SHANGHAI UPDATE

Time to update some Shanghai pictures during my last trip, so that after that I can remove them from my hard drive. Thanks blogspot, this is brilliant, or esle my hard drive will be so full to store all these photos. Call me primitive, but I don't how else to load them on external hard drive, frienster, yahoo pictures etc, .....I shall just stick to blogging.
Shopping in Shanghai














The day market (xiang yang shi chang) versus high end shopping (heng long guang chang-I think).
The former has become such a harrass to go. The minute you drop off the taxi from opposite side of the street, the 'copy' touts will rush towards you and stalk you all the way, trying to show you their albums featuring the copy goods, use their bodies to navigate you to their stalls and you just want to 'siam' to avoid body contact with them until it's like playing "lau ying zhuo xiao ji" (eagle catch little chicks). Their up market shopping quite chic, I think in some ways more so then ours. I saw this cinderella skirt so pretty. Branded one, but can't remember which brand, but think cost thousand over sing dollars.

We feel so violated by the touts so decided to depart the day market and find food. While walking, saw some Chinese students leaving school. I always like to check out other countries' school uniforms, they are always so different, sometimes nicer.

While walking to find makan, see what I found? Fwah, one of my favourite dessert-butter cream cone. The cream very very buttery and I like! Thought I would buy it for dessert later but finished before i reached the next junction! When in primary school, my dad used to pick me from school then proceed to Monk's Hill to pick my sister who used to have her German language class there (her 3rd language, she the smart one), I never fail to buy at least 2 of these cones from the canteen. Eat one while waiting for her and save the second til later...yum.I can't find these anymore but people always tell me have, when I ask them, they always give you this labyrinth direction until you think it's non existential. So anyone who knows please tell me in simple terms ok?

After that, we (me and DJ-that's him in the picture beckoning to settle after walking up and down undecidedly which eatery to go) walked through this little backlane full of small eateries.
So much for choice, we sat down, looked at the menu, not what we wanted and left for another. We found another more decent shop, went in because by now our feet hurt, looked at the menu mostly with curry and rice dishes and realised ....IT'S JAPANESE! Wa lau, walked so much, choose here and there and eat Japanese food while in Shanghai, somemore first meal! Whatever, didn't want to walk anymore so just ate la! Not cheap somemore.

Shanghai Night Scene
Come nightfall, my DJ friend went out with his Shanghai-ed friends so I went Xin Tian Di alone. It's crowded on a weeknight.

Apparently there was a fashion show earlier. Check out this huge stage and nicely lit runway complete with tall trusses and pars. DJ was still spinning when i was there but fashion show already finished. But while in the loo, i caught sight of a few i suppose were the models. They are very tall, lean and pretty

Xing Tian Di was fun as it is host to side walk cafes, restaurants and all kinds of bars-jazz, canto, latin and top 40s. Needless to say, Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Mc Cafe compete for business from coffee addicts. As early as 8pm, the bars, side walks and restaurants was packed. You might not be able to see very well, but the next 2 pics are one of the cafes (think you can see the starbucks sign) and the canto band. I visited the jazz, top 40s and finally the canto band and left when my stomach couldn't take another drop of coke!
Much as I loathed my recent experience there, I cannot deny Shanghai is nice at night, and this not even christmas yet.

Finally, on the day i depart, i found the taxi drivig past several bridges, and when I turned around, I managed to snap this. It's pretty awesome but don't those 4 chinese characters make you feel like you are departing some hellish gates, which probably explained my hellish experience in the airport after that. click here if you wanna read about the saga