Shanghai Nights

We arrived in Shanghai (home of World Expo 2010) at 2am and found a cheap hotel by the airport to get a few hours of well needed sleep, thus our first experience in the most affluent and western city in China was a small dirty room with a mouse scurrying along the floor!

In the morning we headed to Shanghai proper and decided to arrive in style, we walked past the buses offering a 2 hour drive down town and boarded the 'Maglev' train for a 7 minute journey reaching speeds of over 300km/hour taking us into the maze of skyscrapers that is Shanghai - there are more skyscrapers than New York.  In the centre of the city it is a competition of buildings all trying to be the most striking and original.  It makes for the impressive and famous skyline.

As a city, Shanghai doesn't have many 'tourist sites', which was fine by us as we enjoyed some aimless wandering through the citys various quarters; large busy neon shoppin streets to small hidden alleys with cafes and boutiques, and the antiques markets where you have to haggle hard - we bought a teapot for 15% of the original asking price.

For our final night in the city we met up with some friends from Beijing and headed to a Karaoke bar.  We had our own private room for the 12 of us and the beer and songs were flowing.  Everything from Elton to NERD, and even a tribute to Steven Gately.  We ended the night in a bar engaging in some unsuccessful dance offs with the locals - a great night.

To recover from the rigours of city life we are now down river in Hangzhou for a bit of relaxation.