speakers, 1 Brazilian student who speaks English and two Brazilian professors, to resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction. The only slight problem, for me at least, was that we had agreed to meet at the university at 7am. Given the previous reliability of the buses (or lack thereof) this meant I had to wake up at 4.30am to be certain I would arrive on time.

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Aracaju Weeks One and Two: Welcome back to Civilisation

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After my absurdly long bus journey out of Campo Formoso, I arrived in Aracaju, set my ants up in their new laboratory, and headed to the house where I would be staying for the next 4 weeks, with a lady called Nice. As soon as the usual formalities were over; “this is where the bathroom is” … “this is the kitchen”… etc, I collapsed on the bed and slept for a few hours. When I awoke that evening I felt considerably more human. The evening meal proved to be only slightly traumatic, with the usual level of communication issues and no more than the expected level of showing off the exciting gringa, who had just arrived, to friends and family. Still feeling tired from my bus ordeal the night before, I escaped from the living room as early as possible and went to bed.

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Campo Formoso Weeks Four and Five: When the rains came

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The weekend after my post ordeal I had planned to spend a little time relaxing, and the rest of the time preparing my equipment to being work when my student, Natalia, returned on Monday. However, the rain that began on Friday continued all weekend, which confined me to the house almost entirely, and I started to discover a rather worrying number of places where the roof leaked. On top of this, when I finally got around to doing some work and trying to assemble all my equipment which had finally arrived, I realised that one vital piece was missing – my supervisor had accidentally forgotten to include the power cable for the laptop, which would be necessary to download my data. The laptop is so old that it won’t even turn on without the power cable. This discovery pushed me to a point of total disbelief. How can so many things go wrong in such short succession? I quickly began devising a new work plan, knowing it would be at least a week, probably two, before the cable could be posted here – assuming it ever arrived!

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