Shanghai Tang and cheap roadside meals

After a most enjoyable stay in London where your PJWT explorers regained much of their former "glory" back (i.e. we fattened up) we made our way to Shanghai. The flight was around ten and a half hours but its amazing how quickly it goes when you have personal inflight entertainment (AND you haven't seen a few of the movies). Arriving in Shanghai we were nearly conned into paying 500RMB (around A$90 i think) for a private taxi by the information desk at the airport. That didn't seem quite right as we were pretty sure that there would be a direct train link of some kind at least. So we figured out that we could take the Mag-lev to a subway link and then take the subway into the city centre (all for only 88RMB for the two of us). The Mag-lev was damn impressive, with the trip lasting 7.5 minutes and clocking a max speed of 431 km/hr (faster than the Jap bullet trains which travel at around 300).

Shanghai is a pretty amazing city with a lot of new shiny buildings but most of the streets are still dirty and that oh-so familiar asian sewage smell hits you in the face every block or so. We only had a few days in Shanghai and were still feeling the effects of jet lag coming from London so we spent most of the time just wondering around the financial district, shopping malls, old shanghai gardens, as well as wondering the streets late at night looking for food.

The food was pretty good in general with most meals costing us around 2-3 dollars for noodle soup and dumplings. One meal which we had late at night when nothing else was open was in a hole in the wall restaurant (and i use the term restaurant very loosely here) where we walk in and the guy gestured if we wanted to drink to which i replied with the universal eating sign. So we sat down, counting the number of cockroaches running around, wondering if we would be getting menus. The guy came a short while later with two plates of fairly simple fried noodles drenched in oil, and since we were hungry we ate it, leaving a nice puddle of oil. Then came the bill, a princely sum of 15RMB or under A$3, making it officially the cheapest cooked meal we had had on the trip.

The other thing i really like about Shanghai were the chinese massages. We went twice to a place on Nanjing Rd and on the second day we had a 60 min body massage followed by a 80 minute foot massage. All for only 280RMB! One word of advice if you do get a chinese body massage would be to learn the chinese word for softer otherwise you to might end up screaming like a little girl when they elbow too close to the spine. Sorry for laughing at your potential spinal injury Jas. hehe

We also checked out Shanghai Tang, a brand touted as Asia's first superbrand. Very expensive stuff and good quality but for A$500-600 per scarf I think Burberry or some of the other brands are better buys. Probably cause its not recognised yet. I did like the chinese collar on their business shirts though, but not sure how you would wear a tie with it.

Then on our last day we woke up at 4am to take a very scary 1hr taxi ride to the airport for a flight to HK where we spent a day doing laundry, getting a long overdue haircut, eating claypot rice, and catching up with friends (sorry again A and J for missing you guys).


The museum...no we didn't go


Older part of Shanghai near the gardens...quite touristy but then we're tourists!


Ever wonder what Starbucks in Ancient China looked like?!


Passage way into the Yu gardens (and one very stunned local)


Gateway to the Yu Garden


Touristy part outside the entrance to the garden where all the over-priced bad food and tacky souvenir shops are


Inside the actual gardens...would be quite tranquil i'ld imagine without the tourists


Shanghai financial district...the red, yellow and blue building in the front is the new Superbrand mall, claimed to be the largest in asian...we checked it out and its pretty big but only partly occupied at the moment


The very busy Nanjing Road at night...pretty much just one long, mainly pedestrian street mall