Shanghai

We caught the day train from Beijing to Shanghai, first class, sit up and it was pretty good...like a plane seat. The thing cruises at around 200 clicks an hour but was very smooth. Nothing exciting to report except that a half an hour into the journey we thought we'd better celebrate with a beer, it was 11 o'clock after all. I scurried down to the buffet car only to be told they had run out!!!!. I know the Chinese like to drink but that was ridiculous. Problem was solved when we stopped at the next town, plenty of vendors on the platform selling warm beer. Its amazing how delicious a warm beer can be when you're travelling!

We'd decided to stay in the Assett Hotel in Shanghai, mainly through good review in Trip Advisor and the price...it was cheaper than the hostel in Beijing..around $40, and we knew it was away from the main Bund area, but took the punt. It was great, staff had little English but really helpful and good at charades, bathroom needed some grout cleanser, but the best thing...cable TV and a golf channel ( much to Mandy's horror).

We knew Shanghai would be different to Beijing, more glitz than culture so we spent the days wandering the different precints and spent the nights fine dining and drinking. Had a great meal at M on the Bund on the 2nd night and they have a simple guide ( M's guide to Shanghai) which lists, amongst other things, the best bars and restaurants...so we simply followed the guide!!! It was not the cheapest guide to follow, hence all of our evening meals in Shanghai have been tax coded "Directors meetings"....a lot of business planning went on!!

The highlight was an after dinner evening listening to some very cool jazz at the House of Jazz and Blues, owned by a very famous Chinese movie star who was entertaining guests that night and (this is dumb) asking the young extremly, attractive manager where she was from and she answered....."Siberia"....a first for me, I mean who comes from Siberia!!

The biggest shock was getting out of the cab in the area called Old Shanghai to be confronted with more people that we have ever seen. Part of this old town is a mock ancient shopping precinct crammed to the gills with Chinese group tours...it was the worst shopping moment of my life!!!!. But the odd thing is, wandering away from that chaos, we found back alleys that were old and very poor and fascinating and had some delicious street food....the Chinese contradiction principle yet again!!

Of course we had a great time in Shanghai.