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Shanghai - 20th December 2011
Rainy afternoon in Shanghai so am chilling at the hostel rather than do what I had originally planned for the arvo - hike up Nanjing Road.. perfect weather to update my blog..
Yesterday I headed out to the Shanghai Zoo in the morning to see the giant panda. The Shanghai Zoo was supposed to be the best zoo in China, but I was pretty disgusted with the state of it! Did see the panda though, they are very cute! When I got to the sun bears, I stayed a bit longer as the bears were active and there was a cat in the cage, which I was intrigued about. One of the bears came up to the wall and opened its mouth up to the visitors and to my disgust a patron threw rubbish in his mouth! I told them off (in English so they probably wouldn't have understood!), then quickly walked out of the zoo, on my way passing the deer cage where the scruffy malnourished looking deer lived a life on concrete. Was so sad, and I definately wouldn't recommend a visit to a chinese zoo!
After the zoo my day improved with a trip out to Qibao ancient town, 18km metro ride from central Shanghai. I stopped for lunch first at a taiwanese joint (rice, minced pork and mushrooms with soy sauce eggs) then got a pomelo and honey tea (thought i would give the pomelo a second attempt to win me over and with the honey it was actually delicious). Something that I don't get about China is the temperature of their drinks. I ask for juice and they serve it to me hot, I ask for tea (and not in the iced drinks section of the menu) and it comes cold! Ask for a flavoured milk tea and you get a warm milkshake..
When I got to the entrance to the old street I was intercepted by a strange american guy who asked if i spoke english, and when i said that i did, he got me to film him on his crappy digital camera when he spoke about the old street - saying it was in Hangzhou, Shanghai, didn't have the heart to tell him he should do his research and that we were actually in Qibao.. Hangzhou is 1.5h out of Shanghai and is a large city on its own.. Eager to get away from this strange guy but trying to be polite, I asked him what he was filming for. "Basically I run a website where people at home can travel from their living room..". Thank god for intrepid journeys on NZ tv..
I then had a little explore of the old town. It is a gorgeous little canal town dating back to the Song Dynasty. Though advertised as a quieter place to get out of the big city, I found that the food streets here were packed with the shanhainese lunching on an array of goodies such as little birds on sticks and crabs.
Later on that night I caught the metro over to the Pudong new area and walked a wee while down Century Ave, absorbing the energy from the brightly lit buildings surrounding me. I then paid the 100yuan (student price) to get up to the 100th floor of the Shanghai Financial Tower - this is the highest observation platform in the world and provides an awesome outlook of the expansive city of 22million people. I recommend doing this at night, as the night lights always look amazing and i heard that it can be difficult to see through the cloud during the daytime. I then had a hot chocolate at the highest bar/cafe in the city on the 94th floor before making my way back to the hostel.
Shanghai last day - 21st December
After my bedridden state yesterday, I was keen to get outdoors for a hike through the city. One good thing about spending much of my day in my room is that I had some decent conversation with a girl studying not far from Shanghai who was visiting friends in the city that night. The girl studies english and french majors and had the announciation of an english aristocrat, putting my flat, nasally kiwi-accented english to shame. I politely asked her if she had read what I was currently reading - 'the girl with a dragon tattoo'. She replied "no, I mainly watch movies" - she has watched Pride and Prejudice eight times and imitates the accent of Keira Knightly. Therefore, the accent despite her english teacher being an american was revealed.
So today (21 Dec) I left the hostel determined to walk at least 10km despite the drizzle. I walked alongside the river, down the bund and then the whole of Nanching Road - from east to west - a feat of over 10km and the duration of just over 2h. On my walk, I got to refuse the tout's harrassment on East Nanching once again, while also getting to view the golden beauty of the Ling'an temple on West Nanching.
After my hike I decided that since I was planning to take the bus to Hangzhou tomorrow instead of a bullet train that I should do the Maglev train to Pudong International Airport - a return trip costing 80 yuan. This was pretty well worth it as the train the hovers above magnetic fields rather than running along a track (the only one of its kind in the world), reached speeds of up to 430kph! After my ride I decided to catch a metro to the north sichuan restaurant to attempt to find an awesome and cheap restaurant that two of us had discovered when in Shanghai as part of the tour. What I didn't realise when I exited the station is that I was walking further north rather than back down towards the central city and 40min later arrived at a metro station for a completely different line. However, it must have been fate as i was meant to be introduced to some of the best food i have had in china - asijen noodles, a healthy japanese restaurant chain that serves up scrumminess such as teriyaki duck noodles, complete with free refilling tea.
When I later returned back to the hostel, I met two german guys who were on route from studying business administration in Seoul, South Korea to new years celebrations in thailand. These two informed me of some inside knowledge of korean life, such as the importance of computer games to the young people, and 'DVD rooms' that served a function to young korean lovers who lived under the rooves of their strict parents so were in need of some personal space to themselves. Conversation with two interesting tourists over a corona was the perfect end to a good last day of Shanghai sightseeing.
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