April 12
We woke up early and took a shared taxi van from our hotel in Yangzhou to the Guilin Airport. Some guy next to me stole my phone so that was fun to realize once it was too late and we were checking in. We took our flight to Shanghai and took the subway to our hostel. Our hostel was near the Bund, a famous stretch of European looking buildings that looked over the water to the famous Shanghai skyline. We checked into our room and headed to the train station. Like everywhere else in china, nobody at the train station has any idea where the ticket office for foreigners is, so it took us a half hour to find it. We should have obviously just assumed that it was on a street 400 meters from the rain station in an unmarked room on the second floor of an abandoned building. It just makes sense. We waited in an “English Speaking” like for like a half hour until we finally got to the front. There are a ton of restrictions for foreigners that I didn’t know about. The biggest was that you can’t buy a ticket more than two days in advance for some reason. The people in front of us got screwed with that one. Luckily, we were fine and got out tickets that we wanted for Beijing in two days. After the stress of this complicated puzzle, we went to a popular area of the city to find somewhere to eat. We didn’t want duck feet or fried blood so we ended up getting Subway in a mall. We then walked this popular huge walking street with stores and restaurants on both sides. We then took a subway to the Bund to see the skyline at night. It is a really cool skyline because of the TV tower, but I still like Hong Kong’s best. We hung out there for a while before calling it a night and walking back to our hostel. Stressful day to say the least. Hopefully tomorrow is better.
April 13
We woke up at a reasonable time and took the subway to a place that was known by expats for the best burger in the city. We got there and it was pretty much filled with Americans dressed up in work clothes who craved a taste from home, just like us. It was a really good burger, I must admit. We then took the subway to an area of the city with cool narrow alleyways and small shops and food stands on both sides. It looked like it used to be authentic but tourism got the best of it, like everything in China, and now it is an attraction. It was still really neat to walk around the area and see all the small bars and handicraft stores. After that, we walked to another section of the city that is very modern but already popular as the arty upper class section. There were fancy restaurants and outdoor bars surrounded by European style buildings. It was a mall of some sort and was a cool place. We didn’t feel like breaking our budget, so we took the subway to the old town, which looks like a traditional Chinese section, but once again, tourism got the best of it. Some younger Chinese people tried to scam us on a street corner to go to a tea shop with them to hang out, but we are too well seasoned to fall for that bull shit. I shoed them off and we walked away. We walked trough the old town and got some Dairy Queen. It was a great find that I vaguely remembered from two years ago when I visited. It shows how much I like my ice cream. Sanur I’m not Lombogan. We then walked in a garden with traditional Chinese buildings and ponds. This part was actually pretty cool and I’m glad we went in here. It’s what you picture from movie with zen stuff. For dinner, we took the subway to the same place we ate subway yesterday and we ate at Carl Jr’s. It was a pretty good fast food burger. We walked the street again and decided to go to an acrobatic show. However, when we arrived at the theatre, we realized there was no show tonight. There were multiple other confused white people around probably doing the same thing as us. We hung out outside the theatre for a while and then called it a night. Shanghai was ok. It offers a lot but isn’t one of my favorite cities.