We arrived safely in China on Wednesday after a 10 hour flight from Sydney, during which we both had a marathon DVD sesh, Amy managing an impressive total of 5 films! She was very happy as Slumdog Millionaire was showing. Dave met us at the airport and we took a very fast train into Shanghai which went up to 200 km/h at night and 430 km/h during the day!! It was a bit of a shock when we came out of the station- it was freezing!!
On Thursday, first stop was the sports megastore to find a coat- v cheap! Then we went to the supermarket where we had a rather traumatic experience watching a fish being cut open whilst still alive, still flapping and gasping for breath for a long time after its head had been severed from its body! We had to try very hard to resist buying a live toad for dinner... Onto the fabric market, which was huge and sold all sorts of wonderful fabric. You could get clothes tailor-made for you and come back to pick them up the next day. The silk section was particularly interesting.
We then walked through the Old City to experience the "real" side of China which was fascinating. We attracted some strange looks from the locals though... We reached Yu Yuan Gardens where we sampled our first proper Chinese food. This was really rather scary as we hadn't a clue what anything was and there was no English anywhere. The dumplings were very yummy!
We continued to the famous People's Square where we ventured into the Urban Planning Museum..mm this was not the most thrilling place because there was no English translation and unfortunately we are not quite yet fluent in Mandarin. However the tennis court- sized model of Shanghai was pretty impressive.
We then had the daunting task of catching the metro back to Pudong and were practically lifted off our feet in the crowd of people and were once again the object of much sniggering! We had a quick look around the copy market- it is amazing what people bother copying!
Then it was time for our foot massage...mmm lovely. We had a delicious dinner out, though we have to admit that I had a lasagne and Amy had fajitas.
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Hiya, glad to see you're trying out the local cuisine though I must admit I would want to know what I was eating first! Did you any nice silk clothes? I can remember buying something for Mum in Thailand but forgot that Thais are more slightly built than their western counterparts! Enjoy the real China travelling, luv Dad.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Hazz was a star yesterday playing for Bucks. They should have qualified for the nationals.
Well done Hazz! xxxxx
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