Last Day in Changsha

Sorry, no photos at all for today's entry - I was shopping! There will be lots of photos in the next entry though!

Woke up for our standard buffet breakfast again and then checked out of the hotel and wandered over to Jan’s apartment. Jan got herself organized and then we hit… Micky D’s! Ok, not really Chinese food, but I needed something that wasn’t laden with chili peppers!

After lunch we headed over to Jan’s office and I got myself organized. I had some postcards to mail – luckily I noticed that I hadn’t put the addresses on them before I put them into the mailbox. Once I had mailed my postcards, it was time to go shopping!

Jan had to prepare her lessons for the day so I went across the road to A-best to see what kind of cheap souvenirs I could find. First on my list was snake oil moisturizer. I had bought some at Carrefour in Chongqing (because it had snake oil in it) and I really liked it. I thought it would make good little gifts to give to students and stuff. I have so many people to buy omiyage (Japanese custom of getting souvenirs for everyone they know when they go on vacation) for that I needed small and cheap.

Luckily I found the lotion and off I went to look at other things. I found a green tea cup for Hiroshi – you put the tea down the side into a little compartment, so the tea isn’t floating around, and you won’t swollow it! As I was browsing I found a bag with wheels and a pull out handle for relatively cheap. I ended up buying it because my backpack is packed solid and there is no way I would get anything else in it.

Of course, now that I had a new bag, I needed locks. I finally found them and then had people chase after me when I started walking away. Apparently you are supposed to pay for locks there. Weird. I then thought that maybe I should go back to the second floor to see about whether or not I was supposed to pay for the lotion there or elsewhere. Good think I checked! These little mini-pay counters are interesting. Basically everyone is crowding around, pushing and shoving (there being no such thing as a line in China). You have to be quite aggressive to needle your way in to the front!

I also picked up a few snacks for the train and browsed around and talked myself out of many things that were awesome deals that I didn’t really need. Like a fuzzy Pooh blanket for only US$2! By the time I got myself out of there it was almost time to go to dinner. I ran across the street back to Jan’s office, and it turned out she was starting to get a bit worried. Shopping, what can I say…

We went for dinner at Milo Coffee which Jan often goes to. It was really nice. There were big couches around the tables and it seemed really cozy and relaxed. Good atmosphere! We had a hodgepodge dinner of onion rings (with a sweet honey sauce), pizza and cashew chicken (which was hot!). Pretty good though.

Finally it was time for me to leave. Jan saw me off in a taxi and I made my way to the train station. I arrived uneventfully and figured out what waiting room I was supposed to go to. Well, it was total and complete chaos. The room was about 50m X 50m and was jammed full of people! I had to push my way through to find a spot up against the wall that was marginally better because no one was pushing up against my back.

That is until the beggar arrived. There are a lot of beggars in China. For the most part they are pretty easy to ignore. As long as you don’t make eye contact. When I got out of the taxi a bunch of them ran up to me and shoved their cups in my face but I just kept walking and didn’t acknowledge their existence. They gave up pretty quickly. (This is a corner than Jan warned me about as being really bad).

Well, at the train station, this boy, who was about 12 years old, prostrated himself on the floor and started begging me for money. When I didn’t pay attention to him, he started grabbing at my leg. I eventually said “nothing” in Chinese and that only resulted in pitiful begging and him stroking my knee. It was not a nice experience. Of course all of the Chinese around us were fascinated and just stared at us to see what I would do. Eventually I figured he wasn’t going to stop, so I picked up my bags and wandered back into the seething crowd.

A bit later it was time to line up to get on to the train. In the room were rows and rows of seats. You had to line up in between them which was a bit of a challenge because people had all of their baggage sitting in the aisles, and there were people standing in the aisle because there was no where else to go.

I eventually made it on to the train though and lucked out! I got a compartment with only one other person. Excellent! Of course he spoke no English at all, but that was ok. He offered me disposable slippers to wear and we shared snacks. He also got a DVD player and put on English movies for us to watch. Do I want to admit that I saw Freddy vs. Jason? I think the man was some kind of official or something because when the car manager (don’t know what to call them – each car has a person who makes sure passengers get off, gives them a plastic chit in exchange for their ticket when they board, and other things) came by to check his ID, he just showed his wallet rather than the little ID books that I saw other people have. So who knows. Maybe he was spying on me.

Eventually I tried to fall asleep. The train compartment was really dry though so it was a bit difficult to breath. And I was worried about snoring or drooling or doing some other weird sleeping thing, so it was hard to fall asleep. Overall though the cabin was pretty comfortable, and first class soft sleeper looks like an awesome way to travel China when I come back in the future.