Shanghai is a buzzing city we arrivd on 9th July, it seemed you couldn't walk further then about two feet out of the hotel without somebody trying to pull you into a restaurant or sell you a watch, bag, DVD or basically anything else you can think of, it became really frustrating at times as the people would walk straight in front of you and try to stop you walking past.

There were just two days of the Intrepid 'taste of China' tour left and the last activites we covered included a walk along the Bund (the famous river bank of Shanghai), a 'hot pot meal' this is where you order the ingredients for your meal and cook it yourself, this truly was great fun not only did we cook our own meal and make a complete mess of the table, but we could buy big 600MNL bottles of beer for 3RMB (which is about 23 pence). We also went to an acrobatic show which out of the three shows I had been to on the tour is the only one I didn't fall asleep in. On our last day visited the Shanghai museum and our final event consisted of a meal in a local restaurant followed by a cruise along the river.

It felt like the trip had flown by, although it was only nine days we had covered so much and I felt extremely fortunte to have been on a tour with a great group of people. Most of the tour members were due to leave the next day but before departing the majority of us went for lunch at a famous restaurant called 'M on the Bund'! Over the next couple of days most people had left Shanghai including my Mum and it felt like a great holiday had come to an end, but there was still time for beers with some friends in a local cafe called Mojo's (of which we had become well acquainted) and still time to visit the lovely tea houses of Shanghai.

Shanghai also had a gigantic water park called Dino Beach which five of us managed to visit on the Monday, we were the only westerners at the water park, the place was absolutely packed and I haven't experienced a wave machine as effective as the one at Dino Beach! We had hire inflatable rings to use on the parks water slides and each of us felt as though we may fall out the side of the slides in our rings, I know I came pretty close and Nick was so scared he actually felt the need to slide off his inflatable ring while he was decending on the water slide. Any way the wave machine was crazy (words can not describe it), the waves got so big we flew over groups of people. I don't know how anyone didn't get injured it was just pure chaos as at the end everyone at Dino Beach left all the other activities and decended on the beaches pool with the wave machine! The pool was packed with so many people water was lifting people out of the swimming pool, so as I say it was chaos but such brilliant fun.

On 15th July I boarded my last China sleeper train, this time I was on my own and the journey was 13 hours! The next destination was Beijing!