Christmas in Shanghai

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So. Its chrismas day. And Rob woke up with a hangover.

Yesterday we caught a bullet train from Suzhou to Shanghai. It covered something like 150 km in just half an hour. Crazy shit! Shanghai is mind blowing. It is huge. Thank goodness we are in the Downtown. Its lively but away from the busyness of the up market and commercial areas. We overlook another film scene, rooftops with skyscrapers in the distance. An odd merger between what life was like and what life will become. However a short walk from our hotel we can hit the main street easily not that we really need to, because there are restaraunts and shops on our small street.

After we had checked in, Dragon took us for "some orientations" around the streets and led us to 'The Bund'. This is the skyscraper part of town and some of the towers are 110 storeys high! And all of them are odd shapes!

From there, we had "free times" so Rob and i just wandered for a bit, but we all decided that we should have dinner together before we went to watch the acrobatic show. Dinner, it has to be said, was amazing! For two quid we had a salad bowl of chicken broth, meat, (we think there might have been chicken feet involved) veg, a kilo of noodles and an egg, all raw, the idea being that it cooked in the boiling broth. Well worth two quid!

The acrobatic show was amazing. My favouite acts were the men, mainly because they were slightly more daring and were doing all the flips and shit, but the were some nice acts and ballet too. The finale was the ball of death, that wonderful motorbike thing done by Homer in the Simpsons movie, but these daredevils put five people in the ball at once, including a woman!!!!!!

After that, we had invited the tour group, Melitze (from Serbia/Canada), Travis (also from Canada), Maulo (from Uruguay (apologies if its spelt incorrectly)) and of course the mighty Dragon (our tour leader) to our hotel room for beer and snacks! We had a great time, and it disappoints me a bit that we haven't spent much time with them through the week. We had a really great chat and session, until everyone was too tired, or too drunk Robert to talk.

Christmas Day we woke up. Rob with hangover to the sound of the busy street below and the bloody mopeds beeping, at 7 in the Morning. I caught a few extra sporadic hours of slumber before getting up and we had breakfast on our balcony. More out of necessity than pleasure because the maid was cleaning our room. But i am glad to say we could happily sit there with just three layers on its that warm!

Today we went to the museum to have a mosey but i was slightly disappointed, which is hard being a future scholar of history@!!!!! We then got ripped off by a cab driver as we headed to the Jade Buddha Temple. This was an amazing and tranquil place. We immersed ourselves there for about half an hour just taking in the atmoshpere as people worshipped and then got a far cheaper cab ride back to the museum.

We walked back along the main high street to our hotel and we discovered a brilliant mechanism to keep the "You want watch" - no "Ok, you want DVD" - no "ok, ok, you want shoes" - suprisingly no! out of our hair. We spoke welsh back at them. This confused them greatly! And they back off nearly straight away with confused faces. Good fun.

We have out last meal of the trip tonight, so the group are all going out together, which will be fun! Although it has got to be said, i cannot wait for a good steak in Oz！

Peace out。。。

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