Ahhhh i made it to Shanghai!!

I caught the subway last night around 8 and lugged my overweight self to the South Beijing Railway station. Seriously need to rethink my luggage situation, i am carrying around about 23 KG =/ Walking down stairs was like a complete workout. The lovely people on the subway kept giving me their seats hahaha

When i got off the subway this random Chinese lady showed me to the lift and then gestured me to follow her to the railway. The Railway station is like an airport terminal!!! Absolutely hugeeeee!! I got stuck at the turnstile and had to go pay an extra 10p to get through lol Imagine as I went through the lady was waiting for me. She took me all the way to the top before heading on her own way.

The train itself was fine. I was bunked with 3 Chinese men who couldn't speak Chinese. I have uploaded a few photos so you can see what it was like! I picked the top bunk so I could be out the way lol I stayed up until 12:30 reading then went to sleep. It was actually Ok. I woke up early and wandered around the train before sitting outside the room reading again. I got to Shanghai at 9:20am and when I got off the train I asked the man from my room where to go and showed him in Chinese. he pointed a way and off I went. Unknowingly i was on the wrong side of the platform and he pops up pointing to the other side. He saved me a wrong journey haha finding the hostel was a nightmareeee! I arrived in the right area lugging around my snail shell made of flipping bricks not knowing where I was going!! Luckily this nice man in a shop phoned the hostel for me and spoke in Chinese (he didn’t speak English anyway) and pointed where to go. This not speaking the same language is going fine so far.

The hostel is nice, I had a well needed shower as I felt like I had been exercising for hours! Ewwwww. NARSTYYYY. Even washed my clothes and as I waited met this guy from Washington and we decided to go out and find lunch. Lunch literally turned into a 5 hour mission. We ended up getting to The Bund and catching a ferry not knowing where we were going and went over the river. We saw this huge Tower ( The Pearl Tower) and thought we should go to the top. When we finally got there it was 20 pound to go up. Errrr NAHHHHH! I had a fab idea to go up a random buildings lift so off we went hahaa. We found an HSBC building and as we were going in we saw a crowd around the back behind barriers. To cut a long story short we ended up getting snuck into the Ritz hotel around the security by an NBA offical and the Charlotte Hornets basketball team hahaaa. We got in the lift with some of the players who showed us were to go! We pretended to a hostess on the 55th floor that we wanted to eat but first we wanted to look around the posh restaurant. Yes we got our amazing free view!! We deffo walked out of the Ritz with our sunglasses on being stared at by the Chinese fans!! hahahaaa so funnnny!

Finally after our 7 mile journey we found a nice place outside our hostel and finally got my chow mein!! Even got to watch a film in the hostel. Its an early night for me. Lots of plans tomorrow!!

Overall a great start to Shanghai