Shanghai

First stop in Shanghai was the museum which I thought was a funny place to go out of all the great things you could do in this city. It was a very nice museum, mum and I got stuck on the ceramics floor and after studying some of these ceramics that were over 10,000 years old & feeling quite in awe of that fact, we couldn't find our way out as it just kept going on and on. This was just the one floor so we blew our entire allotted time by the time we emerged out the other end. Next we drove to the central city for a walk around another famous shopping street called Nanjing St and strolled along The Bund which is a mile long broad walk along the big Huangpu river (pu means river). By now it was Friday evening and everyone was out and about walking along the river or just hanging out. There were several weddings going on with the brides having their photos with the backdrop of the river and tall high rises behind. The side we were on was the old side, the streets were lined with colonial architecture of European design. We thought it looked rather like the streets of New York rather than Shanghai. On the other side, East, of the river (east is Dong in Chinese or Pudong with the emphasis on dong) was a different story. There were some of the tallest buildings in the world and some very unusual shaped ones at that. The Shanghai centre building is 620 metres and the third tallest in the world while the World Financial centre was just a mere 490 metres and looked like a handbag handle at the top. There were a couple of buildings that looked like a globe and a needle building with balls (or pearls as the Chinese like to call it) going up the spike. When night fell, all these building lit up like Christmas trees and looked just amazing. It's incredible to think that just a mere 25 years ago that side was just farmlands.

They start driving young over here

A comfy looking pillow

We went and had a coffee at costa coffee, without Jon of course as coffee here costs approx $9 a cup, as we had been hanging out for a good cup of coffee for over a week. Chinese do not do good coffee, then met back with the group to board a boat for the night cruise along the river. It was a very busy river, lots of barges and small boats plus the cruising boats looking at the night lights. It was the best city night scene I have seen in a long time and remarkable in the fact that here we all were in Shanghai, a fact that I have difficulty in believing. I liked this city and thought it was far nicer than Beijing, it has a really nice feel to it and it doesn't a threatening vibe, or at least not in the parts we went to.

Saturday morning was going to be a real treat, we were off on the bullet train for a ride to the airport and back just for the experience. It took 8 mins in the train, the same trip in a bus usually takes at least an hour if the traffic isn't bad. This is the fastest train in the world and top speed is 431 kph. I have been on fast trains before including the bullet train in Japan but they are not a patch on this one. When it got to around 370kph I thought we were starting to go really fast but by the time it hit 400 it felt unbelievable. The countryside was literally zipping past then we hit what I thought was a speed bump. I later realised it was a train going the other way, it passed in about half a second with a sound like a mini explosion. The tracks were also unusual as there weren't any, just two grooves in the concrete with what I guess is the magnetic blocks set into it. To say this ride was thrilling would be underselling it and would be one of my highlights.

They took us to the indoor markets after that to spend the rest of the morning pursuing around the bargains and haggling down the prices which can be quite exhausting. We really hadn't had much time to do shopping as they are busy herding us from one attraction or factory to another so it was nice to have some free time. We went back to the hotel for more free time before we met for the farewell dinner that night. Over half the tour group were going home the next day while we were to go on for our cruise down the Yangtze. We took this opportunity to take mum to the hospital to have her stitches removed. Jon, mum & I caught a cab to the hospital where we had to wait for her name to come up in lights. It looked so funny as everything else was in Chinese until we saw 95 Reid in amongst all the hieroglyphics. Anyway it only took half an hour or so and cost the princely sum of $5 so all a bit of an experience. We caught another cab to the meeting place for dinner, total cab fare for both journeys which would have been over 3/4 of an hour only cost $14, a true bargain. We were a little early for dinner so we took a stroll around the streets, went through a fresh food market which was extremely clean selling fresh fruit & veges along with fish and meat. We got chatting to a Chinese man in there who happened to live in Adelaide and was just visiting his parents. He was delighted to talk to fellow Aussies.

Another boiled cabbage and soup dinner

Sunday morning. Was a bit of a lie in, we didn't have to check out until 9.30am so we had a stroll around the neighbourhood which was extremely poor, very much ghetto area but they had a market on. Once again, even tho it was poor, the streets are very clean, the market was orderly and lots of fresh fruit & veges as well as meat. Usually in Asian markets there are flies hanging around the meat and it all looks unappetising but this looked like a normal market, even the prawns were in buckets and swimming around, very much alive so you can't get fresher than that.