Tianjin, China

Thursday and Friday, April 4 and 5, 2019       Tianjin, China

Larry and I caught a public bus into Tianjin. We were told to take the number 513 bus at the bus stop in front of the cruise terminal. We stood out front for about 20 minutes and the bus came but the driver told us no and pointed  across the street. So we moseyed across the street and waited for about 10 more minutes and guess what…. The bus with the same driver pulled up. He had driven down the road a short distance past the bus stop and took a break before picking us up. Guess he couldn’t have passengers sitting on the bus while he grabbed a smoke.

So we finally got on the bus and we rode for about 60 minutes passing lots of ship cargo containers and lots of barren empty land that had great streets of  perfectly manicured rows of trees, shrubs, and bushes. Major three and four lane highways leading off to the left and right were closed off…waiting to have something built on the reclaimed swamp land. The Chinese officials really had a well thought out future plan in operation for the area because the roads were complete and the area was well landscaped.

The public bus motored into the busier part of a city passing universities, hospitals, hotels, and a large several story mall. This part of Tianjin looked very new…most likely built in the last twenty  years. 

Upon disembarking the bus we still had an hour ride on the metro to get to the downtown part of Tianjin which is the third largest city in China. Oh my! 

                                   The tallest building in Tianjin was still under construction.

                                                    Bicycles were everywhere for rent.

                                   Inside the pyramid building, huge carpeted mosaics lined the walls.

                                   The locals enjoyed walking through this field of yellow flowers.

                          How about this crazy looking bike with the little wheel on the back?

After having 22 stops on the bus ride, we decided that we would find a bank in this area because our agenda for the day was to change our Chinese money back into American bucks.

After getting directions in the mall to the Bank of China and a quick walk about five blocks, we entered the bank speaking to four people before they understood what we wanted. In the Bank of China you get a number from a ticket machine and then you take a seat and wait. In passing the time, Larry enjoyed talking to a young Chinese girl who practiced her English on him.  We waited about an hour before our number was finally called.

After talking with  our teller, we finally got two forms to fill out. The hardest part of the form was telling them that our address while in China was the Tianjin International Home Port. Even with having this written in Chinese, they still did not seem to understand that we were on a ship and not a hotel. A third form was given to us to fill in that was written in Chinese…so this had to be translated for us to fill out.

 We found that the bank would not distribute more than $500.00 per day to which we asked, “Can my wife get $500.00 as well?” Yes, they allowed me to fill out the same forms and questioned why I had put down the same phone number as Larry’s form….causing the whole process to slow down again. Silly me! I put my personal phone number on the form and the processing continued. Finally an hour and 15 minutes later…we had most of our Chinese money exchanged.

On Friday we rode the public bus back into Tianjin going directly to the bank….to exchange the remainder of our Chinese money. Although there was a whole new set of bankers greeting us this morning, they knew what to do with us today because they gave us the forms to fill out right away…deleting the Chinese one. They must have had some intense training the night before. Anyway, Larry and I filled in the forms, got our number and sat down to wait….about a half an hour. 

This time I had a great conversation with a gentleman from Ubeckustan while waiting. A young teller got us through the process a lot quicker this time. The only mishap that occurred was that I had filled the form out with a ball point pen instead of the bank liquid ink pen. Can you imagine? Oh well, I just filled the form out again with the correct pen and we were on our way back to the ship in time for lunch. Who would have thought that exchanging money in China would have been such a process?