Puxi : 浦西

i'm not quite finished with shanghai...

the reminding time in shanghai we spent wondering around the streets on the puxi side (浦西) of the river. this is the old shanghai.
we checked out the famous (and overly crowded!) yuyuan gardens (豫园) which were a bit of a tourist trap...
outside the gardens were rows and rows of shops selling chinese "antiques", postcards, and good luck trinkets etc. i think you get my drift.







K-chan and i have no interest in that so we made our way over to the french concession, an area once known as the paris of the east.
here can be found xintiandi (新天地); a trendy open-cafed, boutique stored, yuppie cluster of shops.
in the same area are shikumen (石库门); or traditional european/shanghai style homes. pretty stylish.



we actually spent a couple of days walking some of the trendy backstreets of shanghais various neighborhoods eating an array of international cuisine from thai, to french, italian and of course chinese.



all good vacations have to come to an end...
we took the maglev train (i know, awful name).
maglev comes from the words "magnetic" and "levitation" as that's what it is, a super fast train which is levitated through the use of magnets.
and like i said, it's super fast; the 30km trip only takes 7 minutes to go from the city (unfortunately not the city center!) to the airport. talk about zooming.
but don't expect comfort and style like the shinkansen (bullet trains) in japan. although fast; the interior of the train was a bit of a let-down.
one-way ticket 50-yuan (40-yuan if you show your air ticket) and 80-yuan for a return ticket.



so that's shanghai.
just some extra pics i took here and there.

a very local foot massage parlor


me soaking my feet & 2 old ladies doing twist exercises on the street


the old & the new and the "seven don'ts"

Pudong : 浦东

after the short ride on the "bund sightseeing tunnel" (also sign-posted as the "tourist tunnel"...) we arrived on the pudong side of shanghai. this is shanghai's new face.
amazingly less than 6 years ago this was farm land, now it's shanghai's financial and commercial hub; in other words not a very exciting place for your global traveller.

this area feels like it's still growing.
it already has its fair share of high rise buildings, but the roads surrounding them are still pot-holed and again, like the bund, under construction.
it felt odd walking around here seeing wealthy chinese and foreign expats prancing around in their suits and high heels with a starb*cks in one hand and a blackberry in the other; yet on the same street were migrants from china's vast countryside wearing drab dusty clothes eating noodles from street vendors.
i wonder if they have a better life here in shanghai after all?

the main attractions in pudong are the high rise buildings.
the world's 3rd tallest tower, the rocket-shaped oriental pearl tower (东方明珠塔) stands out the most, especially at night when it is lit up like a christmas tree gone horrible wrong.
if you like observations decks you're in luck. it has 15 of them.



then you have the shopping-bag building; well that's what i call it anyway.
more commonly known as the shanghai world finance center (上海环球金融中心). it's the 4th tallest building in the world and is home to the worlds highest hotel (the park hyatt).
K-chan hates heights but we went up to the worlds highest observation deck on the 100-floor anyway.
the observation deck is in the "handle" part of the "bag" and unfortunately for K-chan it had a glass floor... oops!



while everyone else was sitting on the glass panels taking in the view of the tiny cars below K-chan was clinging to the handrails and wanted to leave, like right now!
i snapped these few shots while K-chan was in a bewildered and meditated state.
imagine the view if shanghai was pollution free!





beside the shopping-bag is the jin mao tower (金茂大厦).
i had a quick peak at the atrium of the 5-star 555-room grand hyatt as the architecture is pretty cool.



so yeah, if buildings don't do it for you, you're outta luck on this side of the river.
you could check out the aquarium, but believe me, it wasn't that great...
(i only went because i had a few hours spare before my return flight)
that is unless stingrays do it for you. no?

The Bund : 外滩

so just a skip and a hop across the historical garden bridge and i was on the famous "bund" (外滩 : waitan).
when i first started doing some research on shanghai i kept hearing about "the bund" and i had absolutely no idea what it was.

was it a building?
was it type of food?
was it a club?
was it a museum or other such attraction?

well for those that don't know, it actually refers to a handful of buildings...52 to be precise.
i know, sounds like a bit of a let-down, but they're not ordinary buildings.
these beautiful historic buildings run alongside the huangpu river looking out towards the pudong skyline, you know that famous rocket-shaped building in shanghai.
this is the view, on a sunny day i might add... talk about air pollution!

looking towards pudong side


looking back on puxi side; where the bund is

so the bund is home to all these glamorous buildings which were built when the area was a british/american settlement.
i guess they're similar to those which can be found lining regent street in london, but just with the odd chinese characters on them.
i was expecting this amazing boulevard with gorgeous buildings on one side, and a tree lined riverside on the other.
i expected wrong...
well the buildings were nice enough, but between these building and the river was a 8-laned chokka-blocked pollution-producing road...wtf
apparently in the past there was a nice grass area in front of the river but it was destroyed to make way for more traffic. but now with shanghai hosting the world expo next year they are moving some of these lanes underground and plan to rebuild some grass area so it was a total construction mess...

a few bund buildings

"public" newspapers. now this is environmentally friendly!

from the bund you can cross the river to pudong by the ghastly bund sightseeing tunnel.
it's a little non-maned train-thingy which for RMB40 (one-way) takes you though a tacky tunnel of flashing lights and even some blow-up dolls on the tracks. no, not that kind of doll!
it's something you only need to do once, actually you could skip this all together, it's pretty tacky.

Astor House Hotel - 浦江饭店

thank god my hotel wasn't in the middle of the shanghai's huangpu river (黄浦江) as google maps placed it!

instead it was close to but just over the historic waibaidu or garden bridge (外白渡桥) where more than 100 years ago non-chinese could cross for free and chinese had to pay a toll simply because it was built by a british guy. crazy. it just happened to be that the day k-chan and i arrived was the opening of the bridge after it had been removed for renovation earlier this year.
that explains why there we so many people taking photos of this pretty "normal" looking bridge.



our hotel; astor house hotel or known as the pujiang hotel in chinese (浦江饭店) was also a historic building which was built in 1846 (that's 163 years ago!).
in its day it was apparently the "place to be" as was promoted as the "most grand hotel in the world".

astor house hotel in 1927


i don't wanna bore anyone with history but these astor house hotel "1sts" are kinda amazing:
- it was the 1st building in china to be lit by electricity (1882)
- the 1st building in shanghai to have running water (1883)
- has the 1st telephone installed in shanghai (1901). the telephone number was "200".
- the 1st home of the shanghai stock exchange was this hotel (1990)

and check out some of these famous people who have stayed here:
- 18th united states president ulysses grant (1879)
- albert einstein (1922)
- charlie chaplin (1931 & 1936)
and many more, but i don't recognise their names...


overall i was happy with this hotel, friendly staff, comfortable room, awesome location, and not to forget that it felt like i was living in a bit of shanghai's history.
the only disappointments were breakfast which was nothing special, the creaky floorboards during the night. can't really complain about this though as this hotel is old, and those creaks were probably just ghosts...
oh, the shower water smelt like it was pumped straight from the river... but then again shanghai is still china.

the hotel's current entrance


illuminated at night & locals taking photos of the bridge


the grand breakfast area


me in the enclosed inner courtyard and the lobby

In-Town Check In

one of the many things i love about hong kong is its convenience!
being a small city in size, not population, it's easy to get from A to B.
or B to C.
you get my drift.

but it gets even better when you're leaving hong kong to travel.
when going to the airport the fastest way (don't read that as the cheapest) is to take the airport express.
it's a train that runs from the city centre (hong kong station) to the airport in 24 minutes.
oh, just for extra convenience it also has free WiFi on the train.

and then there is the "in-town check in" service.
up to 1-day before your flight you can check-in your luggage at any of the three airport express stations (tsing yi station, kowloon station, and hong kong station), get your boarding pass and then that's it! you're free to roam around the city or do what you please!
up to 90-min before your flight you just have to take the airport express to the airport and go through customs etc. no need to cart your luggage to the airport as it's all pre-checked-in.
now that's convenient!
oh, and it's a free service too! even better!!
*note: eight not so common airline carriers don't allow this check-in service




the in-town check in area at hong kong station





like the airport, each airline has their own counter


so that's just what i did this morning.
i woke up earlier than usual and went to one of the airport express stations to check-in my suitcase and get my boarding pass.
then it was a quick subway to work. arrrgghhh i so don't want to be here today... i'm already in holiday mood
anyway, in half-a-days time i will be making my way to the airport for my flight tonight to shanghai!
just a bit worried about getting to my hotel in shanghai.
i googled the hotel on "google map" to get an idea of where i'm staying.
point "A".
mmm...