The blog today is being written by Alan because Sarah is laying on the sofa being a lazy bum. You insist on doing the days when we are in port, so suck it up.
Today was our second and final day in Shanghai. We’ve loved this city, so we wanted to see some more of it before setting sail once again. We woke up earlier than usual in order get some sightseeing done. Thanks to the help of an early morning phone call.
After our breakfast we returned to our room to prepare for the day. Sarah’s dad stay on the ship rather than go adventuring, so it was just myself and Sarah who left to get on the shuttle bus. After being outside for 30 seconds, I realised that I needed another jumper on as it was a fairly cold morning. I came back to the room to get it and still had tons of time before the bus left, thanks to Sarah having read the schedule incorrectly. Firstly, I didn’t read the schedule incorrectly, they changed it and which is why they made such an effort to let us know on the bus that it had changed. Secondly, it would appear that I’m the only one on this trip who does read.
The bus took us to The Bund, where we got out and started wandering down the main road toward Nanjing Rd, which was one of our destinations. We passed by the large statue of Mao Tse Tung and then came across another sculpture. This time it was the Bund Bull and we had a photo opportunity there.
We continued our stroll down the road, but after about 20 minutes or so of not finding the street we were looking for, we thought we should consult the map. We figured out that somehow we must have missed it so we turned around and walked back again. We had almost made it back to our shuttle bus area and we thought we must have inexplicably walked by the road again, when we finally managed to find it. Aren’t we clever! Thank god Dad wasn’t with us as he had a sore calf muscle and the extra walk at the start of the day may not have gone down well.
So we walked up Nanjing Road, being targeted by bus tour people and others handing out flyers for shopping. We ignored them all and came upon a subway station. We have had success figuring out the rail system in Japan previously, so we thought we’d give this one a go too. We found the ticket machines and worked out how to buy tickets. We had to go through security screening in order to enter the platform. Obviously Sarah looks dodgy. What a mean person Alan is.
Being a Saturday, the train was busy, but not packed. Couldn’t get a seat, though. We only went 2 stops before getting out at People’s Square. We found our way out of the subway station and into the large park above. There were millions of people in the square all with signs written in Chinese. We had no idea what was going on there; maybe a political rally or something like that. We later discovered that it was parents there with details of their children, trying to find a match to marry their child off.
While we were walking through there, a young Chinese couple, Alex and Tina, saw us and asked us where we were from. They were very interested when we said Sydney and we talked for some time. They told us they were from Beijing but here in shanghai looking for work. They said they were going just around the corner to a Chinese tea ceremony and asked us to join them. We declined and went on our way. Sarah thinks they were taking us down some dark alley to roll us and steal our money, but I suspect they wanted to take advantage of our bodies. As we walked back to the subway, we saw them accosting another girl. More like meeting up with a cohort.
We bought more train tickets and took the subway to another station where we got off to change lines. Alan wanted to argue and get tickets just to the interchange but I had read up you can buy tickets to wherever, even when changing lines. He finally let me get what I wanted, saving us RMB 3 each (about 50c each). The walk from one line to the other was quite long. I reckon it was probably about a 10 minute walk through the subway station. Eventually we arrived at the other line and caught the train to wherever it was we were looking for.
We exited the subway and had absolutely no clue where we were, or which way the Jade Buddha Temple that we were looking for was. We had a map but not all the streets were marked which made it difficult. Plus Sarah kept telling me to walk in the opposite direction to where I was pretty sure we needed to go. At least we were having fun and at times laughing hysterically at our capacity to get lost. we wandered down a pretty seedy looking back street and then up another street to where it met a main road.
At this stage, the wind was blowing and it was pretty cold. We walked along the main road and saw a sign which said 500 metres to the temple. Yay! Sarah was complaining about having to walk so far. I was complaining about the cold. But we were laughing all the way, and more so when were walked by a young girl having a poop right there on the sidewalk. Oh dear.
We walked to the end of what we were almost certain should be the block that the temple was on. There was a guy with an old lady in a wheelchair begging for money outside a restaurant. We walked past them about 4 or 5 times and every time we did, the guy would either poke Sarah or try to run her down with the wheelchair. At one stage he thrusted a cup in my face and said “money” I said “no” and he then laughed. Very strange.
Still, we could not find this darn stupid temple. Eventually we went into that restaurant (my suggestion), which also appeared to be some sort of sleazy hotel, past the food area, and out a back door. There was an official looking guy there asking us something but we ignored him and hey presto we wandered through the back door to the Jade Buddha Temple. How’s that for luck.
Seconds later, across the courtyard we saw Donna and Rhoda, 2 friends we’ve met on the ship so we went over and said hi. Sarah asked them if they had paid to enter the temple, which they had – 30 yuan or something like that. I guess the dude at the back door who we were laughing too hard to pay any attention to was asking to see our tickets. Oh well!
It might have taken us all morning to find it, but at least we were there now. We took some photos of the statues and displays but then we had to pay to get into the Jade Buddha section. We paid the 10 yuan this time. Aren’t we good! No back door this time.
We thought we might have taken another wrong turn, because we found ourselves walking up a very old winding staircase in what appeared to be someone’s house. The stairs were steep and the roof was low and Alan hit his head. But in another room at the top we did come across the jade Buddha. There was no photography allowed, but I took a few photos sneakily. As the security woman came towards us we quickly left the room.
Back downstairs to another section and this time we found the Reclining Buddha, also made of jade. More photos and then it was through to the gift shop. Donna wanted to buy everything in the shop. Some of it was very expensive. She ended up spending about $116.
We left the temple, through the front entrance this time, and walked out onto the street to find a taxi to take us all back to the ship. We had been warned about the red taxis trying to rip you off, so we got into a blue one. It took probably about half an hour and we seemed to be going round in circles, but eventually we made it back. Even then, it only cost about A$4.50.
It was almost 2 pm and we were hungry so we went straight to The Colonnade and had some lunch just as they were closing up. I should have piled my plate up higher, because all the food was gone by the time I’d finished. I did manage to have 4 desserts, though.
We had a lie down in the afternoon after spending the morning doing such a lot of walking. We went to the launderette and put on some washing. We also took a few more photos of the fabulous Shanghai skyline. I love the night mode on the camera where it takes us with the flash but then leaves the shutter open to get the background, however it really does look like it’s taken on a green screen and the background is added later.
Before dinner we went to put it all in the dryer. We found that someone had already done that for us as they must have wanted to washing machine. We went for our usual dinner in The Restaurant and half way through Sarah returned to the launderette to check the dryer. Some tosser had taken all our still wet clothes out of the dryer and left them sitting there on the ironing board. What a knob! Thankfully another person was just finishing up and I was able to use his dryer. We went back 30 minutes later and all was dry and still in the dryer.
Anyway, we finished dinner and took our now dry clothes back to our room. Sarah and I spent the evening in our room watching tv and playing around on the computer while her dad went to the show and then to the Observation Bar. We set sail at around 9 pm and began the slow journey back down the river to the sea. That was after we annoyed the staff with some more photos.
We’ve had a great time in Shanghai and are sad to be leaving. Maybe we’ll be back someday.
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