Today, almost three full months since arriving in China, I’m making my way to the Shanghai Pudong International Airport for my first trip back to the USA. The reason for the trip is to play in the softball tournament I mentioned a while back! My teammates are almost all in Portland and I’ll be one of the last to arrive.
After years of not relying on vehicles to go from place A to place B, I find myself in a car — minivan, actually — traveling the 2+ hrs from Suzhou to the PVG airport. The trip costs 400rmb (~$50 USD) and is the easiest way of getting to the airport…except for the traffic. I hate traffic. Unpredictable, inefficient, and stressful. It’s annoying at best and never brings anything good to the table. Public transportation might be crowded, indirect, and noisy … But at least it’s predictable and relatively inexpensive.
China is known for its bad traffic, both in the country/rural areas when there’s only one highway and also in the cities where way too many cars are on the congested arteries. There are traffic jams that have lasted days.
With the big international airport on the other side of Shanghai from Suzhou, one can hire a private driver to get there or take the subway to the maglev train to the other subway to the other maglev train to get to the airport. Oh boy, not so much fun there with the public transportation option!
Shanghai Hongqiao Airport is on the closer side of Shanghai to Suzhou and will take only an hour or so by car or subway/maglev combo making it a much more ideal airport to fly out of. Too bad there are only a handful of international flights, none of which are transpacific. (That means a connection in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tokyo, or Soul would be required before getting to the USA.)
One of these days I will attempt the trip from Suzhou to the PVG airport by train so I can better plan for trips and timing. Until then, like today, I’ll be stuck in rush hour traffic on the outskirts of Shanghai.
Happy trails, my friends. See you in Portland or the Friendly Skies!
