Day 7: Travel Home

Sunday, June 15th, 2014

We checked out super early this morning to catch our flight back to China. It has been a fun week but it's time to go home. (I'm not looking forward to sleeping in my bed. The bed here was much better than at home in China.)

We learned something about our taxi ride to the airport.  When we arrived in Manila, a man offered us a ride to the hotel for 1500 Philippine Pesos.  We thought we did great because we only paid 680 Pesos to get to the hotel in a metered taxi and the ride took us about 45 minutes to an hour.  Well, this morning, it only took us about 20 minutes to get to the airport and we paid 183 Pesos.  We really got “taken for a ride” on our trip from the airport!!!  I don’t know where that first taxi drive took us, but we must have gone all around for it to cost 3 times what the ride back cost! I don't think there are really 3 terminals to the Manila airport. I think I saw the same terminal 3 times. Oh well.  

Manila Philippine International Airport

Some adventures in the Airport...We watched this guy put up a vinyl print over what looked to be an electronic monitor board. They were pretty maticulate about the way they put of the vinyl but not willing to pick up their trash...

We saw some person sleeping in an awkward spot in the airport.We tried to figure out what they had draped over themselves to cover up with...

The way people sleep in airports! ;)

The adventure of boarding the plane back to China was just as eventful as when we were flying to Manila. We were bused out to the tarmac to board the plane.

Passengers getting off as the next flight crew waits to get on board.

We left our hotel in the Philippines at 1am Sunday morning and arrived back to our apartment at about 12:45pm on Sunday.  Our airplane flight was 3 ½ hours but the Shanghai subway, train and subway in Suzhou took 4 ½ hours.

We took the same transportation path as we did leaving. When we arrived at the Shanghai railway station, we had to walk a ways to find the ticket office. We had luggage and had to carry it up and down some stairs. We were both exhausted and just wanted to be home. Unfortunately we were not able to get a train ticket for a few hours. So since it worked so well the coming, we decided to just sneak on the next train so we were not waiting around for ever!

Shanghai Railway Station

Shanghai Metro map

It is good to be home and it was fun to hear all about the adventures of the week.  The kids told it all much to Vern’s worry!  J