China, Shanghai: China's Biggest City

Shanghai was the most modern city in China when we visited. Dan thought the place reminded him of an American city and Kyle thought the place reminded him specifically of Chicago. Koala International Youth Hostel was the place we stayed; it was very nice and even a bit posh if you considered the bathroom, which had a huge walk-in shower with massage pumps that could pummel you all over if you switched them on. The room also had a small kitchen with a microwave oven and kettle, and this allowed us to have some pot noodles for a few meals to save some money.

To get to Shanghai, we could have taken a 24-hour train journey and, had we had more time in China, we would have done so. However, we found a great website that was recommended by someone in their travel blog, called ctrip.com. This was a well-known travel website in China and the best thing about it was the fact that they had an English section in which foreigners could book airplane tickets.

It hovered on the track and could reach a high speed of 431 kilometres per hour, over 280 miles per hour

The airline industry in China works differently from that in the UK and US; there are no discounts for purchasing your ticket in advance. In fact, it seemed to work the opposite way, where you could get a discounted fare closer to the date of travel. We were told that the government controls the fares and release of tickets, so it was a bit of pot luck to get a ticket and to get one at a good price. Having said this, though, we knew when we bought tickets on this website that we were getting as fair a deal as everyone else and that we were not getting ripped off by the airlines.

The taxi ride from our hostel in Xiamen to the airport took around 45 minutes, but only cost us around £3.25, or $6. The bus journey to the airport would have been cheaper than that, but we would have had to change buses at least once, and it was easier, with all of our bags, to take a taxi. Travelling by car allowed us to see how large Xiamen island was; it seemed to stretch on for miles as we headed closer towards the airport.

At the airport, we decided to have ice coffees at a cafe whilst updating our travel journal. Paying for the coffees was horrible, as the price for one ice coffee ended up being more than the taxi ride! We didn't know this when we ordered because the menu, in Chinese, was very hard to understand, and the girls serving us didn't speak English at all. We had no choice but to pay for the coffees, which were not even that tasty. The good thing is that we were able to write a journal entry whilst waiting for our flight and the cafe was nice and comfortable to wait in - we even practiced speaking Mandarin Chinese with the girls who served us the dodgy coffees.

The flight was just around an hour once we were in the air, and the plane was fine. There was nothing fancy about it, so we won't necessarily choose China Airlines over our other frequently chosen carriers, but we wouldn't avoid flying with them in the future. Some of the flight attendants spoke English and were rather excited to practice speaking to the only two foreigners on the large plane. We both ate all of our meals because we were pretty hungry; the meals were not very good, though. From what we remember, they seemed to consist of rice and some kind of meat, which was turned out to be the dark meat of a chicken. We have rarely had white chicken breast meat in Asia, and we are really looking forward to that as one of our first meals in the US.

The Shanghai Hongqiao airport was pretty large and, when we arrived late in the evening, there was a massive queue of people waiting for a taxi. After 10:00pm, there was no public transport from this airport into the city, so everyone had to take a taxi if they did not have a rental car or someone picking them up.

The queue was full of Chinese people chain smoking - the Chinese smoke EVERYWHERE - and in the hour that we waited for a taxi, we are sure that a few years were knocked off our lives, from inhaling the smoke. We also heard choruses of hawking from people around us, which is another thing that the Chinese seem to do a lot of, both the men and women as well as little children (we saw the cutest little girl hawk up a big lump of phlegm the other day and spit it on the ground in front of her).

Once we got into a taxi, we were taken to the hostel that we had booked (Koala). The driver took the expressway from the airport, but even though we passed many tall buildings during the drive, we couldn't see any of them because most of the lights were turned off. Shanghai's skyline is "dimmed" some time after 10:00pm in order to conserve electricity to help China with its quickly declining supply of energy. We have noticed that many Chinese people and businesses are pretty wasteful, particularly with electricity; one of the ways that this was evident by the number of bright neon signs we have seen in the many places we have travelled.

Since we couldn't get a feel for what the skyline looked like at night, we resolved to see it sometime before 10:00pm on one of the following days. We ended up achieving this, but it was really difficult as we both had caught nasty colds at the end of our trip in Xiamen, and they had gotten worse while we were in Shanghai, which meant that we were pretty exhausted most of the time we were there.

Our first full day in Shanghai consisted of us sleeping in a bit and planning our time in the city before heading out to visit the French Concession area. We passed many friendly people on the clean streets as we walked around for a few hours. One of the reasons we had for going to the French Concession area was to have lunch at Yang's Kitchen's for some good Chinese dishes. We were served way too much food, which was a combination of us ordering too many dishes, to curb our starved appetites, and the Chinese dishes being cooked up in really large portions.

The food was good at Yang's but it wasn't anything to write home about. There was a lot of oil in the food and also something that we think was MSG, so it tasted typically Chinese and was heavy-going to eat. The recommended dish by our Lonely Planet guide was the minced pork and aubergine (that's the same as eggplant for the Americans reading this); once we got past the thick layer of oil coating the food, it was enjoyable.

Xintiandi was a new pedestrianised shopping area that we wanted to check out, as the architecture was meant to be quite stylish with several blocks of renovated traditional shikumen houses. It was pleasant walking around the area, but we could have been anywhere in Europe or America as we saw more foreign faces than Chinese ones in some parts of the neighbourhood. Speaking of which, we bumped into a French woman and Algerian woman who were looking for a small museum near the site of the 1st National Congress of the CCP. This last thing was some communist building that we had no interest in seeing, but we were more than happy to help them find their way, as they were a few blocks away and had been walking around for a couple of hours, trying to find the museum.

The two women followed us as we navigated according to the map in their French travel guide. When we arrived at the small museum, they burst out laughing because it was right next door to the CCP building, where they started! It was funny, but they didn't regret the walk as they enjoyed talking with us, and we equally enjoyed their company while practicing our French conversational skills. We bid goodbye to them, but it wasn't the last we would see of one of them. We passed the Algerian woman and some of her colleagues when we walked around the Pudong area a couple of days later.

Before we headed back to our hostel for the evening, we wanted to check out some of the large shopping malls dotted up and down Nanjing Road. To get there, we walked briskly through Renmin (translated as "People's") Park admiring the large skyscrapers that started appearing in our view. Dan got really excited when he spotted the Oriental Pearl TV Tower for the first time; Kyle seemed to be acquiring Dan's love of skyscrapers as he had been provided more and more interesting facts about some of the world's tallest buildings that we have seen on this trip.

Feeling rather knackered from all of the walking we did, we didn't spend much time in any of the malls we passed. Actually, we only went inside one mall to have a look at it, and after a few minutes acknowledging the fact that there was nothing at all different from a nice mall in the US or the UK, we left and caught a taxi to return to our hostel for the evening. When we got back to Koala, the guy working at reception wrote down our cold symptons in Chinese (stuffy heads and sinus pressure and pain) for us, so we could buy some cold medicine to try and tackle the colds before they got much worse.

We stocked up on medicine and we also bought some food and drinks to keep in the room, in case we didn't feel like going out the next day, due to our colds. What probably didn't help our colds was the fact that we woke up at 4:00am to try and watch a little TV over the internet. The night before, we saw an article on the MSN UK homepage about the Eurovision Song Contest, saying that the UK had a better chance to do well this year than in previous recent years. There have been many funny entries in the contest in the past, so we wanted to see what this year's contest was like.

The bad thing was that the connection in our room in the hostel was not strong enough to watch continuous streamed video, so the picture and sound kept cutting in and out. Also, the time we woke up, thanks to getting the time zones wrong, was actually an hour into the show, and we missed the first several acts.

During the stream, we caught glimpses every minute or so of a performing act and, when the voting started, we were about ready to give up watching. Just when we were about to close the internet webpage, the stream started playing continuously without any interruptions. We actually then got to watch the voting, which seemed as politically biased as always, with all of the Central and Eastern European nations sticking together and voting for each other.

The poor UK act only received points from a couple of countries, which was really sad considering how much money is brought to the show from the UK broadcasting network and from the voting done by members of the UK public. Maybe one day, the UK will find an act that can at least finish somewhere in the top 20 (out of 24). We couldn't be bothered to talk about the show afterwards, so we both went back to sleep.

Sleeping in again was crucial for our colds, so we decided not to arise until the afternoon. We left Koala Hostel at 2:30pm to see some more sights in the city; bus 24 was our main mode of transport from Koala and it took us an hour to get where we wanted to start our walk for the day. A brief respite in a small mosque was a boring precursor to a more enjoyable part of the city, Fangbang Road, where "Old Shanghai" was located.

Old Shanghai was a really a Disneyfied version of historical China and was a rather touristy area, but was probably one of the few places in the metropolis that actually looks Chinese. There was a large bazaar with many shops and stalls selling really high quality souvenirs, antiques and tasty snacks. The architecture was really amazing, with several buildings appearing just as we imagined them to look like in China; it's just a shame that more of the older buildings haven't been preserved.

There wasn't enough time to walk through Yuyuan Gardens on the afternoon that we visited Old Shanghai, so we returned on our final day in the city to walk through them. Our next stop after Old Shanghai was the famous old street in Shanghai that has been known as the "Paris of the East" - The Bund. 52 blocks of tall, magnificent buildings with different architectural styles line the main street in The Bund on one side, and a pedestrian walkway along the Huangpu River lines the other. The buildings are spectacular by day and even more of an eyeful at night when they are all lit up (before the off switch is pulled after 10:00pm of course).

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel was probably one of the cheesiest things we have done on our trip in the five months that we have been travelling this year. What was in store for us on the journey under the Huangpu River was certainly not what either of us expected. Walking across The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel was not an option for us to get to the other side of the river. Instead, we boarded a small capsule that transported us to the other side in about five minutes, through a psychadelic laser, light and muzak show with the odd words thrown into the journey, like "earth", "water", "heaven", "hell", etc.

In the main part of Shanghai, bridges didn't exist over the river. Therefore, all people wanting to travel across the river had to either take a boat or travel through one of the underground tunnels. There is a subway line that connects the Pudong area with The Bund, and this is the option we took going back later that evening. Before leaving Pudong, though, we first walked around and admired it's famous Oriental Pearl Tower from below, as well as visited the largest mall in Shanghai, Super Brand Mall.

The mall was very large, as you could imagine, with it being the largest mall in Shanghai. Stores abounded throughout the many floors in the building and we spent quite a bit of time walking around a large bookstore inside the mall. The English language book section was very small and there was nothing that caught either of our attentions, so we didn't purchase any books. We did buy, however, some paper to use for future trip planning and note taking. Before leaving the mall, we had a quick bite to eat and, since night had fallen when we left the mall, we headed to the river to take pictures of The Bund lit up against the dark sky.

The weather turned really cold that evening, too cold for us to be wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip flops. After taking some photos, we rushed to the metro for warmth and took a train under the river to the Nanjing pedestrian shopping street. When you think of Shanghai, you may get a mental picture of streets with hundreds of bright neon signs lit up in the sky. This would be the pedestrian part of Nanjing Road. The area, which was like one big lightbulb, was really nice with many shops and restaurants. It was a shame that dodgy men kept coming up to us, offering us ladies of leisure for the evening, as that ruined the pleasantness of the street for us.

When we arrived back at Koala, we watched a DVD named "Hot Fuzz", an English comedy that was released earlier this year. It was really hilarious and we are definitely going to watch that one again this summer. The freezing weather that evening had made our colds worse, so we watched another film the next morning before working on the travel journal. In Shanghai, we finally finished all of our Vietnam journal entries, which made us very happy, indeed, as we wanted to let people know about our China and Taiwan experiences over the past few weeks.

Mexican food in Shanghai? Well, we had to look for a place and we had to try a Mexican meal there. There was no reason not to continue our pursuit of Mexican food in Asia, and we found a nice place called "Zapata's" in the French Concession area. There were no Chinese people in the place, except for the staff, so we definitely hit onto the Expat crowd in Shanghai. Everyone was dressed way better than we were, in our backpacker duds that were bought for the trip and were meant to be thrown out afterwards. Our fashion sense was probably the reason that the hostess sat us in a back corner, away from any action.

The food was good but a little expensive for our budgets, and we don't think it was the best Mexican food we have had on the trip. Nonetheless, we got our fix and we were happy to have had the experience. We still weren't feeling that great from our colds, so we caught a cab back to the hostel and watched another DVD before crashing for the night.

On our final day in Shanghai, we did a power speedwalk through the beautiful Yuyuan Gardens, a set of classical gardens with a 400 year history. It took 18 years to form the gardens as they still stand today, and it was amazing that they have been preserved so well. After touring the gardens, we took a cab to the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall in People's Square, to see how Shanghai has grown and developed over time, and what the plans are for the near future in Shanghai. There were two enormous city planning models there on the upper floors of the exhibition hall, and we were able to understand how little of the city with 13.2 million inhabitants we would see on this trip.

The final touristy thing we did in Shanghai was visit the Shanghai Museum, also located in People's Square. It has been said that this museum was the best in China, but since our visit to Shanghai, we were also told that the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi'an was the best in China. Maybe someone reading this journal entry should visit both of the museums and post a comment as to which one is the best. Inside the Shanghai Museum, there were many different exhibits on display, with several items dating back thousands of years. The most interesting items we saw were definitely ancient coins that were shaped like weapons.

For our final dinner in Shanghai, we decided to try out a restaurant called "Banana Leaf", which was located in Capital Mall across from People's Square. The food was a fusion restaurant, offering hundreds of different Southeast Asian dishes. Reading the menu was a nice reminder of all of the good food that we ate between January and April this year, when we were in that part of the continent. We ordered way too much food, which was a normal problem for us, and pretty much rolled out of the restaurant after eating. The members of the waitstaff were very friendly and helped us practice speaking Chinese while we ate.

The owner of Yangshuo Culture House, the place where we stayed in Yangshuo in April, had helped us book a flight to take us from Shanghai to Chengdu. It was hard to believe we were already taking the flight that was booked during our second destination in China. That second stop in China seems a distant memory now that we are writing this journal entry from our last stop in the country.

Since our flight was due to leave in the morning, we enjoyed some delicious steamed buns and an egg pancake at the food stand next door to our hostel before we headed to the airport. To get to the airport, we walked to the nearest subway station and travelled for 45 minutes to the Maglev Rail Station.

The Maglev train that takes people to and from Pudong Airport is the world's only magnetic train. It hovered on the track and could reach a high speed of 431 kilometres per hour, over 280 miles per hour! At the train's fastest point, we were travelling at that incredibly fast speed, and looking out the window, we could definitely tell that we were really speeding along the track. It took us 8 minutes to travel 30 kilometres, and was a memorable experience.