We only had 3 days left, one of which we needed to travel from Cebu City to Manila and then to Shanghai, leaving us with 2 full days in Shanghai itself. Planning-wise it was perfect, as in this case we didn't need a Chinese visa for a stay of less than 72 hours.
Shanghai International airport is quite empty at night, since most of the flights arrive before 11 pm. Our flight was apparently one of the last ones in, with a delay of just under one hour.
The passport control took a bit longer than we expected. First the guy behind the desk thoroughly examined our passports himself. Then he called a lady supervisor, who started to ask us questions on how long we were planning to stay and if we had the onward flight booked in less than 72 hours. We said we did. She took our documents and disappeared for 20 minutes. When she finally came back, she started to discuss something with the guy in Chinese. Her face expression was such, that we started to get nervous, already thinking how we were going to spent the next 3 days in the airport transfer zone.
However, we had it completely wrong. When she finished talking to the guy and left, without so much as looking at us, the guy smiled and 5 minutes later we had our passports back with the temporary visa and a piece of paper in English, saying that we are not allowed to travel any further than Shanghai with the transit visa given. We assured him that we will not and left.
Outside there was a waiting line for the taxis. Lucky for us, it was by far not as long as in Manila, so we didn't have to wait very long.
The taxi-driver we got spoke no English at all, but I was expecting that so we showed him the hotel's name and address written in Chinese. He looked at the name and started to say something in Chinese back to us. From what we could guess, he still didn't know exactly where we needed to go... We were saved by the maps.me app that I downloaded on my phone. It has the most detailed maps that work offline and even makes routes to get from one destination to another in any country in the world.
So, we switched it on and used it as the GPS to show the driver where we needed to go. The app got us exactly in the right place.
Our hotel didn't look like much from the outside and I had some doubts booking it earlier, but inside it turned out to be great and we loved our two-level room with the stairs.
The next morning we decided to start with the touristy stuff and see where that will take us. Our hotel was located just on the edge of the area where most of the places of interest were, so we could just walk around everywhere.
Outside there was a waiting line for the taxis. Lucky for us, it was by far not as long as in Manila, so we didn't have to wait very long.
The taxi-driver we got spoke no English at all, but I was expecting that so we showed him the hotel's name and address written in Chinese. He looked at the name and started to say something in Chinese back to us. From what we could guess, he still didn't know exactly where we needed to go... We were saved by the maps.me app that I downloaded on my phone. It has the most detailed maps that work offline and even makes routes to get from one destination to another in any country in the world.
So, we switched it on and used it as the GPS to show the driver where we needed to go. The app got us exactly in the right place.
The weather was fantastic, very sunny, but also very cold and we didn't have the winter jackets with us. Another plus of walking was that it kept us warm.
Downtown here is quite modern and if it wasn't for the signs in Chinese, you would never say that you are in China. Most of the buildings looked quite European.
We decided to walk along the river to The Bund and the embankment promenade.
We were surprised to see the Russian Embassy right in the middle. Looks very out of place here.
From The Bund's corner you can see the famous view of the Shanghai Skyline. Most of the times Shanghai is very foggy and you can't always see all the buildings, but we were lucky.
Despite the fact that it was Thursday, the embankment promenade was busy with people- tourists, students, mostly all of them Chinese, we didn't see many European faces around. The police was patrolling the place in funny little cars.
Along the promenade there is a whole line-up of massive office buildings. We figured that they were some government places, because each of them had at least 2 national flags on the roof.
From The Bund we started walking towards the old downtown and the surroundings became completely different. It's really funny to see how the city here changes completely, within the 200 meters walking distance.
The tea-house... Before coming here, we read that tourists need to be careful not to fall for the "tea ceremony" scam. What they do is they approach you as a couple of students, who want to practice their English. After chatting with you for some time, they invite you to have some tea, and then demand you pay for it, asking for ridiculously high fee and threatening to call the police if you don't.
We were stopped here too by a guy and two girls that first asked us to take the picture of them together. Even though we read about the scam, we didn't figured it out at first. Only after they suggested to go and have some tea, we knew who they were...
Later, we were approached again a couple of times, but we knew better and just ignored everybody.
In the middle of the old town there is a huge park and the collection of old buildings that once were a part of the royal court. They are nice to see, but not very exciting. We liked the calligraphy hall and the jade shop.
What we really liked about the architecture in China is the attention to details, the amount of work that goes into each carving, each statue.
Most of the old buildings here are now part of a huge shopping mall that sells souvenirs, candies, tea, and other touristy stuff.
The old town has multiple entries, through the old city gates. Now they are mostly decorative. The sleeping quarters start right outside the gates.
At this point we got really hungry and decided to get something to eat at the most local place we could find. Unfortunately for us, the menu here had no pictures in it and no one was speaking a word of English. We took a wild guess and just pointed at some hieroglyphs. Out of the 3 things we ordered one was quite good, but the other two were not. We still have no idea what we ate :-)
When we left, we were both still hungry. On the way we saw some kind of self-service canteen where all dishes were already portioned and you only needed to point at the ones you want. The prices here were immediately 3 times higher than in the previous place, but at least we could see what we were choosing. It wasn't the best food we ever had, but it was OK comparing to the first place.
After two failed attempts to get something great to eat, we decided to walk towards the People's Square and to see if we will have more luck finding better food there.
To get from the old town to the square you need to walk about an hour, mostly through the residential area.
On the corner of one of the streets we saw people making shahslyk, exactly the same way they make it back home, in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Dima was completely happy and, finally, no longer hungry.
By the time we got to the People's square and the modern shopping district, it was already getting dark.
We immediately spotted the Radisson Hotel and what looked like a 360-degree view bar on top of it.
The main shopping street was going all the way to The Bund, so we decided to first go back to where we started this morning to take some pics of the night skyline, and then come back to the bar for some cocktails.
The skyline at night looks even more beautiful. It was a good idea to go and photograph it that day, because the next day all the lights where out, and none of the building were visible in the dark.
It took us more than an hour to go all the way to The Bund and back. Altogether, we walked over 23 km that day, so we were happy to finally sit down, relax and enjoy the awesome view from the top.
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