Here's Viv looking over the top happy to be flying MAS rather than Air Asia. Helllooooo entertainment system. Hellooooooo food.
Our travelling companions : Parents, the JJs.
So excited about getting served food after flying Air Asia to Hong Kong, I had to take pics. My breakkie choice :
Viv chose porridge for her main:
It was Chinese New Year Day 1 so we got angpow with our meal. But instead of real moolah, we were given chocolate gold coins. Cuteness!
Oh yeah, Dad somehow worked his magic and charmed the air steward into giving us a bottle of wine and a gazillion packets of peanuts. He just brought it to us without any prompting. It was the weirdest thing. Dad, you flirt!
Flight from KL to Shanghai took about 5 hours. The airport was dead, probably because not many people would choose to travel on CNY Day 1:
We got out of the airport and were met by our tour guide, Ling Ling. First stop in Shanghai : Oriental Pearl Tower 东方明珠塔 - the equivalent of our Sky Tower in Auckland. Yes, there's one in every city. Darn male egos at work, I tell ya. Construction began in 1991 and the tower was completed in 1995. At 468 m (1,535 feet) high, it is the tallest completed tower in Asia and the third tallest tower in the world.
Anyway the whole of Shanghai had the same idea and the queue was insane. We experienced for the first time some Chinese people's lack of respect for people's personal space and their fondness for shoving. Gah! I said SOME not ALL so don't give me that look, Missy!
Luckily this was the only place where we had to queue even though every place we went to was packed to the brim with people/tourists.
We finally made it up there after a long wait. In typical Hii fashion, we were ready to go after 3 minutes. Photo I managed to take of Shanghai without any human heads blocking the view.
When we got to the ground floor, it was time to feed the stomach again. Viv bought some local Shanghainese snacks and Jayden scored himself a corn cob. He looked so happy. But it wasn't fresh apparently.
Even Hello Kitty had been to the Tower... heheh... awww cuteness!
Pic of the Tower that I took enroute to our next stop: Bund Sightseeing Tunnel.
So the Tower was on one side of the river and we took a ride through the Tunnel to get to the other side, The Bund. The Bund is the waterfront on the other side of the river. It's the older part of Shanghai where the more historical western buildings are situated. The side where the Tower is on is the more modern part with a slightly spacey feel to it.
The ride through the tunnel costed 40 RMB one way (around NZD11). It felt very techno and spacey with lots of flashing lights and music playing throughout the ride. Kinda cool kinda weird.
We emerged from the Tunnel and saw a lot of roadside vendors selling bits and bobs. This was the Chinese version of toffee apples except it wasn't apples. Bing Tang Hu Loo. Took a photo for nostalgic purposes.
Obligatory family photo op:
Cool buildings along The Bund:
Then it was time for dinner. Yeeehaaaaaa! Dinner that night was in a boat - the boat is moored and doesn't move.
Everyone that knows me well would know that eating is one of my favourite past times. Most of the food we had on this trip was yuckky. This was one of the best meals we had - if we were talking about the bottom three meals.
Clockwise from the top:
1. Steamed fish
2. Stir fried beans
3. Stir fried chinese cabbage
4. Seaweed
5. Beansprouts
6. Stewed pork leg
7. Something unidentifiable - maybe mini dried prawns
8. Stewed eggplant
9. Fried egg (I kid you not!)
10. Murky unidentifiable soup
11. Stir fried prawns
Nothing wrong per se I suppose. But when I go to a restaurant, I prefer to eat food that didn't look like I (ie an incompetent cook) cooked it myself hehehehe. But that's just me.
Long day! After dinner, we went on a boat ride to take in the night sights of Shanghai. It was a cold night. Everyone wrapped up like dumplings.
Video I took while braving the freezing winter night wind for your viewing pleasure.
After 5 minutes, the Hiis retired inside the boat and fell asleep (ok, that was just me but it had been a long day and I'm no spring chicken anymore even if I do look like one heheheh). If I remembered correctly, it was about 100 RMB for the boat ride (about 28 NZD). PS: That girl sitting next to Mum is our Shanghai tour guide, Ling Ling.
A random pic I took of a passing boat. See how the front had a dragon head and the back a dragon tail? Quite cool I thought.
Finally it was time to check in to our hotel. We stayed at Donure Hotel. I took a pic of the complimentary slippers the hotel supplied to help me remember the name.
The lobby - the JJs were dressed in matching jackets and matching bags. They also had matching luggage. Get a room, people. Hang on, they already got one:
Me and Viv shared a room throughout the trip:
Shot of me (sniff sniff, no one offers to take pics of the dutiful blogger ever) and the bathroom. Every hotel room we stayed at in China had rain showers. Loved that:
Interesting that the hotel had to spell all these rules out. DODGY!
We headed off to the City God Temple 城隍庙 the next morning. It was basically an area of entertainment and shopping housed within Ancient China looking (aka fake remodelled) buildings.
Took this photo because it showed what China is all about - the juxtaposition of old (well, fake old in this case but you know what I mean) and new. PS: That second new building looked like a bottle opener to me.
Anyway the one thing we did here (apart from being pushed around in the insane crowd) was to stuff our faces (what else is new). The Nanxiang Bun Shop is one of the most famous places in Shanghai to have Xiaolongbao. Check out the insane crowd waiting to buy these tiny morsels of yummiliciousness (it's a proper word heheh).
Hungry people getting stuck into their long awaired treasures:
There were a few storeys to this shop. The ground level sold the cheapest standard fare pork filled xiaolongbaos - 16 for 12 RMB (approx 3 NZD) which explained the insane queue. The higher up you go, the more expensive the xiaolongbaos and the shorter the queues. Since we had a timetable to keep to, we didn't have time to muck around so we went up to the first level to buy our xiaolongbaos.
Normal pork filled xiaolongbaos - 6 for RMB 25 (approx 7 NZD)
Pork with Crab Roe xiaolongbaos - 6 for RMB 45 (approx 12 NZD)
Verdict: Pretty good but a bit salty. I wouldn't queue for them though. We had to eat this while standing up because we had to go so got them to go. But they were messy to eat so we had to eat them before jumping in the van. I shoved a xiaolongbao into each person's mouth. We got a few looks but then again we attracted weird looks everywhere we go in China. I think we stuck out like sore thumbs for some reason.
Jayden getting more snack supplies for our road trip to Hang Zhou:
Then it was time for lunch. Yes I realised we just ate but we didn't let that tiny detail stop us. JJs aka the twins walking to our table.
But it was just as well that we'd padded our stomach with food already because this lunch was the second worst meal we had in China. Yes, the worst was still to come.
Can't be bothered uploading individual photos of each dish except for this one. This puppy deserves its very own space - i present to you some sort of pseudo meat coated in breadcrumbs (???) deep fried, doused with mayonaise and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Apparently it tasted disgusting. I didn't try it. I may be a dutiful blogger but not THAT dutiful.
More food that looked like what I would have cooked. Not going to bother spelling out what each dish was. Suffice to say they tasted as good as they looked.
But the other thing that made the lunch unappertising? The service. All our meals were included in the tour package and included drinks aka beer and coke etc. But we were only served tea. Not that big a deal and it only occurred to us until after we finished. We casually asked the waitress who served us about the omission and man, did we cop some attitude. She said with a very sourpuss expression as if we just accused her of spitting in our food (I woulddn't be surprised if she did!!!) - how would I know? Ask your tour guide. Eh???? Excuse me????? Now I am usually super nice to salespeople and waitresses etc (read that as a pushover) and would not dream of complaining so the fact that I said something should tell you something. I said "Improve your attitude, please!". I still used please. How did our heroine react, you ask? She said (still with the sourpuss expression) - Attitude??? in a snotty way. Man I sure wanted to smash her face into that plate of questionable meat with mayonaise.... So there you go, service with a smile Shanghai-style.
It was a very short trip and maybe I didn't see enough of Shanghai but I felt that it was basically a modern city with nothing much to distinguish it from all the other concrete jungles out there. Next up, our roadtrip to Hang Zhou.
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