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My plan today was to explore people's park in daylight and to visit the Shanghai Museum which was close by. On the way a couple came up to me shouting "Excuseme Excuseme lady ladyyy!" so I stopped and said hello, to which she replied "ahh see I knew you were foreign because you have yellow hair and biiig nose". Brilliant.
They then explained that they were on holiday for a week in shanghai (although they only live half an hour away) and were on their way to a tea tasting experience and would I like to join them. Alarm bells rang as I've read about this being a common scam where you drink a couple mugs of tea and then get charged with a massive bill at the end, so i made a quick excuse and legged it.
When I got to the museum I bought an audio guide as I knew I'd get distracted otherwise and not take everything in, and was glad I did as most things just had a label but not explanation. There were 3 floors with numerous exhibitions on each level, and I ended up staying for a couple of hours.
After the museum I thought I was going underground to the metro but ended up in a giant underground shopping centre full of teenagers. In some sudden whirl wind of events I somehow managed to get seated at a nail salon and a woman had whipped out her nail file before I could realise what was going on! I asked how much and she pointed to some picture and said 40 RMB (£4) so I agreed as thats nothing compared to a manicure in the UK. However after she had done one hand and dipped my fingers in some sort of purple glitter, she pulled out a calculator and typed in 180 RMB (£18)!! I pulled away saying nooo and managed to get it down to 50 and she carried on in a huff and talking at me in Chinese, mostly likely just swearing to my face! Once the bizarre half-finger glittery manicure was complete she again tried to charge me 140, so I threw down 60 RMB and ran off before we got into a fight ha!
By this time it was dark and so I headed to the Bund which is the stretch of buildings that run alongside the river and is lit up at night. However when I got there my camera battery had died and seeing as I was pretty tired I just headed back to the hostel with the plan to come back tomorrow to get more pictures and explore it properly.
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