XI'AN, CHINA

To satisfy my insatiable need for speed, today I took a ride on The World's Fastest Train--no, not Supertrain, I'm talking about Shanghai's Maglev (that's for Magnetic Levitation) train, which runs from the Longyang Metro stop to the Shanghai airport. It's only like five bucks, and it reaches a top speed of 431 kilometers an hour (that's like 270 mph), traveling over 20 miles in a little over seven minutes. Sweet! There's a digital speedometer readout in every train car, so I could watch the acceleration. It was a pretty smooth ride, I'll admit--but not exactly "glasslike" as the hype would have you believe. Still, the damn thing's fast. Did I mention that?

On the train I met a nice middle-aged couple from Alberta, Canada, who have done a bit of traveling themselves (they're going to a conference in Shenzhen, but have traveled across much of the world in the past 20 years or so). We had quite a nice little chat about backpacking around the globe, and they gave me much encouragement. What is it that makes Canadians so durn nice, anyway?