Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghai in the middle of the May Day holiday week where every man, woman, their kids and their dog either go home or on holiday. It seemed a lot of these people decided to head to Shanghai.

The main sightseeing areas and rampant tourist traps are the Bund, Nanjing rd and the new Pudong area. The first night we went for a walk along the Bund only to be put off by the squillions of people, the thousands selling crap and the stench of urine eminating from the public toilets. The view of Pudong from the Bund was quite spectacular though, amazing new buildings in an area that was only open for development since 1990. It now contains the 4th highest building in the world (see highlights) and the Oriental Pearl Tower. In contrast the Bund is all older european buildings built while trade was rampant in Shanghai.

From here we ventured to Nanjing Road, one of the biggest shopping malls in the world. This also was teeming with people and people selling crap, but much worse than Hong Kong. I could have DVD's, fake shoes, fake bags and rolex's up each arm. As you walk up the street the touts come and ask if you want any of these, we just walk and shake our heads, which mostly leads to them asking if you want a "sexy massage? lady spa?" Funny stuff.

Highlights:
Jinmao Tower
4th tallest building in the world, in the new Pudong area. Great view of sprawling Shanghai and the Oriental Pearl Tower

Bund Sightseeing Tunnel
Actually probably not a highlight, this 100m tunnel under the river from the Bund to Pudong contains crazy flashing lights and weird inflated statues

Maglev Train
We hopped on the Magnetic Leviation train to the Shanghai International Airport at a top speed of 430km/hr! Sweet ride and mighty quick.

Whilst in Shanghai we met up with Melon's cousin Simon. Our first night in Shanghai involved us getting boozed with Simon, to be honest we got boozed with Simon quite a bit. He took us to some good bars and some shockers and by shockers I mean crusty euro-trash sex tourists dancing or crusty euro-trash sex tourists chatting with prostitutes. We hit some good places and usually ended up at a second floor Mexican restaurant called "Taco Popo". For the remainder of our time in Shanghai most conversations consisted of us saying "Taco Popo", "Make yourself a dang Quesidilla" or "Chimichanga" (some sort of mexican stuff wrapped in a tortilla, like everything else).

Our last night in Shanghai we hit the train for the overnight journey to Beijing.