Spring 2015 - Day 27: China
We were told that we would be getting off the ship around 11, hopefully 10. At 10 am they still hadn't made any announcements about anything. Usually we get a good morning and an update right around 8am when we pull into the port.
At 11 we finally got an announcement. They needed a few specific people to come to the Union. A few minutes later we finally got our good morning and they told those on the field labs to head to the Union to get their passports.
Since it was already 11 and they had just started the process Jessi and decided to just eat lunch on the ship. Why spend money when there was free lunch!
When we finished eating Jessi's sea was called to the Union so we went and grabbed our stuff. When I got my passport they had pulled it again and it was in a special section. I really don't know why this is happening, it never did last time and I carried this passport for my last voyage as well. The instructions had been a little unclear, we didn't know if it was like Japan where you absolutely had to exit the ship once you got your passport. They kept saying that once we had our passports we should proceed to the gangway. Turns out that it just meant we were able to leave once we had our passports, not that we were required to. But Jessi and I were ready to leave so we got in line for the gangway as soon as we got our passports.
This was the first time the gangway was on deck 6 and they used our stairs. They were very steep, steeper than I remember. Not a fan of those stairs, but sometimes it is fun to go up them. At the bottom of the gangway they were checking our passports. Every time we got on and off the ship we had to have the bar code on the back on our passport scanned.
He scanned mine and I started to walk away but then they were shouting after me. I had to go back and give them my passport again. The woman frantically turned to my picture page. She double checked it was me and then looked at a computer screen. Then she told me I was fine and could leave. It was weird.
The terminal we were docked in was not really a terminal. In the other places we had docked you got off the ship and then had to walk through a large building in order to get out into the city. There wasn't a building here, instead you just walked along a road under a bridge and past a security guard and then there was the city street.
On the way out of the terminal we ran into a girl with a map, she had gotten it from the pursers desk, I wish we had been that smart. She let us look at it and we found the zoo.
It was pretty far away, according to the map we would need to take the subway there.
But before that we needed to get money. There was a Bank of China right outside the terminal but there was already a long line of SASers there. We went to the one across the street but my card didn't work in the machine and eventually a women who worked there came over and communicated that the ATM would only work with a card from that bank.
So we ended up in the long line at the Bank of China. There was a row of 5 ATM cubicles, but one was only for balance inquiries, and two were for domestic cards. So the line went pretty slowly for the other two. But they worked and eventually I got money and we set off.
The girl with the map decided to join us because she wanted to go to the black market and that also required getting to the subway station.
We turned left onto the first cross street we found and went deeper into the city. It took us a long time to find the station because the map was not to scale and most of the cross streets were not listed in it. We were walking in the correct direction but we had no idea how far we needed to go or if we had already passed it because we couldn't interpret our map.
Some girls found us and tagged along with us for a while but then got impatient with walking and just caught a cab. Eventually we ran into one of the RDs. He had a better map with more tiny cross streets. We were able to get our bearing. We were headed a little bit the wrong way, we needed to cut over one street, but over all we had been doing the correct thing. Eventually we found the station.
It was on a huge shopping street. They were opening a Tiffany and Co., a Gucci, and a Dolce and Gabbana there soon. There was already and Apple store, and H&M, and a Forever 21. There were a lot of people there, it was clearly the place to be.
We went into the station and got tickets to the purple line, which was line #10. They were 4 yuan, which is less than 1 dollar. At that point we split up from the other people we had picked up while walking, they were all taking the green line.
Jessi and I found the purple line, figured out which direction we needed to be going and got on the next train that came. The good news was that the zoo had its own stop. The bad news was that at the end of the purple line it splits into two lines and we had gotten on the one that didn't go to the zoo.
We decided to just get off the stop right before the zoo, which also happened to be the stop right before it spits. Then we would just walk.
The map made it look pretty close but it was about a 10 minute walk. But it wasn't complicated and then we were at the zoo!
We bought tickets for 40 yuan, about 6 dollars.
The zoo seems to be more like a park than the zoos we have in the US. We walked past open field to get to where the animals were. It also looked like it had once been an amusement park as well because there was a very old, very rust, and very rundown looking ferris wheel. It was eerie, it was definitely abandoned.
Our priority in the zoo was to see the giant pandas! We beelined right for them, skipping over the fish and the birds.
At the cross road to turn into the rest of the zoo there were guys with golf carts and mega phones yelling at people to get in them. They were taking people straight to the pandas. We went over there and they tried to get us into the seat but he was collecting money from people and we didn't want to have to pay. So we said no, we wanted to walk. The guy seemed annoyed by that and pointed at a sign that said the park closed at 4:30. It was almost 3 by that point, we had an hour and a half, plenty of time.
We still said no to the golf cart ride and walked past them as quickly as we could.
The aggressiveness of these men was a continuation of how we felt in downtown Shanghai. The word that I use to describe Shanghai is aggressive. They drive very aggressively, they honk for no reason. The people on the street seem really aggressive although because we can't understand them we don't know if they are actually yelling or if that is just the way they talk. We also felt like we were constantly being watched. There were a lot of police and security officers around and they all seemed to be looking as us as we passed by them. It was very uncomfortable and a complete 180 from the culture we experience in Japan.
But once we were deep into the zoo and away from the men with golf carts we felt much more relaxed. We walked leisurely and eventually found the red pandas.
There were four of them and they were adorable! One was sleeping and the other three were just toddling around. At that moment I was glad that I had brought my zoom lens with me. I was able to take awesome pictures of all the animals.
After the red pandas we found the giant pandas.
There were two of them, one was just sitting up on a platform and the other was walking around in circles. He seemed to be pacing the same pattern over and over again.
They were big, bigger than I thought, but they were also awesome. We saw pandas in China!!
While we were looking at the Pandas a man asked to take a picture with us. He was really excited and it was fun. People in China tend to not see many foreigners and so love to take picture with us to prove that they "saw one in person."
That was something I learned from our tour guide in Beijing.
After the pandas we walked past many sleeping animals: a white tiger, some lions, a bengal tiger, and a brown bear. They were all taking their afternoon naps.
Then we found the sun bear. I didn't even know that the sun bear was an animal, but apparently it is. It is the smallest of all the bears. It is brown with the gold patch on its chest. They have a lot of loose skin around their necks so they look kind of funny. There were two there. One was pacing just the panda was, the other was half out of a whole in a tree and was trying to clean the area around him. But they have large claws so he was struggling. It was cute to watch and take pictures of. We spent a long time with the sun bears.
After that we circled back around. The lions were awake and the male was licking the female, I got some awesome pictures of that.
When we got back to the pandas they were no longer outside. It was feeding time! That must have been why the one was pacing so much!
There was glass all along one wall of the enclosure so we had a great view of them eating. One of them was sitting on this slide/chair thing. On either side of the end of it were long stalks of bamboo. He was sitting, legs spread wide, enjoying the bamboo a little too much.
He was loving it. It was awesome.
After that it was nearly time to leave but I had to pee so badly. I had gone to a bathroom when we had first gotten to the zoo but it seemed like to had to pay for it and I didn't want to do that, so I waited. But by this point I really had to go. So I found another bathroom, and there wasn't a person there. Free bathroom! Woo!
Only one thing…
It was a squat toilet.
But I did it and I survived and it wasn't that bad. It was an interesting experience to say the least. People do that all the time?! They must have the strongest thighs, seriously.
We left the zoo and took the subway back to the same station we had come from. The zoo station was literally right next to the zoo, so that was convenient.
Once we got back into downtown Shanghai we decided to do some shopping on that huge street. We went into Forever 21 and I got a black t-shirt because I left mine at home and was missing it.
Then we went into the Apple store and I got a case for my computer to keep it clean and protected. It was expensive but it was worth it.
We then tried to find wifi, but everywhere we went had wanted us to put in a phone number, that seemed to be a trend in Asia.
We went into the mall that was in the basement of the Apple store and found a Subway. Hallelujah, dinner! We ate subs that were almost like normal subway but were just a little off. And the Lay's chips I got were 'red Italian meat' flavored. Not good, nope.
After we ate we made our way back to the ship. It took three taxis before we found one that could understand where we needed to go. We had our green sheet that said the name of the terminal and we also had a picture of a map that showed the port with a tiny picture of a ship. No one understood and it was getting really frustrated.
Finally, one guy seemed to understand but as we were driving he kept asking if we were there and I kept waving him onward. Eventually he dropped us off close to the port. It wasn't exactly where we needed to be but we just walked two streets over and made it back.
The guy double checked my passport getting back on the ship. Maybe my passport is flagged or something? It was really strange.
The other girls were back on the ship and they were getting ready to go out. I opted out. It was too cold and I didn't feel like spending the money.
Instead I packed, organized my pictures, watched a movie, and then went to bed. We have to meet at 9:30 for our program.
To Beijing! And the Great Wall! Woohoo!!
