Day 3 - after a torrid night's sleep we arrive in freezing cold shanghai minus our bags (which contained our coats!)

We hung around the airport for a while making our disappointment known, and managed to come away with extra Chinese Yuan ($) to fund our travels.

The metro from the airport was long enough, without the need of the schoolboy error of falling asleep and failing to change trains when all the other passengers got off. An hour later we were back at the airport! suffice to say that there was a lot of travelling that day and the journey to our couch surfing hostess was a long one. Luckily she was very friendly and helped with reuniting us with our bags.

Her apartment, though, was cold. I mean very cold! We couldn't understand how people could live in sub-zero temperatures. We shivered our way through our fist night!

Our final 2 nights we are spending at another couchsufinh host. Fortunately her place is considerably warmer and central too. We feel happy here.

Our impressions of Shanghai so far: wonderful city. Clean, orderly, but exciting too. A mix of old and new, some veri impressive architecture ( eg the Bund with its European colonial style buildings, traditional Chinese pagodas in the old town, the jaw-dropping ultr-modern skyline of Pudong across the river. And oh, I forgot to mention the food...wow! I always knew I loved dumplings, but the Shanghai dumplings are SOMETHING ELSE!

Tomorrow is day 4 and we'll be heading to an ancient canal village...

Oh, the life of a backpacker never runs smoothly...after the best night's sleep so far we managed to negotiate our way to where our bus should leave from. If you didn't have someone to speak Chinese I really don't know how you'd manage...! We were told that there was little point in going to Zhuzhia Jiao as it was a 3 hour journey and it was after 12 already. Despite this setback we enjoyed our final day in Shanghai...the sun was shining and the temperature was springlike. We can't get enough of those dumplings - I had another 8 along with some spicy noodles! A bit later we went to a local coffee shop where kc had her favourite tea in hongkong style. This is basically tea and coffee mixed together. I really didn't fancy the deep fried duck's chin the girl at the next table was munching on. She even ate the beak!

The Bund by night is a glorious place to spend some time to admire both sides of the Huangpu river. The neon skyscrapers are futuristic.

Huiney our host met up with us later and she gave us a couple of very useful travel tips.

Thank, Huiney, it was a lovely stay in your home.