Arrival in Shanghai

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In the next two months I will be traveling through China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This is the beginning of my journey...

First up? China! Where exactly? Shanghai, the place I will call home for the next month. Me and three of my friends from law school (Chelsea, Connor and Jen) all boarded a plane in Portland and began the long journey to China, a distant and mysterious land to us. The plane ride wasn't bad but it was our first taste of the food to come, which is never a good sign.

After the 15 hour flight from Vancouver, we arrived in Shanghai a day later then we had taken off at around 5pm. As soon as we stepped out of the plane the humidity hit us, it was a balmy 85 degrees in Shanghai that day. We anxiously departed the plane and began to make our way toward the baggage claim. Luckily, our friend (and Jen and I's housemate in Salem) was there to meet us at the airport since he was doing an internship at a law firm for the summer. It was nice to have someone to guide us to our hostel. After collecting our bags and exchanging our currency we were off. (Side note: Weirdly enough all of the bills in China have Mao on them... a weird concept coming from America where we have a different person on all of our bills)

Almost immediately as we stepped on the subway we knew we were in china. Suddenly, nothing was in English, everyone stared and there was a beggar walking down the subway aisle wailing into a microphone and shaking a Styrofoam cup in our direction. Luckily, we are all such poor students avoiding eye contact didn't feel too horrible.

Since our plane was delayed by a few hours, it was dark by the time we departed the subway station to find our hostel. Everything smelled like sewage, smoke or feces and cars were honking at us for no reason. Suddenly it hit me... I'm in China... what am I doing here?!

That thought escaped my mind when we finally settled in to our perfect hostel, the Rock & Wood. It was so cheap (~$10 a night for a private room and private bath for 2 people), adorable (it had a koi pond, pool table and bar) and new; we were very impressed. However, we were so tired that the only thing on our minds was showering and eating before bed.

I was pretty skeptical about eating things in China since everyone had told me how difficult it was going to be for me to be a vegetarian, but it wasn't too bad and the breakfast at the hostel was great.

Later that day we decided to try to explore and find a good lunch place. We turned left out of our hostel and walked toward an alley that seemed to be a market place. Little did we know that this was an authentic Chinese market and what it contained was almost terrifying. First we saw a giant dead rat on the floor, then rows of shallow buckets with very little water in them in which snakes were slithering over each other, fish swimming in an inch of water (and dead bloody ones), bags of frogs leaping on each other and a baby chewing on a shoe. It was all quite shocking but also extremely exhilarating too! We were actually in China!

We all began to form a love/hate relationship with China very quickly, but I think it was mostly based around low blood sugar... but who knows...



Our next stop? Beijing! We will be getting on the 8am bullet train tomorrow morning and will be spending 5 days in the beautiful, ancient city.

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Photos

American Breakfast at Rock&Wood Hostel
Such a lovely morning!

Sketchy Alley
Ahhhhhh.....!

Houses
People here all hang their clothes out the window, its kind of cute.

Comments

[Belinda & Hal]

Eeek slithreing snakes!
Love the documentation and photos of your travel. Keep washing your hands (just saw the movie "Contagion" where it all begins. After your visit to China you may be curious to see it)