Of course, the travel gods of China would make it difficult for me to leave. After Dr. Sun generously offered one of the company cars to drive me to my hotel in Shanghai, it was an hour and a half late. Why, you may ask? Because the street outside my apartment had flooded. After we finally hit the road, about an hour into the drive, we hear some knocking and have to pull off the road to check it out. I was worried that I wasn't going to make it to Shanghai, but the problem turned out to just be the under-engine plate guard, not a major problem. We fixed it with some rope and continued on to the hotel.
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| The flooding in front of my apartment building. I wasn't kidding. | While we were getting the car checked out I played with the mechanic's dog. Playing with dogs is the same in any language |
The hotel turned out to be in the boonies, nothing like the area around airports in the states. I think it qualified as the Chinese suburbs. Either way, I was kinda disappointed. I checked into the hotel and I actually had a pretty nice room (free internet even). However, I didn't see any other guests there, which was a bit disconcerting (I later heard them having an argument later that night). I wandered around the area looking for dinner (eschewing hotel restaurants, which was a good idea in hindsight), but the pickings were slim. I grabbed some modest street food and retired to my room to watch far much more TV than is probably healthy for me.
 | My glorious 11 kuai (about $1.50) dinner. |
After the disappointing amenities at the hotel, they did succeed at having an airport shuttle. For the short distance I had to carry my own bags, I truly regretted bringing/buying so much stuff, but I got lucky and wasn't charged for my overweight baggage. The waiting experience at PVG was pretty disappointing (the shops were rubbish and coffee was overpriced), but the best part was the fact that they had free wi-fi, so I got to listen to the first half of the Stanford-UCLA football game. I boarded my flight around half time and proceeded to wait and wait and wait, as we were delayed by rain in Shanghai. We left and hour late, which worried me because I only had 2 hours before my flight to SFO. When I landed in Incheon, I learned that 1) my flight to SFO was delayed 3 hours and 2) that Stanford blew out UCLA. I have more to write, but I have to go hop on the plane now. I'll update when I get home.
 | A challenger for Pasta? |
Update: I'm home and so glad to be here. The flight from ICN to SFO was nice, but I got food poisoning halfway through, which sucked. All told, I stayed up for 40 hours from leaving the hotel in Shanghai to going to bed in California, a personal record that I have no intention of ever approaching again.
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