Shanghai

Shanghai is a pretty amazing city. I think it's separated by a river. One side is relatively young, in that most of the buildings and development has occurred in the last 25 years. On the other side of the river is the older part and where you'd find some more historic sights.

Percy's nephew Alex lives in the Hongkov (sp?) district which is great as it's within walking distance to the metro and surrounded by local food stalls and small businesses. It takes some time getting used to crossing the street and seeing how people drive but to be honest it's not too bad.

We've had this crepe thingy a few times for breakfast. The lady makes it right on her hot plate.

She spreads batter over that hotplate and then cracks an egg over the middle and spreads it all over. She threw some unknown stuff into the middle of it (you can see them in the bowls to her right) and then fold it over and puts these fried tofu or something in it. It's actually really tasty. It costs about 3 or 4 RMB for it. So like 50 cents back home.

One day we visited the World Financial Tower. This building is approx 475m tall. I believe it has the one of the worlds highest observation deck. this building looks like a giant can opener. I don't think I got a photo of it from the outside but inside was pretty neat.  Actually it's in the pictures I took from the bund.

We've been to a bunch of places, like YuYuan Garden, Hongzhou, and a few temples.

We've also seen some funny things. Check out this photo of a guy on his scooter with his child sitting on a propane tank. Pretty crazy by our standards.

One thing I wanted to eat here was Xio Long Bao. One of Alex's roommates recommend a place. It's not a tourist place by any means and it wasn't exactly the cleanest place in the world. However the bao's were fantastic as were the dumplings/wontons in this soup. I think between the 3 of us we ordered 40 Xio Long Bao's and 2 soups. It came to like 50RMB, so like $7CDN.

Another night we also went out for Japanese Teppenyaki and we got to meet a bunch of Alex's friends. They were all here teaching English in different schools. A few British lads and a couple of American guys. All seemed like super nice guys. Turned out the restaurant was all you eat and all you can drink for 170RMB.

Last night I got a chance to finally meet up with Julian and his wife and son, Daley.

I'll get a chance to spend more time with them as we'll be staying with them when we get back from Beijing. We haven't pegged it down yet when we're leaving for Beijing but it should be soon.