THE HUMAN SEA

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Today in Shanghai was beautiful weather so we started walking in search of the fabled soup dumplings (Dumplings with hot soup in them). On the way we went past the Shanghai museum which was free today and had a massive line up. We decidded to give the museum a miss and found a restaurant. The soup dumplings were good but I wasn't blown away by them, perhaps I've had sooooo much good ffood I've become spoiled.

We then went to Nanjing Rd (a major shopping area) and caught the subway uNder the river to all the new huge buildings. If I'd thought there were a lot of people at the museum I was wrong, on Nanjing Rd, on the subway and everywhere there was literally a sea of people. Walking through them was like swimming through a human waterfall it was unbelievable. Even Jack who is Chinese was starting to wig out from being surrounded continuously by so many people.

I went up the Jin Mao (golden bloom) tower to the 88th flooor observation deck. This was my tallest building and definitely fastest lift. The view was huge but it looked smoggy and today was a blue sky sunny day ??? We shopped for ages, had dinner at a food court (quite good actually) then went to our hotel to get our backpacks. After a long hike through the crowds to the subway we finally arrived at the maglev station. The train is wide, very quiet and quite quick, It only got up to 300km for us but apparently it does over 400 depending on the time of day. I have been on the shinkasen which is fantastic and this went 15km faster - so that's my fastest train so far - very cool but I'd trade it for a steam train any day.

We got on our flight to Beijing with no delays (yay)

SHANGHAI - For me it was OK probably the most un chinese city I've been too. It was a mess of construction at the Bund and across the river. they are getting it ready for the 2010 world expo which actually looks pretty good. i don't know if I'd do Shanghai again - I don't enjoy shopping that much and there are just to many people. I also had someone try to sell me hashish (the weird thing was he looked like a chinese Cheech - aka cheech and chong - very bizzare!

Oh Yeah - It was my nephew Michaels 5th birthday today so I rang to spoeak to him - Happy Birthday Michael

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