Relax…

So here is the first of a few posts in regards to my vacation.

Shanghai Flickr set.

En-route to Myanmar, had a 12 hour layover in Shanghai. Options were to stay in Pu Dong airport for 12 hours or go into Shanghai and do a bit of exploring. Since november, China has relaxed their visa requirements which allows people with connecting flights within 24 hours not to have visa and leave the airport. So we went to Shanghai.
Pu Dong airport is a new airport. With this, they have a bullet train that goes into Shanghai. It is really nice… 7minutes and 20seconds to the city from the airport at speed of 430km/h on the maglev train. Then a 10 minute subway ride and we were at People’s Square. The heart of Shanghai.

Shanghai itself is a nice city. Very modern with a touch of the classical chinese architecture. We walked around People’s Square and looked at the Christmas festivities that were going on. We then grabbed a taxi to a Nanjing Road, which is the shopping and tourism area. After be barraged by people trying to sell fake rolexs and other items we managed to have a decent time exploring and eating real chinese food and getting real chinese boba/bubble tea.

Thoughts on Shanghai

The japanese people have a generalization about the chinese; they are rude and always so angry.
After flying China Eastern Airlines, going through Shanghais airport 3 times, and visiting Shanghai I can understand why they have this generalization.

First off, on the planes, the chinese men think they ruled the world. Not two seconds after the plane touches the ground all the men unbuckle standup and start to unload their luggage. The stewardesses all start screaming at them to sit down and buckle up, some acknowledge while the majority just stare at them with a “do you know who the fuck your talking to bitch” look on their faces.

Next, getting through immigration was like a mosh pit. The chinese people have no pretext of an orderly queue. If there were 15 people in queue to go through, there would be 3 or 4 chinese men that would walk to the front and try to cut in.

And finally the thing I found most annoying was the staring. Not a timid, oooh look a caucasion. This is more of a oh my god he has a hand growing out of his/trainwreck stare. Very annoying.

All in all, Shanghai was so so. I am happy never going back there again, but if someone was paying me I would go. I give it a 2 outta 10.