Le Tour Shanghai Youth Hostel

Yes, there is a bed to sleep in! Once we got to Shanghai (at 6:15am I might add), we tried to buy train tickets, but once again, they were all sold out. So we don't know how we are getting to our next city yet! We're going to go to a travel agent later on today once they are open! We headed to Caoyang Subway Station to find a hostel. I left Meghan sitting with our baggage at the subway station while I went to find the hostel. Luckily, it wasn't to hard to find. We are staying at Le Tour Shang...

...No, Alex hasn't been cavorting with any "ladies of the night", instead the title of this blog refers to (one of) Shanghai's nickname reminiscent of the city's past, when British and French (and pretty much everywhere else) took advantage of Shanghai's position on the coast and turned it into China's busiest international ports, as well as a den for prostitution, gambling, drug and alcohol abuse... and, well, all things Western. Indeed, it is commonly said that Shanghai is a Western inventi...

I have about 550 pictures from Shanghai, so it will take me a few days to select the better ones and sort it all out.

I will put a few different Shanghai entries up.

This entry is of our day at the Shanghai Museum and of some pictures of the city.

It was a very big and nice museum. My favorite part was the section on Qing and Ming Dynasty furniture. The wood was meticulously carved and from a distance it looked like it was fake. Once you got close you could see the incre...

Here are some pictures of me and the guys and our adventures. We hung out with two cool Danes and a group of Germans. Us Brits abroad were very international in our adventures.

This entry is just a bunch of pictures, mainly for my friends who want to download them.

Oh yeah, the Hong Kong entry will be up soon.

-Zai Jian

Geordi Dai, Scouss Dave, Soren, Henrich and I all had a romantic evening on the Oriental Pearl. This was a small boat that took us in the East China Sea/River. It was very beautiful and we had the opportunity to take many great pictures of the city.

Here we go...

So the Chinese New Year has passed; on the spur of the moment, I decided to visit my friend Priscilla in Shanghai. China during the New Year is bedlam; its imposible to travel before the official New year celebration and its chaos during the 10 day festival. I relaxed in Beijing for the weekend and then headed to Shanghai on Sunday. In the afternoon, we picked up Priscilla's friend Alan from the airport. To get there, we took the highspeed maglev train. It took 7 minutes from the center to th...

I spent 3 hectic days sightseeing here. Actually, that's not strictly true - I had 2 hectic days sightseeing then on my third day I went for a 2 hour massage and then ate in a sandwich bar! I found Shanghai very interesting. Probably a good place to start because, whilst it's undoubtedly China, it is also quite Westernised in many respects. I was still surprised how little English was spoken, although relieved that all street signs have both Chinese and English (and most of the buildings even...

Hello! Here is our first blog, which is a little late as we've been going two weeks now!! Anyway, we're in Shanghai, but leaving for Gulin tomorrow, on a 25 hour train journey! Glad to be leaving as it has been pouring with rain the WHOLE time, but it is extremely humid at the same time. Things/Cities we have done/seen: Beijing, Xian, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Warriors, Pandas, some of the Paraolympic games and shopping! Bye! Jen & Fran

So far the trip will have been just travel without much sightseeing. Given that we have some time, we may chill here for a day before heading west to catch our cruise. We arrived in Shanghai around 6am, not quite as early as we'd hoped but that didn't really matter since it meant a better chance of getting a place to stay. We were hounded before we even got off our bus (and we really wanted to get off), but we didn't need our luggage carried and we knew exactly where we were headed - the subw...