One Crazy Ride

During dinner with our travel group we were talking about going to Shamian Island.

Our itinerary had us scheduled to go tomorrow to do shopping, but we wanted to see our friend Judy.

So after dinner we decided to go on an adventure. 


Sure, being in China is an adventure. 

But have you ever ridden the subway in China?

and taken all these people with you?????

Here it goes....................................

 

 

 

First we had to buy the subway tokens

 

 

 

Then we headed to the terminal

 

 

 

We were watching other people,

trying to figure out what to do,

 

you had to scan your token

then you could pass through the gates.

 

 

 

NEXT.......

 

 

We had to figure out which way to go!

 

 

 

THEN.........

 

 

 

 

we had to wait on our subway train.

 

 

We were not the only ones on the train

 

 

The train had several stops to make before our final destination.

 

By the time we got to our destination, so many people had gotten on the train,

I could no longer see Robbie(white shirt)

 

 

 

We were packed in like sardines

 

Getting on the train was not hard

 

Getting off was the problem!

 

There were so many of us in our group that we had to space ourselves out

 

so that we could get out at different doors.

 

We could not all get out at the same door at our stops because there was not enough time before the doors shut and the train started to move again.

 

We had three connections to make.

 

We finally arrived at our destination............

 

It was time to leave the subway and go shopping.


We could not figure out how to scan our tokens to open the gates to get out of the subway station.


Finally,


we saw that you had to deposit your token in a slot near the gate in order for the gate to open. 

Trying to get a stroller through here before the gate closed was virtually impossible.

In all of this confusion,
Valerie had placed her token in the slot,
but did not go through the gate.

She was stuck on the inside, while we had all gone through.

Several people kept pointing and shouting at us in Chinese,
because we were blocking the gate,
therefore stopping the never ending flow of people coming through.


Eventually, a Chinese lady said, in broken English, that we needed to speak to the attendant.

Are you kidding??

And tell them what?

No one was going to understand us....
There were tons of people everywhere,
People where filing past us,


Another Chinese lady was talking (in Chinese) to Valerie, and the Chinese lady behind her (obviously thinking that was her mom) and pointing to the attendants box.

Valerie turned to walk towards the attendants. 

By this time, I had already taken hold of her arm. 

I was not about to let her go.

 

The lady who had spoken in broken English looked at me and motioned for me to pick Valerie up.

 

I knew exactly what she meant.

 

I swept Valerie up and over the gate and we proceeded to the nearest exit!

 

The lady directed us to Shamian Island and we thanked her.

 

On our trip back to the hotel, I made sure that we all used the same gate to exit. 

Robbie always went through the gate first,

the three girls followed,

and I was always last!