DAY 11

Today we went to Shanghai station to book our tickets to Beijing, completely unaware that there was a national holiday coming up. When we arrived at the station, the place was absolutely heaving, like a human ants nest.

Our first encounter, once inside the building, was with a guard whose sole purpose appeared to be to blow a whistle and generally act like he was at a rave. He directed us, through the medium of whistle blowing of course, to the queue for the 'English speaking counter.' Unfortunately for us polite English folk, the Chinese don't really get the idea of a queue. After all, if you arrive at your intended destination and there are people in front of you, why should you have to wait until they have been served, when you can just barge your way to the front and cause a commotion? That's a far more effective solution, right?

So after a couple of hours waiting in line we eventually get close to the counter and while Daley fought his way through the scrum, I ran defence to make sure no more of the busy little feckers got through. The other thing we didn't realise about Chinese national holiday's is that some 60-70 million people travel during that week. The result of which meant that we couldn't get a train to Beijing until next Thursday, but we could get a train to Xi'an on the Tuesday, although it would be a 16 hour journey on hard seat. Reluctantly we took it.

After that ordeal we went back to the Pudong district in the early evening to go up to the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower and have a look at the skyline at night. All in all it was a waste of time and money, the building looks amazing from the outside but the views from inside are far from spectacular. Hardly surprising really as we were inside the most attractive building on the horizon. There was even a much-advertised roller-coaster inside, which provided as much of a thrill as the 'Nutty Squirrel' ride at Alton Towers.

After negotiating the unnecessarily complicated lift system, we left the tower and went back to the hostel to find out how our friends' day's had gone.