Planes, trains, and automobiles....

After adventures at their sleepy home things started to come to an end pretty quickly in the way of China. We enjoyed the last few days we had in China and made several trips to bus and train stations to get our tickets to Shanghai and then to Shenzhen. It took us a lot of time be we were eventually successful in getting our tickets. We woke up fairly early on the morning of Sunday the 18th to finish up our packing and haul all of our luggage down the stairs. We met a couple of cars at the gate who took us over to the bus station to catch our bus to Shanghai. We got on the bus and it seemed to be going smoothly until the bus stopped for what seemed like a very long time, eventually several other people came and got onto our bus and we were on our way again. A couple of hours later we made it to the bus station in Shanghai, which we had to haul all of our stuff through to an exit that was further away from the train station than where the bus had pulled in. We went around and after awhile wound up dragging all 100 pounds of our luggage through the train station until we could get to the waiting area for our platform. We had a couple of hours there when we could get something to eat and we could rest. Eventually we had to drag all of our stuff on the platform, find our car, and drag it in the train. It was quite the feat getting all of our luggage on the train, and then we played a giant game of Tetris in trying to get all of our luggage to fit.

I feel bad for the poor guy who had the one bed left in our compartment of the sleeper train. We had all of our stuff jammed in there pretty tight. We played some games and did various things to keep ourselves entertained for part of the train ride. Try as I might I just couldn't sleep through an entire 19 hour train ride. After a while it was late enough that we were able to get ready and get to bed for the night. I tried to keep my normal evening routine and eventually went to bed. Luckily, I slept fairly well on the train although I did wake up a few times and was pretty well wide awake around 6:30 in the morning. After waiting for a couple of stops to pass we got ready for the day and started getting everything to take of the train. Just so we could get everything off quickly we piled all of the luggage near the door so we could move quickly to get it off. Much to our chagrin we discovered very close to the train stopping that the side which we anticipated the platform being on was opposite the side it was actually on. We had to quickly move our luggage so the train attendant could get through and open the door. Once the train stopped we each grabbed one piece of luggage and headed off the train, then Lorilei the last one on the train stayed on and passed off all of the other luggage to us and we had all of our luggage of the train in what was easily 2 minutes flat. 

Once we had all of our luggage we started to haul all of it the direction of the exit to the platform. Once Katie got  onto the escalator it stopped moving and seemed like it had broken. So she got off and started to carry her luggage down the stairs. A nice Chinese man helped her to get it all down the stairs and we were all prepping to do the same with our luggage when the escalator decided to work again. We hopped on the escalator and headed down. Once we got to the bottom we scoped it out for a sign which would show us where the metro was so we could get where we needed to go. We drug all of our luggage through the Shenzhen train station until we found the metro. At which point we purchased tickets for the metro and accomplished the feat of getting ourselves and 2, 50 pound bags of luggage through the security gate. We got on and rode the metro for a couple of stops before Lorilei realized that one of the immigration checks was where we had initially gotten on the metro in the first place. So we got off of the metro, drug our luggage across, got back on and went back until we got back to where we initially were. We followed the signs for Hong Kong, there was much dragging of luggage and we finally made it into a beastly line to go through immigration where you had to be pretty aggressive and do a fair amount of pushing to stay in your place. Eventually we got sent down a tiny side corridor just for foreign passport holders that was very difficult to get our luggage down, once we were at the end of it we got an exit card and waited in line some more until finally we all made it through China customs and we ended up in No Man's Land.