A Weekend in Shanghai

This weekend we headed away for the last of our weekend breaks before our longer summer holiday trip to Vietnam. Early Thursday morning we headed to HK International Airport to take our flight to Shanghai which was due to take-off at 08:20. This was supposed to allow us to spend the entire afternoon on Thursday looking around Shanghai. Instead what we found at HKIA was absolute chaos. With hour long queues just to check-in to flights. When we finally reached the front of the queue at about 07:45 having queued for 55mins we were told that our flight was delayed (no time given at this point) and that we wouldn't be ale to check in our bags, instead we were given a £4 breakfast voucher and told to come back 135 minutes later at 10am. When we arrived back at 10 the queues had doubled in length and this was the view that awaited us at the HK airlines check-in desk.

Airport chaos!

Well, this time we were able to check in our bags, but instead of an imminent departure we were told that we would not take off until 17:20. With a 2 hour flight up to Shanghai, this meant that we would lose the entire afternoon and have to cram our visits into a smaller timeframe than first thought. Well, as exciting as it was to spend 10 hours of our lives in HKIA we were very relieved to finally take off at about 18:00, some 12 hours after getting to the airport.

Having landed in Shanghai, we headed for the Maglev airport transf train. This is a magnetically levitating train which runs from the Airport into the city and hits rather straightening speeds as it winds it's way towards Shanghai city centre. A short metro journey took us to Nanjing Street East and from here it was just a short walk to our hotel, The Bund Riverside Hotel on Beijing Road East. Once checked in we hit the sack straight away as we knew we would have a busy weekend ahead of us.

Our room

Our hotel room view. (Skyscraper in background is the 'bottle-opener' shaped SWFC)

 On Friday morning, after grabbing some breakfast from an extremely delicious and unbelievable ycheap fresh smoothie bar we headed to the People's Square area of the city which is home to an array of museums, galleries, exhibition centres and green spaces. The sun was out in force and we soon sought refuge in one of the galleries on the square. Our first destination was the Shanghai Art Musueum which is located on the West side of the park and is supposedly home to one of the finest collections of Chinese art in the city. We soon realised that most Chines art either requires a very specific taste, or the ability to read Chinese calligraphy and although there was an interesting exhibition on 'Art and the Railways' on, most of the museum was pretty dull.

Shanghai Art Museum

Painting from Art and the Railways Exhibition

From here we headed further round the park and headed to the Shanghai Museum. This is the city's main museum and contains a number of huge collections including coins, furniture, national dress, painting and most impressively china and bronze-work. This mammoth museum was best attacked in small sections and we decided for the sake of our own sanity not to spend to long getting lost in the huge exhibits. We saw all of the highlights of the museum including some of the best example of bronze work and many other fine artifacts that have been dug up from the tombs on previous emperors, like that which we visited whilst in Beijing.

Ming Dynasty Bronze Work

Qing Dynasty Chineware

After the Shanghai Museum we headed to the excitingly named Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre. This building is actually home to one of the finest exhibits in Shanghai and details how the city has expanded from its port roots into the urbanized metropolis that it has become today. The highlight of the centre in the HUGE model reconstruction of the city which shows all of the buildings of Shanghai, including those which are n the process of being built, including the tower which will be the second highest building in the world when it is finished in 2014. The model also goes through day and night as you wonder around its edge to show what the city looks like when the sun goes down. Think Beaconscot meets the 21st century.

The Shanghai city model

Central Business District by night

After the urban planning centre we headed for a spot of lunch at restaurant called Kung-Fu which was located in one of the hundred or so different shopping centres along the main Nanjing Road East which connects the People's Park to The Bund riverside area.

After heading back to our hotel to cool down and have a bit of a rest we decided to cross the river that runs through central Shanghai and head to the Pudong area of the city. This is the main financial and commercial centre of the city and is home to three of the top 10 buildings in the world.

Getting across to the Pudong area would invovle in crossing the river and rather than getting the metro to do this we decided instead to the much discussed Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. This short rail car ride is like nothing I have ever seen before. It was a distressing mixture of It's A Small World in Disneyland and the Wondrous Boar Ride scene from Gene Wilder's version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Our senses were subjected to a number of strange sights and sounds as were descended beneath the river in a small glass box.My photos came out just as I imagined and just how I felt during the ride (slightly disorientated)

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel (just never worked out what 'sights' we were supposed to be seeing exactly)

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel View from car

Oriental Pearl TV Tower

This area of the city had a totally different feel from what we had seen of the rest of Shanghai and as you walked around its huge elevated walkways you felt like you were in a Ridley Scott sci-fi film with the enormous towering buildings, coloured lighting everywhere and huge televisual advertising hoardings.

Self-stitched panorama of Shanghai CBD

We had decided that if we were to go up one of the skyscrapers in Shanghai, we might as well go up the highest, so we sets our sights on the Shanghai World Finance Centre. This bottle-opener shaped building is currently the 3rd highest in the world, however it is also home to THE HIGHEST viewing platform in the world, located on the 100 floor of the building. Having paid our money we headed for the lift which took us 425m up into the sky. This was only to the 94 floor, which is located at the bottom of the bottle-opener section of the building, please look at the photos if you're not sure what I mean by 'bottle-opener' shaped. The view from here really emphasized the size and extent of Shanghai but we had soon had enough of this area and were determined to get to the top of the building to watch the sun go down over the horizon.

SWFC Entrance 

Shanghai World Finance Centre

West view from 94th Floor Viewing Platform

What greeted us on the 100th floor was one of the most breath-taking sights I have ever seen. Watching the sun go down over such an amazing city was indescribable and also unfortunately unphotographable with my meager photographic skills. Much to D's dread there was also a section of floor up here which was glass and through which you could see right down onto the street some 474 metres below. From up here you could see the slight curvature of the earth and as the sun went down, the lights on the cities buildings started turning on to give us a totally view of the city.

A rather disturbing view (And no... I don't mean my legs)

The Jinmoa Tower (foreground) and the Oriental Pearl TV Tower nearer the river

Shanghai at night

Panorama of the city view from the 100th Floor of the SWFC Building

After our trip up the tower we decided that Din Tai Fung was our destination of choice for some dinner. Luckily for us the SWFC lower levels was home to one of the Shanghai branches of DTF (our favourite HK dim sum restaurant). We had another delicious meal here and although the menu was slightly different we still manged to try a number of new dishes, as well as some usual specialities (Xiaolongbao which are Shanghainese soup dumpling and extremely delicious)

On Saturday morning it was time to see some of the more historic areas of Shanghai so we first madde our way to the YuYuan complex which is home to the YuYuam Gardens, tea house and the City God Temple. These were all very busy and although we took time looking around all three, because of the heat and the throngs of tourists we soon decided that it was time to head somewhere a bit cooler.

Inside the YuYuan Gardens and Rockery

Tea House and Zig-Zag Bridge

Inside the City God Temple

We then headed for a spot of lunch at a restaurant that I had found before we left Hong Kong. It was called Whisk Choco Cafe and as you can probably guess from the name, it specilaised in chocolate desserts, as well as having a good selection of Italian style main courses to choose from. We both struggled to pick what we wanted, but both plumped for pizzas. The desserts were even harder to choose, and even with the help of the refrigerated cabinet of puddings, we both struggled eventually going for one called Molten Chocolate Delicious, which tasted as good as it sounds.

Whisk Choco Cafe, Shanghai

As you can imagine, we were both stuffed after our lunch so after a walk back through Shanghai, we made our way back to the hotel where we wanted to catch up with some sleep. This was because we had woken up at 0355 in the morning in order to watch the stunning London 201 Opening Ceremony.

The next day, as our flight wasn't due to take off until 19:00 we decided to visit a couple of new areas of the city that we hadn't visited yet. We first made our way to The Bund, which is the waterfront area of the city abut 5 minutes walk from our hotel. The Bund was originally home to the financial centres of Shanghai (before the development of the Pudong District across the river). It is still home to the original buildings of the era however, and having been in Hong Kong for 5 months it was great to see a city that has protected some of its historical buildings rather than destroying them and covering them with more skyscrapers. From here there was also the best view of the CBD of Shanghai from across the river.

View of Pudong District from The Bund Waterfront

Former Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Headquarters

Financial Buildings on The Bund

Peace Hotel on The Bund

After this trip to The Bund we made our way to the former French Concession area in South-West Shanghai. This area belonged to the French until 1946 when they handed in back over to the pro-Japanese puppet-government who were in place after the end of the Second World War. This was a truly remarkable area of the city and was very much European in style with tree-lined residential avenues and two-floored houses with a definite European style.

European-Style Streets around the French Concession

Within the French Concession is the Taikang Lu area, which is an area full of narrow shop lined streets which specilaised in all forms of Chinese arts and crafts as well as a few typical tourist souvenir shops. We visited a tea shops where we were treated a traditional tea ceremony and were able to try a number of delicious flavoured teas. We spent a couple of hours wondering around the narrow alleys and finally that is was time to grab a bite of lunch before heading back to the hotel and then the airport. For lunch we went for a Thai restaurant which was a real find and mixture of great surroundings ad great food meant we finished of our time in Shanghai in style.

Tai Thai Restaurant in the French Concession

After making our way to the airport we were gutted, but not surprised, to find that our flight was delayed again, this time for 4 extra hours. The oympics and grand prix were on TV which made the time go a bit faster, but still meant that we were not back to the flat in HK until 03:30, with D having to get up at 07:00 to go to work, it was not the real end of the trip that we wanted.

That's it from me for today. My next update will probably be when we get back from Vietnam in mid-August. Until then.... Live long and prosper...

The Peninsular & Hong Kong Disneyland

This weekend was one of extremes! After D had had her hair cut on Saturday morning we made our way over to Kowloon to The Peninsular Hotel for afternoon to as a celebration of D finally being given her full-time position at work. As the afternoon tea didn't open until 1400, we decided to head to Ocean Terminal beforehand to have a quick look around. This turned out to be easier said than done, as Ocean Terminal is the biggest shopping centre in Hong Kong and having a 'quick' look around this centre was beyond the realms of possibility. Instead we just set our sights on American Eagle to have a quick perusal and decided that we might come back to Ocean Terminal if we have time before we leave HK. This quick visit to the shopping centre turned out to be a mistake on our part, as when we arrived at The Peninsular there was already a sizeable queue building up around the lobby of the hotel and since the afternoon tea session still didn't open for 30 ,images, we realiesed we might be in for a bit of a wait. Well a 'bit of a wait' ended up being 1 hour 45 minutes and by the time we reached the front of the queue we were verging on ravenous. We were finally shown to our seats and pleased to see that they had put us a long way from the queueing people, so that we didn't sit there for the duration of our afternoon having hundreds of people willing us to hurry up! We decided on the champagne afternoon tea so we could celebrate D's achievement in getting her job and soon enough we we sipping the hotels own champagne (which was particulate good!). Then our afternoon tea tray arrived with a delicious looking array of sweet and savoury treats for us to dig into. The food selection was absolutely delicious and we were soon making our way through all the treats, including a couple of scones each, with clotted cream (oh how I miss clotted cream) and strawberry jam. The atmosphere and food were both absolutely brilliant and we were soon realising that we may have to leave the comfort and coolness of the hotel. It was an afternoon well spent and one of the best things we have done since we have been in Hong Kong. We have decided now that as a measure of all the places in the world we will visit in the future, we will try an afternoon tea in each location. Hong Kong will be hard to beat but I am sure that we will gve it our best as we continue our travels.

Well, Sunday was very a very different day, but equally good fun, but for a few different reasons. We made our way on Sunday morning to Hong Kong Disneyland, which is on Lantau Island, around 50minutes from Causeway Bay on the MTR. As usually Disney in never understated and it started earlier than we thought as we were picked up by the 'Disney Train' to take us the last stage of our journey to the entrance to the park. Once we had paid the exorbitant price for our entry tickets, we made our way to Tomorrowland to join the queue for Space Mountain as we guessed this would be one of the busier rides of the day. Having done my best to persuade D that Disneyland wouldn't be as bad as she thought, I was pleased that SM was more of a thrilling ride than I remembered and I was pleased to come out to find out that she enjoyed the ride on SM. Staying in Tomorrowland we made out way to a slightly less intense rid in Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, which is arcade/ride all in one. After this we headed to Autopia, which is a slow paced driving experience, which I expect when it was devised was what people thought driving would be like in the 21st century.

This was good fun, although the day was starting to warm up and after a 5 minute ride in the sun we wanted to find some shade to cool down. It was time for the first parade of the day so we found a spot in the shade to wait for the character parade to come past us. Having been to Florida, the parade that we saw in HK Disneyland was a lot shorter but it was still good to see most of the character from the Disney films, and made me feel young again seeing it all so long after I last saw them.

 After this we headed for some lunch and having done some prior research we made our way to the Grand Banquet which was one of the main food seas in the park. We were then pleased to see that there was a very un-American choice of food, with burger and fries being replaced with dim sum, noodles and our choice and curry (red than vegetable curry to be precise). This came with steamed rice, naan bread and vegetable soup and was a real nice surprise that it tasted so good. At only 65 HKD each (about £6) it was also quite reasonable priced (I suppose we finally deserved some value for money having had to pay £40 each to get in to the park). After lunch we decided that a slower paced ride would be best so we made our way to It's A Small World for a bit of vomit-inducing happiness. This was as colourful as ever, if a little bit dated in the 21st century and was just what we needed after our lunch.

On our way to the newly finished Toy Story Land we managed to get our photos taken with the Mr & Mrs Mouse as well as Goofy, as I wanted my photo taken with one of the characters that didn't make me feel like a giant.

We then headed to TSL and after having some more photos taken with Woody and Jessie went on the new RC Racer ride. This was a great idea and one of the more thrilling rides on offer at HKD. You are rocked back and forward on mechano track in a giant version of the RC character from the Toy Story movies.

We then headed to Grizzly Gulch which was an area of the park which had only opened on Saturday and so was therefore decidedly busy. We decided to ride on the new Runaway Mine Carts ride which turned out to be the best surprise of the day. What started as a rather tame, predictable ride, soon changed and we were being flung back the way we had come and exploded at quite a speed out of an exploding mine shaft. Having had enough sun and plenty of fun we decided to head back home to Causeway Bay and relax a bit before D has to g back to work this week and I have my BTEC schemes of work to write. Whoopdeeeedoooo!!!!!

Long Weekend in Beijing

Last weekend, we decided to make the most oh\f the Bank Holiday in HK to get away for a long weekend in Beijing. D took the Friday off work, which gave us four days to explore the city and the area around it. We flew Hong Kog Airlines early on Friday morning which meant that we were able o check into our hotel (Capital Hotel, Beijing) before 1300 and had the afternoon to see a couple of the sites near our hotel..... Well that was the plan anyway......

Having checked in and dropped off our bags in our room we set our sights for the Panjiayuan Antiques Market in the South-West of Beijing. Having examined numerous maps we were sure that it didn't look too far and we started on our journey. Around 3 hours later we arrived at market, just as the majority of stall-holders were making their way home for the day. This left us with an empty market area to walk round, with the only items left to look at being the huge stone statues that they sell at the market that they clearly expect people not to even try to steal. These were not just your usual garden ornaments, instead they were selling, 16 foot replicas of the Great Wall or a pair of mythical creatures who looked very menacing and stood about as tall as I was. Having decided that these statues wouldn't be withi our 23kg luggage allowance we deicded to head to the Temple of Heaven, which is also in this area of Beijing. However, rather than risking walking their we jumped in a cab instead.

After having heard a number of horror stories about Beijing cab drivers I was pleased to say that we had no problems on this occasion. I decided to follow where he was taking us on the map I had, and I am pleased to say that the driver took us the most direct route possible to our destination and was able to take us right to the main entrance to the Temple Park. This 15 minute cab journey cost us the grand total of 95p, so it was fair to say that we would be using a great deal more of the cabs whilst we were in Beijing.

Having taken us so long to reach the market, we arrived at the temple to find that the main attraction was also closed for the night and that we would only be allowed to walk around the park area. This however, turned out to be one of the quietest areas in Beijijng and Daisy and I took this oppurtunity to sit and relax in the park for a while before heading off to find some food. The park was beautifully maintained, and in the cooler evening air it was very pleasant just to stroll the paths around the Temple of Heaven.

After sitting in the park for a while we headed back towards our hotel via Qianmen Street, which is a pedestrianised (apart from the tourist tram) street which has been regenerated in the style of old Beijing. The street is full of modern shops as well as some of your typical souvenir shops which litter cities like Beijing. Having decided that we should try some authentic Peking (Beijing) Duck we headed for the Qianmen Roast Duck Restaurant. After our afternoon ramblings we were both famished and thought that we would get the chance to try some duck amongst a few othe speciality dishes of Beijing. However, in thinking this we were much mistaken and after having waited 15 minutes for a seat we were rushed in and given aroud 30 seconds to decide what we wanted to eat. This however, was plenty of time as it appeared that this restaurant ONLY did peking duck and there was no other dishes available on the menu. Snce we were already sat down we decided to go with the flow and plumped unsuprisingly for the duck. This came with an 'authentic' duck soup with looked a bit like a cupfull of melted butter, and tasted, I imagine much the same. Well it was not the worst peking duck I have ever tasted, but unfortnately also nowhere near the best. After dinner we headed back to the hotel, which was only about 15 minutes walk we were pleased to find out.

On Saturday, through our hotel reception we had booked a private tour to see the Ming Tombs and Great Wall. Our tour guide and taxi driver picked us up at 0900 and we headed out of the city into the surrounding countryside of North-West Beijing province. It was in this jounrey out of the city that we first got a real feel of the sheer size of the city and the number of people/cars/roads/building it contains.

After about an hour we reached the Ming Tombs at Ding Ling, which is home to the only orginal Temple that peole are still able to enter. The tomb that we visited was that of Zhu Xianjun, and was the 10th of 13 tombs to be build in this area of the Yanshan Mountain region.

The main framework of the building was constructed of single cedar trees fom Southern China and the entire building still stands without the support of a single nail or supporting bracket. The inside of the temple has now been turned into an exhibition, showing a tiny proportion of all of th gold that they excavted from the tomb itself when it was first discovered. Within the collection are some exqusitie examples of chinese arts and crafts, including a gold head dress worn by the Emperor made of gold so thin that it looks moe like lace than strands of gold. Here you are also able to walk around the base of the vast hill which was place over the tomb in order to incraese its Feng Shui. The location was first chosen because of its good Feng Shui, the mountains behind it to the North and supposed to protect it from the evil spirits carried on the North Wind, whilst the river to the South is also desgined to protect it from unwanted spiritual visitors.

After our visit to the tombs it was time for the usual trip to a Jade Museum/Factory Outlet, I understand that this is so that the tourists can see how one of China's biggest industries work, but also get annoyed at how you are harrased and harranged into making purchases, just so that the tour guide can make a bit more comission from the sellers. However, this was also the location of our lunch stop so D and I politely refused any attemps to extract money from our wallets and instead just used the stop as a chnace to cool down and have a bite to eat, whic was actaully quite tasty.

We then made our way though yet more of the stunning country to the north of Beijing with our final destination of the day being the Mutianyu Great Wall. This is the 2nd or 3rd area of the Great Wall of China to be redeveloped and was set amongst some of the most amazing scenery that both of us had ever seen. After a short (rather dodgy) looking chair lift ride, we were stood on the Great Wall itself. I don't quite think either of us had prepared ourselves for what we were goung to see and we were both struck by the sheer enorimty and scale of the Wall. It was a crystal clear and extremely hot day and on either side of us you could see the wall snaking its way along the ridges of the mountians, which a small watch tower every 200 metres or so along its length. After taking lots of photos and just trying to take in as much of the scenery as possible, it was time to head back down to the waiting car.

This gave us 2 option 1) take the rather dilapidated chair lift back down or 2) take the much more fun, but potentially life-threatening tobogaan ride. After deciding that if we were going to die, we would want to die whilst having some fun we chose to take the toboggan. This was a great idea, and we both had a good ride down. Although this would have been more fun if the person in front of D and I had decided to try and go more than 10mph all the way down. However, with some tactical hanging back both of us were able to get up some good speed on some of the steeper sections of the descent.

On our second full day in Beijing, we decided to visit The Forbidden City anf Tian-an Men Square, both of which were located quite close to where we were staying. Perhaps Sunday was not the best day to do this as when we reached Tian'an Men Square we realized quite how popular these two destinantions were with Chinese tourists. Unperturbed, we headed into The Forbidden City and had a long wonder amongst the temples, gardens and courtyards that it contains. I must be honest that it wasn't quite as amazing as what I had imagined, but it was still great to see for myself the splendour in which the previous Chinese used to live.

On our way to visit the National Museum of the Chinese People's Republic, we were to see another side of China which is not often seen. Whilst walking along (rather ironically) Tian'an Men Square we found ourselves in the middle of a fountain of leaflets, as from all around us a group of older people started to throw leaflets in the air. As you can imagine this sent the nearby police and 'secuirty' officials into over-drive and as soon as it had happened there were uniformed officials appearing from all directions around us. I didnt manage to get much on camera but I did manage so serrupticiously get a few candid photos of the immediate aftermath. We do not know what this small demonstration was about, but we were both left with the idea that it is probably not that uncommon in a country that it so tightly restricted when it comes to freedom of politcal expression. It seemed all the more ironic to us as politcial freedom and it's suppression was the main reason that had brought us to Tian'an Men Square in the first place.

After this we headed for the Chinese National Museum , which paints a very 'interesting' picture of the country's history and pays quite a lot of attention unsuprsingly to Chairman Mao and the growth of modern Chinese political philosophy.

On our last morning in Beijing we headed back to the Temple of Heaven to have a look around the temple itself. It was one of the hottest days we have had since we had been in Asia and the temple looked stunning in the sun, with its coloured tiled roof and multicoloured laquered paintwork exterior. We also took the oppurtunity to have another walk around the gardens, but unfortunately they weren't half as relaxing as they had been on Friday as now they were filled with an assortment of groups practcing everything from ballroom dance to Tai Chi.

On our way back to the airport we paid a visit to the Olympic Park from the 2008 olympics and most impressively the Bird's Nest Stadium which stands as a hallmark to the work and money that was put into staging the games in China. It is simply a stunning stadium, with its huge metallic bird's nest structure freestanding around the bowl of the staium. We were also able to see the Water Cube, home to the swimming events as well as see the Olympic Wall, onto which they have engraved the names of EVERY gold, silver and bronze medal winer from the Olympics and Paralympic games. All I can say is that the London Olympic park is going to have a lot to live up to after seeing the development that has, and STILL IS taking place in Beijing because ofthe Olympics.

I will leave it at that for now. Hope you are all well and that you are enjoying the lovely British 'Summer' along with Wimbledon and all of the preparation for London 2012.

Catch up again soon!

J