Yes, one week later and I’m still here - in Shanghai that is.

After contacting over a dozen more shipping and freight forwarding companies and getting them to do something for me any progress was seem to be stopped still by the customs. On Tuesday some good news finally got in – I had a company that was already doing much more for me than any other before them and seemed confident to get my bike out of here. Tanja also had some good news. She managed to find a company in Australia that sounded absolutely confident to be able to get my bike to Brisbane and they also asked all the right questions for me to believe them enough.

Then it was a wait while both companies – the Australian as well as the local – were trying to get more info – a quote from the Chinese in case of the Oz company and Shirley – the nicest and most helpful business person I’ve met in a while – from the local office of Swift Logistics tried hard to get a “Yes” answer from several different customs houses. “Call me in two hours.” “Give us a call tomorrow morning.” Those were the kind of sentences I was hearing every time I returned to the telephone shop on the corner where they were already smiling at me from a distance and even started to greet me with “Hello” and learned “bye bye” from me for when I was leaving.

 While on Thursday morning I still didn’t have the sea freight quote from the Oz company Shierley has exhausted all her possibilities … with a negative result as in all previous cases. :( She suggested contacting my embassy and getting them to demand an exception from the local government. However, after my experience from our embassy in Vietnam I did not believe they could help me much so I decided to try something different first.

A day before I have visited the nearest customs house in an attempt to get the customs clearance for my Kawa from them. They could not do it but gave me an address for another customs house that supposedly could. That was the place I decided to visit next. I got there 4 minutes after noon, which meant an hour wait on a bench in front of it – lunch break… When they re-opened I presented my demand with all the supporting documents I had and was determined to get what I was so desperately after. After my calm but clear and assertive explanation that I could leave without the bike and without paying any customs duty on it for importing it (which I of course haven’t thanks to my Carnet) they started to try harder. In about two hours I got the good news: they agree with re-exportation of my bike. Hurray! It finally clicked to somebody.

“Now you have to go to your forwarding agent and tell them to contact us.” I’m being instructed.
“Oh… sorry, I don’t think I want to travel to the other side of this humongous city just to learn that I need to come back here to get some documents or to do something more. Could you please give these people a call and negotiate what you and them need?” was my reaction, passing the girl behind the counter my notepad pointing to Shirley’s number. Fortunately there were no major objections to this request and after we passed the handset of the telephone back and forth to each other several times a plan seemed to have been developing. I really didn’t want to move until everything was crystal clear. So while Shirley talked to Amy – a girl from the government assigned personal goods freight forwarders, which we had to go through – and other interested parties I waited in the customs house for them all to call me back. In another half an hour I have already talked to Amy and then Shirley is telling me that suddenly everything goes unbelievably smoothly, congratulating me in the same breath. We had to involve the government assigned freight forwarders to arrange all the customs procedures and to crate the bike but the final price of the shipment was fortunately to stay the same.

So today there was a guy standing in front of my dorm room’s door ready to lead me to the warehouse through the maze of Shanghai traffic. There were two little glitches though. First: this guy was expecting me to take him as a pillion passenger – not possible of course thanks to my traveling setup. Second: yesterday afternoon I already confirmed my fear of the damaged battery being completely dead again so we had to find somebody kind enough to give me a jump start..

So after a few unsuccessful attempts to start the bike using first one and then two parallely connected car batteries brought by some guys just from the opposite side of the street they finally arrived with a running car where the battery was fully charged and strong enough to turn my big engine. After that I followed the guy who took a taxi to the warehouse.

In the warehouse complex, without informing me of the fact, while I was waiting for the customs to get back from their lunch break again and processing the paperwork the laborers have already built a huge crate around my bike. Very nice and solid, nevertheless HUGE! They didn’t give me any chance to take off the front wheel, mirrors, windshield and not even the big top pannier which is about a 10 second job. They didn’t even give me a chance to empty the fuel tank, which was one of the first requirements of Amy’s when I got there. Well, it was already all done so I thought that it was gonna have to work out somehow as I really couldn’t (neither was prepared to) pay any more then I was originally quoted. The shipping agent was supposed to tell them the requested volume, weren’t they?

After we got to Swift Logistics’ offices, Shirley – a very pretty Chinese girl by the way – informed me that I would have to pay more. “Well, how much more? Why?” I asked still a little surprised. “Because the crate is much bigger than I quoted you for.” was the simple answer. You see, when I requested the quote I have told Shirley that the volume was going to be about 2.5 cubic meters and so she quoted me for 3. Now the reality was that even though I would in fact be able to prepare the bike quite quickly in a way that it would require only 2.2 cubic meter big crate these crazy guys (who by the way charge by cubic meter as well, which explains things quite a bit) made the crate 5.5 cubic meters big! That is 2.5 times bigger than really necessary!! Now I had to go back to the warehouse and fix this. We phoned these people to stop finishing the crate and the company Buick took me back to sort the rest out.

After trying to get someone in the warehouse to pull the crate out of the warehouse, brake it apart and let me to do my part on the bike Allan (the sales executive from Swift who was accompanying me for the whole day) came back after disappearing on me for half an hour. He told me that they would be calling me from their office to discuss a price reduction. When they did Shirley informed me that they weren’t really happy to break the crate apart at the place where I was and so they worked out a better price for the transport in the current oversized crate. The final price was “only” USD50 more than the originally quoted so I basically had to accept. For the 50 bucks I wouldn’t have any more trouble and when the bike arrives to Oz I can just break the crate and simply ride away as they even left fuel in the tank. Well, I’ll have to come and pick it up with a new battery to replace the dead one that is currently installed but I guess things just can’t be too easy, can they…

Back to Swift’s offices to sign the contract, pay the money and that’s it. Shirley even booked my flight back to Oz for next Tuesday – how kind of her. Thanks again Shirley! No turning back from here.

So I am really leaving China now. I do feel sad that the circumstances didn’t give me the chance to reach Pakistan through the north of China and the Tarim Basin, which would have to be a great ride. I still plan to do Karakorum highway on the Pakistan side next year if possible, but to get to China on a bike again seems to be neither likely nor possible under the current conditions. I was unbelievably lucky to get here on my bike and now I have wasted half of the fun. At the end it was my own decision however and I have to live with that. I think that it is completely normal to feel sad when something big is ending and I’m still certain that my priorities at this time are right. I do want to continue at some point - that is all I can say right now.

Got back after dark, joined my new good friends for dinner and later that night we tried some of the best clubs in Shanghai in our growing group – there was 16 of us at this point – Chinese, Hong Kong, German, Australian, American, Japanese, Italian and I can’t forget the Czechs of course ;-).

We had some great nights with the guys here in the past days as well. One destination I can really recommend is Zapata’s – a Mexican club. It is mostly full of white people, so not really an Asian experience, but it was lots of fun and the DJ was great. They have ladies nights on Wednesdays where girls can get Margaritas at the bar for free until midnight. There were 6 guys and two girls in our group that night so girls were constantly supplying the drinks, which were then shared by everybody. Then we danced again until we sweated ourselves to the point of dehydration again and gave “our” girls the signal for bringing some more icy Margaritas :).

There are already lots of plans for meeting each other in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Czech. It would be great if at least some of these re-unions eventuated still this year. I’ll be going to Europe shortly but with no money, so I hope at least some of the guys can make it to the Czech Republic. At the end it is worth much more than only for seeing me…

As you can see I also had time to go into the streets with my camera one of the past days and take a few pictures of the locals. Hope you like them.