Shanghai - Arrival day

3:41 pm - in long immigration line. We had to be fingerprinted twice via scanners. Think FindPenguins is a bit confused about the time zone switch as it posted this one out of time order. (I managed to go back in and slightly switch the time and date to correct that)

Made it through immigration and then hit a huge jam up with crazy customs check where everyone had to run their bags through a huge scanner. Fortunately as we stood in line, an attendant motioned us and a few others just to skip it and go ahead. Mass charge ensued but we were at the front of the pack. :). As we got out into the main terminal, I had to laugh - must have been 200 or more people there each with a sign. It was bewildering to look at , trust me. Fortunately after a few seconds we spotted our Gate1 guy whose sign stood out with the Gate1 logo.

We were out of the terminal with our tour guide Tom Tang at 4:50 pm. Spoke very good English so that will help on our tor. On our way to the Marriott Courtyard. . By the time we made it to our room it was 6:30pm - totally wiped out - went straight to bed. Woke up a few hours later to unpack and sort a few things out and decided to update this. Fortunately I had talked to techies at NordVPN before I left the states to see what I had to do to make their VPN work so that I could access Facebook,Google,Gmail,etc. Because using the wifi at the hotel here, I couldn’t access them. I finally had to use a specific Australian server which the tech had mentioned and that did the trick. The automatic connect with the VPN didn’t work either. Otherwise, I would have been dead in the water for email, facebook, etc. Knock on wood - Chinese are probably reading this as I speak. :). Good thing I saved that chat into Evernote because I couldn’t remember the server number. Pays to do one’s homework sometimes.

Everyone on the bus ride to the hotel was wiped out. Some had flown without a night’s stay in LAX. Traffic on the way to the hotel was crazy - of course it was around 5:30pm - rush hour. Motorcycles,moped,bikes all over the place and some people carrying some large loads of something on their bikes - looked like lumber - will have to get a pic next time. Hotel is very nice. People greeted us like we were royalty and had refreshing drinks waiting for us while we checked in. Smiles everywhere. Not quite the standard greeting we get in the US.

Tomorrow brings a city tour and an afternoon free with get together meeting in the evening. Will probably sleep half the afternoon as well. LOLRead more