Rhod and Anna's World Adventure

Sorry it's been a while. This is because we struggled to get good/cheap internet access in Shanghai. Hopefully the next few joyous accounts will help ease the pain of no post for 9 days.

Shanghai was a surprise. Not a surprise in the sense that it was a modern city unlike the other 2 we had seen in China. I was expecting that. I wasn't surprised by the fact that they had lots of neon lights and a super fast train (more later). I knew that. The real surprise was that beer was 14 times more expensive than Beijing! 14 times! This has got to be a joke. It's like buying a beer in.....London or any other major city. Rest assured I was not pleased. There seemed to be no logic behind the pricing because the result was that nobody ever went in the bars. They were always empty. I'm no business man but I would think a full bar with cheap beer is better than and empty bar with expensive beer.

Good news though. The staring has continued and the general street selling was still rife.
"Hello Shoes?" they had wheels and lights that flashed when you were rolling.
"No it's ok I have shoes"
"Hello Watch?"
"No thanks I have a watch, would you like to know the time?" This throws a street seller to the point that he walks off.

We spent our time in Shanghai well. We got the lift 350m up the Oriental Pearl TV tower to look over the city as all the lights came on. We also went on the Maglev train. As an engineer I couldn't turn down the opportunity to go on a train that does 430Km/h. It was great you can get to the airport 30km's away in just under 8 mins. The bad news is that if you have no need to be at the airport it's not really very interesting so all you can do is return to the city in the same amount of time. In 35 mins you can cover 60km including 20 mins trying to entertain yourself in an airport.

On our final day in Shanghai we decided we had had enough of being grabbed, stared at and shouted at. We thought we should go somewhere we could feel at home.....Shanghai Zoo!

I've not been to a zoo for a long time and it really opened my eyes. The people of Shanghai love their animals. They take great joy in feeding them. Particularly when it says please do not feed the animals. They like to take sticks and poke the bears to prompt a bit of action. They like to lift their kids over the safety barriers so they can get right up close to the wild boar and taunt it with some food and some small chinese child fingers. It was unbelievable. Perhaps my most favourite part was when people shouted and threw stuff at the Lions and Tigers who were asleep in an attempt to wake them up. It was no surprise that most of the animals were hiding at the back of their pens. On a serious note the zoo was dirty and old and most of the animals did not look well. Should you be able to see the rib-cage of a Rhino?? It wasn't the pleasant day out that we had hoped for especially as the main thing we went to see, The Panda, had emigrated to America! Good luck to it. I hear it's the land of the free.