Back to Huxley: Shanghai

So we made the 10 hour flight to Shanghai and touched down at Pudong airport just after 7 a.m. local time. Flying over China you really how vast it is and how fast it is growing. From the air looks as if it has been created within a computer game with rows on rows on tiny blocks.

To get out the airport and into Shanghai we took the bullet train (you know the one with the pointy nose-cone. The journey takes 7 minutes and the train travels at 300 kmh.

It is the fastest I have ever been on land. As the train approaches, Shanghai looms in the distance like a futuristic city from another world.

We jumped off the train and got a cab to the hotel. I don’t know how Shanghai isn’t one big traffic jam. Everyone seems to travel in any direction whenever they chose. You take your life in your own hands. It seems no respect is shown for vehicle size, age of driver or pedestrians for that
matter.

After dumping our stuff at the hotel we hopped into a cab to head over to the old city. (The picture at the top of the post is taken there). As soon as we arrived we were mobbed by street hawkers offering imitations of anything you can think of.

This made the whole experience more frenetic than we'd hoped for but I guess its just inevitable. We actually found the more we deviated from the tourist trail the less we were hassled so it proved to be a positive incentive.

With a renewed sense of adventure we headed on foot to the Bund (the old British area established to manage its commercial interests in China) that sits on the West of the river Huangpu. Over the river from the Bund you get an amazing view of Pudong which hosts some of Shanghai's tallest buildings.

The building to the left in the picture below is called the Oriental Pearl Tower and on the far right is the World Trade Centre (it looks a bit like a bottle opener) which is the second tallest building in the world and has the highest hotel.