Well, our trip really started in earnest yesterday. Up at 0445 for a domestic flight from Brisbane to Sydney before getting on an A330 from Sydney to Shanghai. We were very lucky to receive our upgrade request to Business Class (thank you frequent flyers!), so we felt like royalty and the 10 hour flight actually went fairly fast. On arrival we were successfully met by 'Gong' (English speaking guide!) who transferred us to our hotel. Long day, but everything went smoothly - great success!

Today was a little less hectic and we got to start being tourists. Gong was our guide again, taking us to see some of Shanghai's highlights. We saw a silk factory, an old French building that has been converted to a museum (amazing hand crafted art), the Jade Buddha Temple (houses a 1 tonne, 2 metre tall Buddha carved out of a single piece of white jade) and Yuyuan Garden (2 hectare garden created by a guy 200 yrs ago to please his parents!).

Once the tour was finished, Gong dropped us in the middle of Shanghai with some rough directions and we were off exploring! A little daunting given very little English is spoken or written, but we made it! Had a beautiful lunch for two and sampled the local poison (Tsingtao) for a cool AUD17 and had a wander through Nanjing mall. Successfully braved the metro and wandered back to our hotel for a much earned rest! It was a big day of firsts for Case - first intro to crazy Asian driving, first intro to Chinese squat toilets, first time eating real Chinese food (no sweet and sour chicken in sight!) and first time on a train with not a sign in English! Now for some sleep before retracing our steps for another tour tomorrow morning!