Day 9-12, Shanghai

After another long over night train ride (17 hours!), this time sleeping on the top - 3 bunks up!, we arrived in Shanghai at lunch time. The first afternoon was free after an orientation of the city, however as it was late in the day we headed for ice-cream at Mr Gelate! We then wandered back to our hotel to get ready for our first meal in Shanghai. The city is crazy, there are 17.4 million people that live in Shanghai! There isn't as much cultural stuff to see and do here but it's still really interesting wandering round the street. Most of Shanghai is built up and with many sky scrapers but at night when its lit up and you walk along the Bund by the river its really pretty.

Friday started with a trip to the Shanghai Museum, it was kinda interesting though once you've seen one ancient pot/scroll/seal they all start to look the same! We decided to head on to the antiques market to have a wander round. There were so many amazing things to look at, and Dave even found an old Tin Tin book in Chinese which he thought about buying but as they were all real antiques the bargining was hard and they didn't budge! We then went on to the Bazaar (another type of market in the old part of Shanghai). We picked up some great bargins here, so many that we now have to have a bag dedicated to souvenirs until we can post them! We spent so much time here we had to get back fairly quickly for our evening entertainment - an Acrobat show! The show was out of this world! Some of the things they were doing were impossible (we think they must have taken their spines out beforehand!) the way they were bending and flipping! Everyone was on the edge of their seats the whole time wondering what was going to happen next! On the way out about half the group got separated from the rest (including our leader Merrick) and we didn't really know where we were! Having tried several times to get a taxi we decided to try and make our way on foot!.....2 hours later (with a pit stop at Mc D's!) we made it back!

Saturday unfortunately was a very wet day :( but we put on our rain coats and headed off to try and find the flee market. We managed to find the right area but couldn't work out where abouts it was so Lloyd (one of the guys in the group) asked someone for directions however this REALLY turned out to be a bad idea! We ended up being surrounded by about 15 locals/gang members who we can only assume worked in the shopping area we were taken to (which wasn't the flee market!) and after about 20 mins of trying to tell them we didn't want to buy stolen/counterfit clothes, DVDs, bags etc we finally managed to get away (only by jumping into taxis though!). One guy was still hanging out of the window of the cab as we escaped! We managed to get back to the Bazaar and had another look around there but after about 10 mins or so we were soaking wet! Dave really wanted to go to Costa (his fav coffee shop at home!) so we went there to warm up and dry off! Afterwards we headed back to the hotel for a rest before meeting up with some of the others to go on the cruise by night along the river. The city is so beautiful at night all lit up, you can see the Bund and all the towers on the Pudong side including the 4th tallest tower in the world - Jinmao tower and the Oriental Pearl TV tower (which looks more like a space ship!). Even though it was quite foggy some of us decided to go and climb up the tallest tower on the Pudong side of the city. To get there we took the sightseeing tunnel, this was the weirdest thing we've done yet! You get into a sort of capsul thing and stand up, then it sets off down a dark tunnel where they do some strange lighting effects and a voice comes over the top saying "MOLTEN MAGMA" and "METEOR SHOWER". It was like something out of a Sci Fi show! Once there we found the bottom of the Jinmao tower and caught the express lift up to the observation deck on the 88th floor. You get a birds eye view from the top of the city and you can even look down in the centre of the building from 56th up to the 87th as they have an attirum down the middle (its a long way down!!). We headed for food afterwards and then on to bed.

Sunday (today!!) we are in an internet cafe talking to you!! We packed up this morning as we have to get yet another over night train (26 hours!) this time to Yangshuo where we will be spending Christmas. So as we probably won't get on again until after, we wish you all a Merry Christmas!