Day 62-69 16th-23rd September - Shanghai - Australia in one city!
Well arriving at Shanghai its enormity really hits you quickly it is absolutely huge. 22 Million People!! Everywhere you look are massive buildings. I boarded the metro to go to Nanjing road, one of the main roads coming off the river. It was hard at first to find out directions because the street signs can be quite confusing. When a sign is on a street it ofter names the next street in a certain direction instead of the actual street the sign is on.
I eventually found the hostel I camped out at for a few days, and met an English guy Alun who was good value. The first day it was raining so I didn’t do a lot, walked around had some dumplings checked out the area around the hostel. That night I had an early night after not a lot of sleep on the train the previous night.
The next day Alun took me to a market with some of the cheapest shopping around, it was crazy the stuff there was almost free. I am going to Tibet and Nepal where it will be really cold so I decided to get a gortex jacket. The one I chose had another jacket for the lining and a pair of pants for about $45, in Australia it would easily be $500.
In Shanghai I mainly rested I had been on the road for a long time, so I didn’t do to much which was a welcome change. I ended up staying at a friends place later in the week for three nights. At one point we did not leave his apartment for 48 hours, punched out 6 movies slept and relaxed.
Some of the Shanghai highlights were riding around the city and the Urban planning centre, this was absolutely amazing. Shanghai is an absolutely huge city and it is just a place where you can watching things go by instead of feeling that you have to see a huge amount. Another thing that hampered some of the sightseeing was there was a Hurricane that drenched the city with rain for most of the time that I was there. The urban planning centre has scale models of everything they have planned for the next 15 years, including all the transport improvements for the city, airports, new apartments etc. Something that I thought would be so boring turned out to be really great.
After the rest I was re-energised and ready to take on the rest of my trip. I organised to stay at my friends place in Beijing and then travel with him for a week after that. I stayed there for 8 days and then caught a plane to Qingdao to check out the home of Chinese beer.
The rest of the photos can be seen here Shanghai Photos
Tags>> Bicycle China Shanghai