Shanghai

Hi all, 
 
Well I made it safely to Shanghai. I had my first experience with flying 
domestically within China and all in all it wasn't too bad. They did make me 
take all my stuff out of my bag going thru security (must have been some of that 
strange food from the Night Market I was trying to smuggle out!) and also patted 
me down and I have to say, I didn't see them doing that to any of the Chinese 
people, but then again, I was pretty much the only Westerner on the flight! The 
cool thing about the flight though was it felt like I went back in time. Talk 
about service, they offered a free breakfast! Yogurt, dried apricots, roll with 
butter and a big ol' blueberry muffin plus two rounds of free dinks (soft drinks 
people, it was 6:30 AM!). But how nice to have that included, especially since I 
hadn't had time to grab breakfast and the price of the ticket was only $90. 
Gotta love the Chinese economy! 
 
So I got settled into my hostel after a quick taxi ride in (luckily I remembered 
to have the people at my last hostel, write out in Chinese the name of the 
hostel in Shanghai or I would have been sunk since he spoke no English!) This 
hostel is a little more hotel like than the last one but they both were nice. 
This one is right in the heart of the city and when I say city I mean city. This 
place is huge! The population is more than New York City and Tokyo combined at I 
think roughly about 25 million give or take a few million chinese. But the 
location is great because it is walking distance to everything and a block from 
the subway to get around to everything else and it's at a budget busting rate of 
$5 a night. I ain't making this stuff up. It's incredibly cheap here. 
 
So I first went right around the corner from my place and walked the Nanjing 
Road pedestrian mall. Again for the Charlottean's think Birkdale without the 
cars but with even higher end shops. Don't you wish more cities would close 
whole roads down to traffic and just let people roam. It's so cool and this 
place of course is packed with people. I then took a walk along the Bund which 
is sort of the financial district along the river. Very pretty with great old 
style architecture of the buildings on the West of the river and then across the 
river on the east is the brand new Shanghai with major skyscrapers. I went over 
there and rode to the top of the highest observation deck in the world on the 
100th floor of the Shanghai World Financial Center. This building resembles the 
what would have been One Wells Fargo building in Charlotte but is now the Duke 
Energy building (it has that same open top that makes it look like a bottle 
opener... hey... maybe Ken Thompson was over here and had a few too many drinks 
when he thought about the design of the future building at the same time he was 
working on the Golden West deal! - sorry inside joke for those old Wachovians!) 
The views were unbelieveable! It was weirtd but there were whole blocks of 
buildins with the same color roofs on them and they were very colorful, like 
orange, blue, red and green. It looked really cool from above and someone said 
there was no rhyme or reason to the color scheme only to make Shanghai a 
beautiful city. They did it all last year for something called Shanghai Expo 
2010 whatever that was. 
 
What I started to realize as I walked around more and more was it was more humid 
than Beijing and was a lot warmer, so as my good friend BC would say, it was a 
double Gold Bond day! LOL. 
 
I then came back to the hostel and chilled for awhile and let the feet and toes 
have a break and then took an evening boat cruise on the river. The buildings 
lit up were just spectacular. This city is really amazing and you can just get 
the feel that they're trying to out do any large city in the world and I hate to 
say it but thay may have done it. (OK Jeff, quit drinking the Chairman Mao 
Kool-aid!!!) 
 
Well that's all for today. I think tomorrow may be the first day I actually see 
some rain and my feet are doing a happy dance thinking I may give them the day 
off... but of course I brought rain gear, so I don't think so!! LOL. 
 
Take care all! 
 
Jeff