China Day 16, Xi Tang or Water Town

Tuesday July 12^th

This morning we finally met up with the rest of our group, two guys and three girls who were on a shorter Intrepid trip from Hong Kong to Shanghai and are joining us for the rest of the trip. They were travelling with Rally, our new guide. We checked out of our hotel and boarded our minibus for the two hour drive to Xi Tang.

We arrived by 11:00 and went for a walk through the 'downtown' of the town, visiting the local food market where they were selling meat and other unidentifiable types of fish or eels. Then we walked to the really pretty section of town. This is where there are traditional type houses along the river bank. There are little boats that take tourists for rides on the river. There are lots of shops and little restaurants all along the river. Rally gave us free time to explore. I walked around checking out the town, watching the people and looking in the shops.

We met at 1:30 at the Tom Cruise poster (apparently he shot part of a movie here) and then went to a restaurant where Rally ordered us way too much food. After lunch we had another couple of hours to explore the town. I bought a couple of snacks, and a few necklaces. It was fun interacting with some of the local people. I like to smile and say 'hello' and see what I get. Most times all I get is a smile back, but some can say 'hello' too. But when you say 'how are you?' they frequently don't know how to answer. But it's fun, especially when someone can speak some English.

Then we met up again and walked back to our bus for the drive back to Shanghai Railway Station to catch our overnight train to Xi An. The station is huge, is very modern and looks more like an airport. We sat in the waiting room with hundreds of local people before boarding at 7:00 for our fifteen hour train journey. The train is air-conditioned, but more crowded and cramped than the last one. I am on the top bunk, along with Oliver. Adam and Beverly are on the middle bunks and on the bottom are local Chinese people. The bunks seem smaller and have less head room than before. I climbed into my bunk to get out of the way and typed up the last couple of days of blog. Once the people had all settled and I was finished I climbed down and we socialized for a bit and I had a packaged bowl of noodles for dinner. There are a some really nice new people, Adam, Danny and Beverly, wish they'd been on the whole trip. I played with a little Chinese boy for awhile. Then it was lights out and time for bed.