{"id":1867,"date":"2010-07-10T21:20:18","date_gmt":"2010-07-10T13:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/?p=1867"},"modified":"2010-07-14T19:16:10","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T11:16:10","slug":"wuhan-as-boring-as-this-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/?p=1867","title":{"rendered":"Wuhan&#8230; As boring as this title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The hostel is not great and what sounded like trolleys full of scrap metal being dragged over rumble strips outside our window at 5am was a little treat. We slept in &#8211; only getting moving around 9. It was raining a little and I had to drag V out to see the only site that I thought was worth seeing &#8211; &#8216;The Golden Crane Tower&#8217;. After a long walk through the muggy (think average temp here is in the high 30&#8217;s) and wet streets (no fun here because puddles generally contain more living organisms than what you would find in a septic tank) we arrived at the tower and an entry fee that we thought would not be worth it. Good thing too as V found out later that the tower was rebuilt in the 80&#8217;s and now has an elevator &#8211; how authentic !<\/p>\n<p>Back at the hostel we relaxed the afternoon away browsing online and making calls in preparation for our 12 hour long overnight bus ride to Shanghai &#8211; John was supposed to arrange a sleeper train for us but apparently no tickets were available.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/p_480_360_397D3DD4-6B8F-414C-A5C6-804A6193A8BC.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignleft size-full\" \/>The bus station did not instill any confidence in our travel plans. It looked like complete chaos and again incessantly loud. We attempted to go through the boarding gates a few times but were chased back. Being the only westeners around we got a lot of attention and a few people offered assistance, which was great, but none of it was conclusive. Eventually (an hour late) we were ushered to a waiting old bus. It was a sleeper bus (ie: more or less flat bunks 2 high, 3 wide and ~10 deep) but very cramped, old and grotty &#8211; after some confusion about our bunk numbers we settled in. V had a bottom bunk &#8211; I was a row back on the top. <\/p>\n<p>Each bunk had it own &#8216;features and benefits&#8217;; Both were Asian standard length (too short) and as soon as the bus was packed to capacity we pulled out of the station and promptly stopped to gather more &#8216;unofficial&#8217; passengers. V ended up sleeping shoulder to shoulder with a guy who filled one of the gaps on the floor. My bunk was a delight &#8211; broken air vents meant I had cold hurricane force wind on my face combined later with dripping water as the bus started to leak. The saftey rail was missing &#8211; rolling over would result in a nasty fall so I slept with one hand jammed in a convient gap. The bunk itself was also not firmly attached to the framework &#8211; fun. To top it all off I could not believe it when people started smoking in a bus with no windows ! It was a very long night.         <\/p>\n<p>[Pictures: The view from my bunk &#8211; yip it was a slow day !]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><small>&#8211; Posted from my iPhone via Wifi<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hostel is not great and what sounded like trolleys full of scrap metal being dragged over rumble strips outside our window at 5am was a little treat. We slept in &#8211; only getting moving around 9. It was raining a little and I had to drag V out to see the only site that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1880,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions\/1880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}