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Published: November 6th 2013
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The flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai took around four hours and we spent the whole time fastened tightly into our seats. We had terrible turbulence and the seat belt sign was on for the duration of the flight. This was due to really strong winds which Jon had seen a warning about prior to getting on the plane but kept it quiet - probably best! It was the first time we had flown with Spring Airlines and the first time we encountered everybody on the plane participating with 'circulation' exercises whilst landing. It looked pretty fun so me and Jon decided to join in.
Once we had landed we collected our rucksacks and made our way to the metro via the Maglev Train (a high speed magnetic levitation train) that goes up to a speed of 268mph. We had heard some horror stories about getting the metro in China, especially in rush hour and unfortunately for us it was 5pm. At each stop more and more people were getting on even though there wasn't any room, we were so squashed in my face was pressing against the door. It got to our stop and I literally couldn't move and
no one would let me through. Jon kept shouting me to push but I actually couldn't so eventually he used all his force to push me out which resulted in me almost crushing a girl on the way out with my rucksack. I never actually saw her, just heard her scream in pain. We decided there and then that would be the last time we would take the metro in rush hour.
After a short walk from the metro station we arrived at our hostel, Phoenix. Our room was lovely and big, had a human size bed, air con and our own bathroom - we were in heaven. Once we had checked in and showered we didn't fancy venturing too far as we were shattered so ate in the restaurant downstairs which didn't disappoint. We had a delicious crispy duck dish and another dish consisting of pork, asparagus and garlic along with three big beers coming to £6! Everybody working there seemed really excited for westerners to be in their restaurant but they couldn't speak any English neither us Chinese so that's when the iPhone app "Me No Speak" came in very useful. It is basically just an illustrated
Chinese phrase book - it made the staff laugh a lot.
The next day we got up early as we wanted to avoid sightseeing in the midday heat that had been issued with a level 2 weather warning. It was that hot it had reached a new record of 40.8c and news channels were frying eggs and meat on the pavement to show how hot it actually was! It was about 9am when we reached The Bund (the waterfront showcasing all the historical buildings and skyscrapers) and the heat was incredible. We managed to walk round for an hour, getting 'sneakily' photographed by the locals but my face started to turn bright red and felt like it was burning off so we went and took shelter in the shade. We were still boiling hot though and decided to find somewhere in doors. Everybody else had a similar idea and took cover outside and inside a Swatch store to take advantage of their air con.
There was only so long we could pretend to look at watches so carried on walking along the road. Due to it being so ridiculously hot we decided to stay out of the sun
as much as possible so spent the rest of the day on one of the worlds busiest shopping streets, Nanjing Road. There were so many malls, most of them way out of our price range but it was still nice to have a wonder around, especially in some of the food malls where they were selling some weird and wonderful things such as dried squid. On the evening we took a visit to the French Concession and had dinner, it was really nice there and interesting to learn abit of history on the place but pretty expensive for us as a beer was almost £5! We had a great night and had planned to stay out a little longer but it was a bit of a budget buster so we jumped on the metro home.
We had another early start the following morning and made our way to Yùyuán Gardens (a historical garden) in the Old Town. The gardens consisted of ponds full of Carp and turtles, intricate pagodas and bridges, beautiful rockeries and luscious green scenery. After a few hours spent there it was time to avoid the midday heat again so went for lunch and retreated back
at the hostel. Late afternoon we went to Han City, (four floors of market stalls) to go and buy some gifts for the family - we spent hours there and didn't end up getting back till 10pm.
On our last day in Shanghai we spent several hours wondering around Shanghai Museum (supposedly the first world class museum in China ) that exhibited everything from old Chinese coins to ancient sculptures of Buddhas - it was actually quite interesting. The rest of the day was spent preparing ourselves for our first overnight train journey to Xian. When we got on the train we were both a little apprehensive of who we might be sharing our four bed cabin with. We ended up getting lucky though and instead of being put in with a family we were with a Chinese couple a similar age to us. Although we couldn't communicate to each other we all shared a laugh when Jon tried on his complimentary slippers that were way too small for him!
We had an enjoyable time in Shanghai but it was all very modern and developed so we were looking forward to getting to Xian which we were hoping
might be the opposite.
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