I noticed this morning that
they have Japanese-style toilets in the hotel.
The weather is just as misty as
it was yesterday but at least it’s not raining.
Flowers in the hotel lobby.
We have a half-day tour today starting with the Bund area.
One side of the river is the old “Chinese Wall
Street”.
The other side is the new financial district. Believe it or not, the new side was just flat
land as recently as 1990.
The tall building on the right is the Shanghai Tower - the second tallest building in the world. Did I say this in yesterday's post? No point paying to go up in this weather.
There is a long wall of fresh flowers. The flowers are changed every two months
throughout the year.
We were surprised that the Bund section of the tour seemed
to last about 10 minutes, or about half the distance we walked yesterday evening from our hotel to the jazz bar at the Fairmont Peace Hotel.
This was a foretaste of things to come.
After that, we walked to the most famous Buddhist temple in
Shanghai. We were thinking of skipping
this as we have seen SO many temples already but I’m glad we went as the Jade
Buddha (which unfortunately you aren’t allowed to photograph) is darned
impressive. A life-size figure carved from a single piece of jade.
These are used to hold the ceramic tiles in the roof construction. Buddhists pay to write their name on one so their name is forever part of the temple.
Then to the Yungan Gardens which I wasn’t struck on but
David liked a lot. At the temple and the gardens, our guide was
very knowledgeable. You don't expect the garden to be so big given the small entrance below. This evidently is so as not to flash your wealth.
Next stop was to a bazaar which was a complete tourist
trap.
The buildings look like impressive
old but when you get up close you see that they are very new.
Things starting to go downhill.
The last stop was to be a food tour which I was really
looking forward to as the one we did in Hanoi was fantastic. In Hanoi, we were taken by a local food
blogger to around 10 different food stalls across the city, which lasted around
3 hours. He described each dish, told
us what was in them and how they were prepared and cooked. In
Shanghai however I was surprised when our guide said that she would be doing
the food tour, but so be it. Things started
off OK when she took us to a street stall selling seamed buns and crab soup
dumplings.
Another request for a photo.
Then we went to a fast food hall in the bazaar where we were
given a tray, told to line up at one of the concessions and choose what we
want.
When I asked things like, “what are these?” she gave us
pearls of wisdom such as “I don’t like them”.
The place was packed so she directed us to a downstairs seating area
which was just awful (I know, I know, damned first-world problems).
We even had to buy our own beer!
She left us there saying she would come back
in 30 minutes. That was the food tour.
There
will be words with the travel company.
This
was also the worst Chinese food we experienced throughout the whole trip.
We left most of it and went back upstairs to
find it lashing down.
There was meant to be a final part of the tour but we’d had
enough so asked to be taken back to the hotel.
On the way, we asked to go to a supermarket (it’s what we do at the end
of a holiday!) but she said it was too far away and asked for the second time
that day if we would instead like to visit a silk factory. Good relations completely broken, when we got
back to the hotel, I emailed the travel company and said we didn’t want to see
her again.
With the rain stopped, and David taking on tour guide duties, we took a walk round Shanghai. When you
get away from the river front, it’s not nearly as glamorous.
Came across a rare (mainly) pedestrianised street.
This photo just asked to be taken.
Then a walk back to the hotel. On the way, this family wanted a photo with the two of us so we
reciprocated with a selfie.
Back to the hotel for the happy hour – you get one free drink
- eventually.
Then off to see a Shanghai
acrobatic show.
The taxis have this plastic barrier which we thought was for their protection but seems more likely that it is to stop cigarette smoke getting to the passenger seats. All taxi drivers seem to smoke.
The show was much better than we
thought it was going to be.
Very hard to
take photos though as flash isn't allowed.
There was a section
with six women on bicycles going round in a circle.
They jumped from sitting on the saddle to
jumping into a standing position on the saddle to jumping on to the handle bars
– all while going round in a circle.
The
last part of their act had 9 of them on one bike with another doing a handstand
on the head of highest one – again going around in a circle.
Had to be seen to be believed.
We got there early - It was actually pretty full.
This guy was balanced on a board on a cylinder.
He would flip large soup bowls that he placed
on the far end of the board and flip them onto his head.
He then finished with flipping a cup into the
soup bowl, and a Chinese spoon into the cup.
Impressive stuff.
The closing act had 8 motorbikes going around inside the sphere at the back of this photo at the same.
Taxi back to the hotel to get some more night-time pictures on the Bund
as the mist is a lot less this evening.
Then to get something to eat in a local café.
Finally, back to the hotel, where we ran the
gauntlet of the pimps.
By now we are not
anything so polite when it comes to saying no. Definitely won't miss the pimps.
