In Shanghai I'm looking at the same sky as you! (it's blue!)

Hi Everyone!!

It's been a while since we've had good computer access. In Hong Kong we stayed in a dump so there was no free internet like in Beijing and Shanghai. I am now in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan visiting my friend Bridget!! I've finally had a chance to upload Shanghai pictures. Sorry by the middle-end I stopped describing stuff (i got lazy).

Shanghai was awesome, I've never in my life seen so many cool looking buildings! They have amazing architecture there, every building looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. We stayed there for about a week. Some trip highlights included our trip to the ancient water town of Zhouzhuang south of the Yangtze river, Century Park, Shanghai Art Museum, Science and Tech museum, the waterfront and view of the city's skyline at night, developing some serious bargaining skills, trying all the possible street food we could, becoming pros with the subway system and experiencing the world's most populous city of over thirteen million residents in all it's reality.

It was hard to believe that whether you are on the subway at 8am, 10am, 1pm or 7 you're going to be packed into a subway car. People here can't be polite otherwise they will never be able to get around (so it seems). We quickly learned that in order to get where you need to go you have to be ruthless! Everyone moves very quickly around here, and yet they will line up for an escalator next to an empty staircase (we definitely got some weird looks taking the staircases). They have intimidatingly large malls in certain areas and we're from Toronto, so that is saying something!

By the time we were leaving Shanghai we were pretty pleased. This city takes a lot from you as a foreigner and also gives you a lot as well. It's not that people here are rude, it's just overwhelming for two polite and courteous Canadians to be submerged in an environment that seems to lack the general day-to-day street manners we value back home. Though we found their manners very different, despite the language barrier we could sense their genuine desire to point us in the right direction. Eventually, however, the lack of thank you's, excessive slurping during meal time and the constant hacking of phlegm noises got to us.

Our train to Hong Kong was an overnighter plus; we spent 20 hours on the top bunks of a three tier. It is called a hard sleeper, by that we realized they mean hard in terms of difficult in addition to a very hard slab for sleeping on, with a ceiling that would be perfect if we were a head shorter.

All in all we had a really great time in Shanghai and China. Hong Kong was wicked, i'll write about it soon!

xoxoxo
Stephie (and Rebecky)

---

---