So today it was time to leave the safety of the group tour and look after ourselves. We met up with our great Swedish Friends Therese and Johanna at 10am (well, 10.15am once Therese packed her bag) and got a taxi to our new home - Innjoyworld Hostel. The taxi arrived in a "traditional" type street (look out for photos sometime soon). We walked into the hostel and first impressions of the inside were not too bad. Then we walked into the room - it was a bit of a weird feeling. We're in a 10 bed room and everyone was asleep and it was a mess so we just pretty much dumped our bags, put a few locks on here and there and went out.
We made our way to the Pudong Financial District on the subway. We'd decided to go up the Shanghai World Financial Centre (SWFC - aka once a decent football team). I think it's the second highest building in the world. Regardless, it has the highest observatory in the world! 150 Yuan (£15) to get to the 100th floor. The queue went down really quick, maybe 15 minutes (some people said they waited 2 hours!). We took the elevator to the 94th floor - it flew up there and even your ears pop it is that high & quick! Then the escalator to the 97th floor, and then we walked the final 3 floors to the 100th floor (it was 200 steps or a 30 minute queue for the elevator). So, the highest observatory in the world - the views were fantastic! There were glass floors and views right across the city, although it was misty again so couldn't see too far. We took some pictures and wandered around for a little bit, then headed down to the 97th floor to take some more pics. The exit floor was 94, but first we had a toilet break. Well, you've seen the Carlsberg adverts, and if Carlsberg did toilets, it'd probably be the best toilet in the world! I stood in the urinal and had a view over Shanghai! Took a few pics of that too. Then I noticed that the toilet had a remote control...what is this I asked myself? I had a little wander in and it had s control to control the b-day, the heat of the seat, the gradient... I tried to get the b-day spray working with the toilet lid down (didn't want to be spraying myself with that crazy stuff) but it didn't work. Took a few more pictures (whilst having an arse massage (just kidding)).
We took the elevator to the bottom of the tower which dropped about 10 meters per second! We were given a voucher booklet so took advantage. We got a free drink in subway, buy one get one free at Cold Stone Ice Cream and a free donut with our coffee at Mister Donut. Subway was an experience - everything we asked for, the guy picked up the wrong meat, then asked if we want double meat and then double cheese in that really fast Chinese/English accent. You had to be there.
After that we went for our ice cream which seemed to take about 40 minutes to choose what we all wanted - that's what happens when you hang out with 3 women! We ate our ice cream in a little courtyard at the bottom of the tower - got dizzy looking up to the peak!
We set off back to our hostel, but decided to have a bit of fun on the way - way took some silly pictures of holding the Oriental Pearl Tower and stuff. The Chinese people started gathering around us and peering at our cameras to see what we were up to - was pretty funny!
We got back to our hostel and it seemed different again. Everyone was put of the room so think it didn't seem as daunting. Got a quick shower and got changed into some decent clothes - we needed to because we were meeting up with Therese's team leader's dad and friends.
We got our hotel receptionist to write the directions to the restaurant down in Chinese and she ordered us a taxi. We jumped in the taxi outside the hotel but it was a bit of chaos - there was a street market on so the taxi thought best to reverse out of the street...then he decided it was best to go forward...the taxi driver was beeping his horn and stalls had to move over and people were swamping the car, we though we were never going to get out of there!
Anyway, we finally made it to the Cool Docks which is just a little south of the Bund, jumped out of the taxi and Becky and her Dad, Barry, were just walking down towards us. They took us up to a classy chinese restaurant called The Docks, into our own private room. We met Barry's wife, Angel, and some really lovely friends. Barry made sure we always had a full glass of beer and made sure that we kept drinking. Angel ordered the food and it was the best we've had so far - fried whole fish, another fish, chicken, dumplings, ribs, beef, tofu, prawns, all kinds of stuff and it just kept coming. Andrew, one of Barry's friends, looked after us and explained all the dishes and told me to eat the prawn whole...shell, head, the lot. So I did and it was nice! It's the way it is cooked that makes it ok to eat the whole thing.
We had a really good time together with some really lovely food, drink and a good chat. We then went on to a bar called Melody5 - we drank some more in the square where there was some nice restaurants, bars and a water fountain area. Again, Barry made sure we always had a full glass of wine. I was on the red wine and it went down really well, a bit too well! We had a really really good time and met some lovely people, and Becky's Dad and Angel were very welcoming and very nice people, so to were there friends. We hope to see them all again soon sometime - it really was the best night we've had so far!