well, we were told that the journey from wuhan to shanghai was 17 hours....it wasnt, it was 12...so we were fast asleep when the train pulled into the station (and these are sleeping compartments, so we were in out bed, in our pj's!!!!) we had to grab our belongings into every plastic bag we could see, grab out pack and bags and leg it off the train...then hunt down a clean toilet to brush out teeth and get dressed!
our directions said to leave the station via the south exit, however, we were in a brand new train station that is not on the lonely planet map, and the station is called south shanghai train station, so every bloody exit was the south exit! south north, south west, south east and south south.....OMG! we had to get a taxi to the hostel as we had no idea where we were or where we were going or how to get to where we were going from where we were!!!!! anyway, we got a loverly taxi driver that got us there in one piece...yey!
we love love love love love shanghai! we stayed in the french quarter, and had a pattiserie on our corner, with croissants and a local starbucks for coffee! there was a loverly shopping centre locally with a huge christmas stree outside that was silver and pink! you shoudl have seen my excitement when i saw that! i was beyond overjoyed! we had a good walk around shanghai and it is so clean and well kept, with people painting the cement between the brick the same colour as the brickwork to make it look nice!
we walked to the bund, which is the waterfront, and the view was breathtaking! we vowed to come back at night to see it all lit up, and when we did, it was well well well worth it. this is the first place in china where i have thought 'my mum would like it here'.....and very few people actually spit, which is a godsend!
Peoples square had a big market underneath and the museum above, which was currently showing seventeenth centuary swedish silverwear, so we gave that one a miss! but the square itself was full of doves, which was beautiful, and made it appear to be magical in some way. we walked to nanjing road, which is the main shopping road, like oxford road in london, just so wide (at least twice the width of market street in manchester) and piled high on either side with 7/8 floor department stores and shops. no christmas music in the shops, but a man on a balcony playing the sax, which was nice.
Yuyuan gardens is amazing. we arrived at 3pm and thought is was absolutely beautiful, but at 5.30 when it was dark and all the shops lit up, it was like being inside a fairytale. the gardens themselves are costly to enter so we didnt go inside (we have seen enough temples and pagodas without paying to see another one!), but around the walls of the garden shops have been built in an old fashioned and traditional chinese style, so they look like they have been there for about 100 years. the chinese style is differant in shanghai as it has a huge french influence. the buidling are white, with black curvy chinese rooves and red shutters at the windows.....and evey line ot the roof, and every window is lined with white fairy lights....every tree covered in lanterns and lights....it was really breathtaking...it was the first time i realised christmas is coming and i shall be away from home...even though mum will be here i wont see ali, and yzzy, and dad and sudesh and mandy and lyds.....it made me cry - in the middle of starbucks (and you know how i feel about public displays of affection or emotion...tut! tut! tut!)...but then we got a grip and went to the pudong...(which is the other side of the river)
the pudong. we got the ferry to the pudong and walked along the river front. this is the colony side of the river! it is full of huge tower blocks with american and european companies in them, and posh tower blocks with apartments for the american and european workers....one hotel had chandaliers, and we suspect lounge music playing....this would be where mum would stay if she came here! not somewhere for two girls in dusty converse and dirty hair! we found a bar called the blue frog, with an offer of burger and beer for 70 yuan, and we went in. this turned out to be one of the fracking best decisions we have ever made! it was happy hour, so it was buy one, get one free! we started talking to the texan chap next to us (aaron) who was so so so lovelry...then some people at the bar started chatting to us, so they came over to join us, so at our little table for two, we had about 7 people! at midnight it was laura's birthday, so they bought us loads of champagne and bought laura a mango mojito (with whipped cream on the top!)....then an american lady called sandy and her husband joined us and they bought more champagne, and sandy bought us all a blue frog tee shirt from the bar! when we asked for our bill, jerry and mark had paid it!!!!! (they could claim it back on their expenses they told us when we complained to them!).....so we were fed, watered and (cleanly) clothed for free...!!!!! ~~~YOU CAN TAKE THE GIRL OUT OF MANCHESTER, BUT YOU CANT TAKE MANCHESTER OUT OF THE GIRL~~~
Laura's birthday. the next morning we awoke with a bit of a headache! we breakfasted and then went out to the zoo with another laura from our hostel and johnathon (a dutch chap and a bit of a dick really who was also in our hostel)...when we got on the bus to the zoo we bumped into the swedes!!! how crazy! the zoo was better than most other zoos in asia, the reptile area was amazing, and the fish and the avery, but the bears were all in big pits (with some rocks and trees in them) and people were throwing food into them so they stood and caught it, which was a bit to close to perfoming bears for us and we found it really quite upsetting. the panda's were inside their enclosures and looked to sad that we didnt take any pictures of them, and we nearly started a war with some dick around the red panda's when he threw a stick at them. we shouted and screamed at him and made gestures that he certainly understood and screamed at him until he went away. DICK the lions were happy in their area, so happy in fact that they had a bit of lion sex while we were there!
as it was laura's birthday it was her choice for dinner, and her choice was italian. so we had spag bol, potato wedges and garlic bread for tea. which was amazing.
we checked out the next day and headed to the station for our 20 hour train journey.(the owner of the hostel turned out to be an absolute dick, and i am not prepared to waste any time on her telling you about her, so you just have to know she was a dick and our write up to hostel world reflects this!!!) we had to go through immigration to get our train and walk under a sign saying 'you are exiting th ecountry' much to our delight! so we took pictures of us under it with big grins on our faces!
when we got on our train we bumped into peter, a chap we had met in wuhan, who was also going to hong kong and was in the bunks next to ours! crazy!
we were so happy when the train pulled away that we went to the dining car for a beer.
goodbye mainland china, we wont be back thank you very much!
xxxx
