In Shanghai

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Well I've made it to shanghai, and thankfully my luggage did too, everything has gone great except for internet access, this is my fourth attempt to post an entry but due to bad luck and bad wireless none of them have worked out.

Anyways Shanghai is great my cousin picked me up from the airport everyone at the airport was really helpful although no one spoke English. While writing this our McDonald's delivery arrived which brings me to my first real observation on this trip anything that required labor is available and dirt cheap in china, raw materials are expansive but that's pretty much all you pay for, with so many workers in china anything labor intensive is dirt cheap. Every single restaurant I've gone to has more workers than customers sometimes by a ratio of 3-1, they all have one person whose job seems to be just opening the door (labor is cheaper than an automatic door after all). At a couple of restaurants I think every table had two people on waiting on it, no drink sits half empty, and no dish goes uncleared. The food and the people are fantastic.

We went to Hong Quio market and discovered what haggling is all about, the real price for any given item is 40% or less the original price, shop after shop of fake ipods, copied DS games, jewelry, cloths every little shop there are people trying to pull you in "just look" they say, I got some great deals, but haggling is a battle. The streets can only be described as organized chaos, cars don't seem to follow any strict rules and bikes are everywhere, people cross streets one lane at a time standing in the middle of the street as cars zip past, somehow it all seems to work out.

Advertising is everywhere (as expected) in the hallway to Ramien's apartment there is a LCD TV mounted that plays ads (with sounds) all day and night the really amazing this is only about 20 apartments use the door where the TV is placed.

I'm going to wrap up this post before I lose internet access again Shanghai is an amazing city, the people are amazing, I have 2 days done and 26 days left. THis is going to be an amazing month.

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Photos

Welcome to Shanghai
And its great to be here!

640Gb Flash stick!
I almost bought this, just to see it. Of course it's not 640Gb but apparently it fakes itself to be 640Gb when you plug it into a machine.

Dinner
Just one of the great meal's I've had so far.

The famous iPhone nano!
Just one of the many iPhone nano's I've seen they are slightly less responsive than the real thing, and don't work with iTunes or I would have bought one.

Organised Chaos
Here is a brief look at the organised chaos on the street in front of the market.

Tv's everywhere
This cab has a mobile satellite TV in his cab, the tv on it is live, to bad he doesn't get hockey.

Bikes
Just a brief example of the bikes, I've noticed a lot of bikers wear face masks although honestly the air is better here than I expected.