Shanghai - China.

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Shanghai and onwards.

We crept into shanghai early in the morning. It was a foggy morning and the smell of the orient was all around. I will let you workout what that smells like. The dock was a container port as the ship we are on (Arcadia) is too big to fit in normal harbours, not the cleanest places - so we have to dock in deep water harbours like container ports. This sometimes involves a lengthy bus trip to get to the nearest town or city - but we are not complaining - though our backsides are after the 3 and a half hour bus trip yesterday and 3 and a half hours back.(more about that in a future blog when we catch up with where we are).

You might have worked out by now that we are behind with the blog - it’s all a mater of enjoying the day and when we have a quiet sea day, trying to keep this blog up to date - so far we are failing miserably at blog maintenance, but succeeding at enjoying ourselves.

Back to Shanghai - We docked and then took the shuttle bus to Shanghai city.
On the way we were able, as the mist cleared, to get a good look at the countryside. There was a lot of new construction going on and a lot of poverty visible. I suppose that’s the benefit of travelling off the beaten tourist path, you get to see the real place. There was a mix of luxury and poverty side by side.
We arrived in the city and set about making our way about - no conducted tours for us - we are self propelled people and like to see the real as well as the tourist places.
Having said that we got a taxi - £2 - and headed to a Buddhist Temple (one of the top tourist venues) and bumped into some of the ships conducted tourers. A bit busy, but well worth the £2 fare. We saw a man doing hand painting - very rare, or so they told us, and wandered around the temple taking in the atmosphere. We then headed off to a park (the best park in china -so the guide books said) and ended up in a park (not the best in the city, far less china) where we had some coke and crisps in a tea garden with all the other jakeys. It was nice and uncluttered with tourists!!!!!
We then headed through other parts of Shanghai to view what there was to see. Had a fabulous time and got slightly lost (Judi started panicking as we were not sure of the way to the place where we were to pick up the bus. I started working out how to get to the ships next port, Hong Kong, and how to learn Mandarin in 3 minutes) However after using the sun and stars for navigation, we found the bus collection point.
Its an old highland trick to find your way home - follow the sheep in front and keep your head down - we found a couple of sheep that seemed to know where they were going, and its easy to spot the Europeans in a cit full of Chinese - so followed.
No problem - there was the bus and the way back from deepest Shanghai to our weee boat.
We arrived back at the ship, footsore but very happy and satisfied. We bought a hand painting (very rare) from the Temple we visited and decided not to buy another hand painting (very common) from the local Shanghai market. Lesson - not all rare things are rare, no matter if its sold to you by a monk!!
On now to Hong Kong.

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