Shanghai Shenanigans

Wow so took a trip by high speed rail to Shanghai this past weekend.

This was my first train ride. I felt like a dork because I sat next to the window and would jump every time a train would pass us. I believe the top speed was around 350 km/h.

As soon as we arrived we started a fun trek into an amazing supermarket. I found tons of cereals that weren't just different brandings of frosted flakes. Though they were significantly pricier than Hangzhou Tower's 50 kuai (less than 6 USDs but still). They even had Milka chocolates. Mmm chocolate. Soooo many delicious imported goods.

Dumplings and egg rolls yuuum

We got better deliciousness at this fairly upscale restaurant that I have completely forgotten the name for. It was really pretty and it was weird to hear so many people using English that weren't Laowai :P

Soup filled dumplings

Soy sauce wasn't so great with these though. I think the soup mixed with my soy sauce and made it really bitter or I may have accidentally grabbed the vinegar. After our rather quick lunch (quick because we were all apparently starved) we made our way down the street towards our Hostel. It had a really cool hallway of what I'm assuming to be old traditional Chinese statues that were lit up in a very museum like manner. Though that left the rest of the hallway in darkness.

Sorry that it's rotated stupidly

We dropped off our things then we tried to make our way to the People's park to check out some museums. Before we actually made it there we stopped to check out an odd gathering of people.

Yes this is a giant plate

We were sort of being silly and ran over to sit down on the bench.

People surrounding the area trying to figure out what it was about immediately started taking photos of us and then photos of our group taking photos. It was a giant yo dawg we heard you like--- moment.

It was a lot of fun living it up in the limelight, especially since we earned some very sought after bug spray. Yaaay for finding an OFF advertisement and getting free repellent. I was not dinner that night at the Bund.

Before we got to the Bund we ended up getting bubble tea, stopping at an underground market of sorts, attempted to find a KFC for another bubble tea in the Hershey's store/shopping complex, and found the abstract art museum with an exhibit called the Tao of Nature.

These statues were near the bathrooms

The bathroom walls were covered in slang/inappropriate words with details depending on gender. There were little buses cruising along the walls.

And a random assortment of household items painted white dangling on a wall.

Once again apologies for unrotated annoying

Modern art is odd but definitely fun sometimes. There were these cases of prehistoric fossils. An actual fossil along with something of pop culture relation like a pikachu fossil next to a plant one.

We left the museum and finally made our way towards the Bund. Along the way we saw many exciting things that I won't cover because they weren't nearly as exciting as the Bund and this blog is getting pretty lengthy with all of the photos I have to attach. I'll split it up into two blogs for each day.

Pearl Tower and some globes

It was here that we were really feeling like celebrities. It was cute at first but then the picture taking and requests became too numerous so we ran to another section of the Bund. We were also being followed by a particularly odd person. He had followed us from the area near the Hershey/shopping mall complex and had been singing the entire way... Anyway, the celebrity feelings quickly turned from encouraging to frustration as we were soon hounded by many visitors sincerely interested in pictures of/with such strange laowai (foreigner in Chinese written phonetically without tones; should have mentioned this earlier my blunder).

Chopsticks; a memorial

Honestly I have no idea what this memorial/statue was for but we referred to it as the chopsticks. We came back to the Bund later that night to get even more pictures. Saw some really fantastic lighting on the ships then we attempted to go find some sort of night market.

Blurry I know my apologies once again

The shopping was to be held off for another day due to time constraints and bad researching.

Part 2 will come tomorrow, I'm too tired to write anymore but much love from Shanghai/Xiaoshan,

-Kimdolion