Shanghai - part 1

Shanghai is an amazing place, risen from a small town only a couple of hundred years ago to being a teeming metropolis of somewhere between 15 - 25 million people depending upon who you believe. Filled with high rises and designer stores, you only need to walk a few streets away to find poverty and traditional chinese living. Street food is common place, but 5 star restaurants and hotels also dot the city like pimples on a acne ridden 15 year old. First night involved the view from the bund, and then a beer at captain hostel bar. Highly recommended for the view, not highly recommended for the pizza. Then it was off past East nanjing st, (filled with desinger stores, touts, fake watches and the subway) to Southern Barbarian for dinner. Thanks Case and Ben for organising, the yunnan food was super awesome and cheap and the extensive beer list was well received.

Day 2 - We didn't really know where to begin, our guidebook despite being brand new proved hideously out of date. The city changes so much that unless you are printing a guidebook a day you'd never be able to keep up with pace of chance around the city. So we headed south, it was towards the equator so that gave us some hope that it would be warmer.

Soon we entered some markets in the old area of town. Do not buy anything here except maybe street food. Everything else is a tourist trap and you will pay through the nose, ears, eyes and throat (thank you scottish man on the train for the quote) for anything else. Still its kind of exciting and entertaining to wander around. These streets have been rebuilt as some kind of new 'old' chinese buildings are filled with shops, food, street performers and touts. We continued our adventures and walked about 20kms through the teeming metropolis that is Shanghai. The architecture of the modern buildings in the city is amazing, with dizzying skyscrapers meeting traditional chinese buildings, french colonial architecture with slums, terrible roads and extreme pollution thrown into the mix.



Night two involved a visit to southern beauty for szechuan food. I was sweating chilli through my eyeballs but man it was good. They made these great little eggplants topped with fresh chilli and tomato, a standout. The prawns were so hot that you could've cooked an egg on them and everything else was a dream as my mind was so fuzzled by the extreme amounts of spice.