For those of you who were wondering, Trish and I made it to Shanghai. Our flights were mostly uneventful - there was a minor medical incident on mine ("Could any medical professional on the flight please notify a flight attendant") but I heard through the grape vine (aka eavesdropping on flight attendants) the woman was okay and happily disregarding medical advice not to eat.
When we were served cups of noodles as one of the meals on my flight, and every Caucasian was asked if they needed a fork, I was grateful for Grandpa Wilson having insisted his grandchildren use chopsticks. I certainly didn't manage to learn Mandarin before I left, so felt mildly better I was at least bringing my chopstick skills with me.
Anyways, the more important part is that after going through customs (which involves scanning my fingerprints twice to confirm my identity), I immediately found Trish. She had arrived an hour earlier, and was waiting at my flight's baggage claim. We navigated out of the airport proper, and headed for Maglev, the bullet train. While it can reach speeds of up to 430km, we were on it during a reduced max speed of 300km (unfortunately due to technical difficulties, video footage could not be added to this post).
Video added post-adventure
Picture added post-adventure
We switched over to the subway, which was similar to subways back home (except announcements were in Mandarin and English). Then it was a short walk to the hotel, and thanks to Trish (aka Captain Directions) we made it there easily. There was a delay checking in as the didn't seem to have our reservation on hand. Trish hoped we might get upgraded for free, I hoped we would just have a room at all. You can tell who the optimist is between us. Luckily we did get a room - no upgrade, but it had what we wanted most: beds.
We had a half hearted debate about the merits of going out to get food versus just going to sleep. Our fatigue won out, and we made it to 8pm before turning in (8am Kitchener time, 5am Vancouver time).
View from our hotel room which is oriented incorrectly, also due to technical difficulties (sigh):
Photo fixed post-adventure
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