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Ok, so another few days gone by and another blog post, this one from the wonderful big, bustling and busy metropolis that is Shanghai!!After a loo-oong night's train journey from Xi'an to Shanghai, where we discovered that soft sleepers are a fair bit more expensive than hard sleepers and not much more luxurious (they certainly didn't feel any softer on my poor back, and I definitely didn't sleep any better!), we pulled into Shanghai just after midday on Sunday 9th, and came out of the railway station to clouds, smoggy mist and lost of drizzle.great. A quicl taxi ride later, we got to our hostel and settled in for a few hours, with lovely hot showers to make ourselves feel slightly human again, and a quick cuppa at the annoyingly pricey upstairs cafe. The hostel itself (Le Tour Traveller's Rest Hostel) is pretty nice, with big clean dorm rooms, though there are shared bathrooms which is all a bit summer camp-y for my liking! We're staying in the Jing'an Temple area which is pretty near the centre of everything, and a cool area with lots of little shops and restaurants near by.
We didn't do too much on Sunday afternoon, but we did hop on the metro (another amazing transport system in Shanghai, perhaps even better than Beijing's though slightly more pricey at around 30p a ticket instead of 20p!) back to the train station as we discovered that yet again we couldn't get the train tickets that we wanted (We were trying to book from Hangzhou, which is confusingly pronounced 'Hang-Jo' where we're going next to HongKong) as they'd sold out, but the helpful girl at the hostel reception told us to get a train from Hangzhou to Guangzhou (again, confusingly pronounced 'Guang-Jo' and we're planning on going here after HongKong so it's a bit round about!) then busing it from Guangzhou to HongKong which takes about 3hours giving us a total journey time of about 23 hours (fun!). So, off to the train station we went, expecting lots of hassle-y hand gesturing and lost of chinese people bunking the queue, but in actual fact it was pretty painless as we got an English speaking server so we're all sorted and booked just in time to get out of China before our visas expire next week!We grabbed a quick dinner in a nearby chinese fastfood place called Uncle's (complete with stereotypical old bearded chinese man logo!), where I had yummy spicy pork with rice, really tasty garlic-y green beans and cabbage, all it separate little pots, as well as some rather odd solid/jellied hot savoury eggy custard stuff that we didn't really know what to do with, and decided just to leave as we couldn't stomach more than a spoonful of the weird stuff! We checked out People's Square too, which is near the main shopping district of East Nanjing Road, and stocked up on English books at a very well stocked bookstore, before heading back for an early-ish night.
On Monday we made the effort to get up pretty early, and grabbed a healthy fruit and granola breakfast at nearby Wagas (a cool coffee shop which it seems has mainly ex-pat customers, and we've definitely noticed a lot more white people here than in Beijing or Xi'an) before catching the metro to The Bund, which is one of the most famous areas in Shanghai on the east side of the river, with lots of really pretty art deco style buildings including the Peace Hotel, AIA building and the meterological tower. Nowadays that side of the river has a wooden promenade area where you can stroll along the Bund and look across the river to the heart of the financial and business sector in the New Pudong area, with great views of the Pearl Tower, Jingmao tower and the Shanghai World Financial Centre, which is apparently the world's third tallest building, though the Pearl tower is definitely the most striking and we both agree taht the SWFC just looks a bit like a giant bottle opener at the top, so not very inspiring!
After getting a feel for the Bund and getting some history from our Lonely Planet (which, although quite informative at times, we've found to be a little bit snobby and up itself, with some of its' contributors just writing things for the sake of sounding intelligent- especially when it describes Shanghai as 'parochial and inward-looking', I mean come on!!), we crossed the river on the Bund Sightseeing Tour, a really cheesy but also quite magical little thing where you get transported along this tunnel under the water which is full of flashing lights and special effects, with a chinese man doing a voice over saying things like 'HEAVEN AND HELL' , 'METEOR SHOWER' etc etc. It made us laugh so much, such a typical chinese type thing, we were saying that if we had a tunnel linking two sides of a river at home it would probably just be very staid and boring, but this was great fun. Pretty pricey though for all 6 minutes of it, and we paid a little extra to see the frankly rather crappy 'ancient mirror' and 'rare sea creatures' exhibitions at the other end which were pretty tired. On the other side, our faithful little travel bible LP had said there was a sex culture exhibition near the Pearl tower, and of course that sounded way more interesting than any other sight seeing we could do so after a few pics of the hulking great concrete toer (not as pretty up close as across the water!)we set off trying to find it, using the rather vague map position is our book. Over an hour of walking and searching later, we were back round the sightseeing tunnel and asked a server there, only to discover it had been closed!!Argghhhhh!!!
Hot, bothered and very frustrated with our fruitless searching, we headed towards the SWFC and Jinmao tower, where we stood in awe of both the hudge structures. It really amazes me how people can think up things like that in their heads, draw them and a few months or years later there they stand, these awe inspiring big goliaths!!After that we tried to find somewhere to eat near Century Park, but nothing doing, so we hit up a shopping mall near SWFC where we got some tasty Hong Kong style pork and rice dishes. A bit less frazzled and a bit more refreshed, we spotted an H and M in the shopping complex and couldn't resist a poke about. Major mistake!Seeing loads of pretty summer dresses and interesting fashion just reminded me how much I hate all my crappy travelling clothes and feel very unfeminine and not really myself without being able to wear what I want. I don't have any regrets about going for comfort over fashion, as I definitely would be grumpy much more wearing umcomfortable yet fashionable clothes than I am in frumpy baggy shapeless mostly khaki monstrosities (urgh), but still, a girl can wish! I think the whole experience of being practical with clothes and cosmetics is definitely a good lesson to learn, and I hope that I won't take all my nice stuff back home for granted too quickly come August home time!!Anyway, rant over...
So, got a metro back to East Nanjing Road, the big shopping street (yet more painful window shopping), just to have a look at it, and we also headed into People's Park for a little walk around, where we found a cute little crop of fairground rides and we went on those fun flying chair things, which for some reason I had a laughing fit on, and we also did a teeny bit of toning in the exercise area, though we were put to shame by some shirtless kung fu types who were doing chin-ups!!We found a slightly dodgy looking Expo ticket office just inside the park gates, and after much fruitless searching the day before for tickets (the Hostel sells them but with a 3 quid mark up, bit steep when that can get you a meal here!) we were thinking about getting tickets, but I was waiting for money to clear onto my card and so had a slight temporary cash flow problem and needed to borrow a little off Jade, so we headed to nearby Starbucks for a nearby beverage and a think. Over an hour later and all decided, we headed back to the ticket place all ready to get our Expo on when much to our horror the park was closing and the keeper wouldn't let us in!!We are such idiots!!We ended up getting them at our hostel, as we didn't want to queue to buy tickets at the Expo itself (which seemed like the only other way to get them, oh well!!that night we had some really good dumplings for dinner at a little hole in the wall place just down from our hostel, good value at only about 60p for 8, and tasty too!!We had a fairly early night as Tuesday was our Expo day!!
We had great fun at the Expo yesterday, it was another lovely sunny day, and there were loads of people out there for the day but the queuing wasn't half as bad as we'd expected. The Expo is split roughly into continents, with all the exhibiting countries from each one grouped together, and we managed to cover a good deal of Europe and a little bit of Oceana, though unfortunately we didn't make it to the rest of Asia-!The theme of the Expo was supposed to be 'Better City, Better Life', but some countries embraced this a lot more than others- the Thai, Cambodian, Phillippine and Malaysian pavillions seemed to just be the physical embodiment of all those 'visit us' ads that are on tv, so mainly just a big marketing ploy for those guys, still cool though. First stop of the day though was Ireland of course, which was in quite a boring building but had lots of diddly eiddle die music, pictures of Sheep/Green Fields/Enya/Oscar Wilde etc and a little bit about making Ireland even more green so that was fun!The UK Pavillion next, which had probably the most striking and innovative building of all, the spikey bits in the pictures (they'll be posted asap I promise!) are individual tubes filled with different seeds from Kew gardens, though there was a little bit of b/s about how the british love the great doors and doing activities outside is the favourite pass time of the nation. We both agreed this is definitely NOT the case, and I think watching football with a pint of beer in the pub is probably the most highly rated activity in reality!Anyway, we didn't get to see the Chinese pavillion which everyone we spoke to raved about, as you had to reserve tickets and they'd all gone by the time we rocked up 10 mins after the pavillions opened...The Chinese people were obviously properly keen about it!I'm not going to be boring and go through all the pavillions one by one, but here are my most and least favourite (just in case anyone fancies visiting the Expo in the next 6 months it's on!!):
Best:
1.Italy-big queue but really cool inside, from beautiful designer dresses on display to a lime green ferrari, a vertical orchestra display and a display about italian wine.Molto bene!
2.Germany was cool, and even though we had to queue for 45 mins (the longest we queued all day), all the cool interactive exhibits more than made up for it. Their idea was 'Balancity', a play on the words balance and city where life's made better by balancing the good with the bad, and doing your bit to be more eco friendly, quite nie really. There was also a pretty odd show thing at the end where a German guy and a Chinese girl enthusiastically tried to rev the crowd up and convince us that our 'energy' (i.e. shouting) was moving a big spherical ball suspended in mid-air that was very clearly attached tosome sort of hydraulic system. Quite sweet really.
3. Sweden was ikea-tastic, with a massive slide through the two levels (though it had closed when we got to it : ( ) and light-up swings that you were supposed to think of an innovative idea on. Some cool optical illusion-y things too, but e were disappointed there were no swedish meatballs available!!
4.France was pretty interesting, lots of artsy shost of Paris with mood lighting at the begining, a hommage to Louis Vuitton that all the Chinese people were going bats*** crazy over, and a guy dressed up as the michelin man who actually caused a physical fight to break out between two chinese couples as they were vying to be first in line for that particular photo opportunity...hilarious!!
5.Iceland was just a big room that'd been set as if it was the right temperature for being in Iceland and they showed a film of various different aspects of the country. It looks like a beautifiul country, bleak and desolate in some parts but picturesque at the same time. Also, by that stage in the day we enjoyed sitting down as our feet were aching from all the standing around haha!!They had a bit of film of that pesky volcano errupting at the end too, obviously a bit of an afterthough after all the troubles with it!!
6. The Belgium and EU pavillion was great- firstly because we got a free biscuit (yeahy!), and also because there was a 3d film, live belgian chocolatiers making amazing chocolate art and loads of massive diamonds to look at. Shallow, moi?!!
and...
The Worst:
by an absolute mile was the USA!!We were both really excited about it cos we though we might get some good freebies (incidentially we only did get the belgian biscuit in the end which was a bit stingy) and we waited for a good half an hour, only to be hearded through three different rooms where we just sat and watched patronising and sickeningly cheesy films about making a difference, with interviews from the pavillion's sponsors such as Pepsi Co and Chevron. I bet they're really interested in ethics right?!?!Also, the last film, apparently in 4d, had a bit where we got soaked from 'rain'.NOT COOL. Also, the american staff were really annoying!!
Great day had by us both in all, and we had some good snacks including yummy turkish doner kebabs for lunch and belgian waffles with ice cream. We were absolutely exhausted by the end of the day though, as we spent near enough 12 hours there, I''ve never had such sore feet before!!We came back last night and basically just flopped into bed we were so tired!!Though we did have awesome japanese noodles from a nice restaurant in the metro station near us (which also conveniently has an underground supermarket, a chemist and a florist- that's chinese ingenuity for you!).
Today we pretty much just chilled out. We headed to the French Concession area around lunch time to go to a Propaganda and Culture Centre, which was weirdly enough in the basement of a big residential building!!Was really interesting though, lots of anti-american posters and interesting propaganda slogans, and the old guy who gave us our tickets was really sweet and kept translating the symbols on each poster for us and getting really over excited!!A really fascinating insight into chinese history. We also went to a bookshop cum ice-cream parlour (amazing!!), and chilled out at the hostel before heading to Shanghai Circus World to see an acrobatics show called 'Era', which we're literally just in from. It was UNBELIEVABLE!!There were plate spinners, and guy who balanced on planks of wood and glass tumblers and caught 5 bowls, a cup and a spoon on his head, contortionists, trampolinists, people spinning and backflipping and somersaulting through tiny hoops, a guy who threw massive porcelain jars up in the air and caught them on his neck as well as spinning them around on his head, a couple who were suspended in mid using massive ribbons, people on stilts being catapulted upside down and landing perfects (same with a pogo stick too!),and finally, dum di dum duuuum the CAGE OF DEATH!!!at one point 8, count them 8, motorcyclists were doing loop the loops in a tiny metal cage at the one time. absolutely astonishing!!There were several moments throughout when my heart was in my mouth though, unbelievable crazy things to watch. Definitely worth the ticket price, so cool!!
Anyway, we're up early tomorrow to get an 8am train to Hangzhou.It only takes an hour and a half thankfully, so we're planning on taking it pretty easy tomorrow after we get there. I've loved being in Shanghai, not sure whether I like here or Beijing as they're both very different but it's a very cosmopolitan city and I've felt really safe here with lots to do.
Going to put a loads of washing on now though, how exciting!!
lots of love from Shanghai xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P.s. many congratulations to My cousin William and his fiance Kim who just got engaged, I hope you have many happy years together!!
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