Shanghai:

April 18th, 2005 - April 21st, 2005

Greetings from Shanghai...

We arrived on Monday morning following an overnight train ride from Beijing on what can only be described as the nicest train we have been on in 5 months. The train left Beijing at 7:30pm and arrived promptly at 7:30am in Shanghai, just in time for the work (sightseeing) day.

The 4-bed cabins were immaculate and the train was quiet, clean, comfortable, and most important, safe. Neither of us really wanted to wake up when it rolled into Shanghai as it was the best sleep we had had in weeks.

Shanghai is a much more vibrant than Beijing and it possesses more character. We are staying close to the People's Square - home of the recent anti-Japanese riots which preceded our arrival. We are not far from several shopping streets, a sector in which Shanghai seems to excel.

The Shanghai sky is lined with futuristic buildings from the obscure to the insane. But they all make for an interesting stroll through the city both during the day and at night when they are illuminated in a multitude of colours.

The main attraction in town is a street called "The Bund" which is along the water, not far from where we are staying.

The Bund features several old buildings - which are now protected - and have been described as "Shanghai's Wall Street" due to their resemblance of 1930's style New York buildings. A nice boardwalk across the street snakes along the waterfront making for nice views of both the Bund and the new Pudong area across the river.

We took a crazy underground subway-like car to the other side of the Huangpu River to the Pudong area. The underground tram was more like a ride at Disneyland, complete with sound effects and a laser light show.

Clearly, an ordinary subway ride would not be enough to excite the local tourists, because I can assure you the "show" was not for the foreign tourists! It did make for some cool photos... which sadly can't be send from this modern metropolis because all the computers here seem to run Windows 98! How nineties of them...

Shopping is a major part of life in Shanghai - malls and stores are everywhere. We spent most of our time in town browsing through windows - sadly our backpacking budgets cannot afford the latest from Hermes, Burberry, and the like. However, the window shopping did lead to a lot of walking which will hopefully get us back into shape for our return to Canada.

Our final day in town was spent visiting a classical Chinese garden set in the heart of the old city. It was a peaceful way to escape from the chaos of walking on Shanghai's streets - which is always a major challenge. There were lovely ponds filled with large goldfish, beautiful trees, and fantastic old-style Chinese pavilions.

We fly to Hong Kong tomorrow morning and that is where we will be wrapping up the final three days of our trip. From Hong Kong we will fly 12 hours to Vancouver to visit my family for a couple of days before returning home to Toronto in the wee morning hours of April 28th.

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