Shanghai in Pictures

Our Hotel for 3 nights called the JinJiang Inn.

Yunnan Road (recomended food street), where we saw lots of animal innards and strange fish all being prepared on the streets, plus a man pouring out a load of toads from a bag into a small tub. This didn't really stir my appetite, along with the smells too, until we turned a corner and found a restaurant that had all its food safely behind doors and indoors. What you don't know, won't harm you, came to mind.

Discarded chopsticks.

The Bund


Old Town

The location of the original Shanghai, the oldest part of of the city has deffinately been marked by the present, much like everywhere we've seen, roads ending abruptley, buildings half built, or half distroyed, out with the old in with new we might say, the Chinese say jiude buqu, xinde bulai meaning if the old doesn't go the new won't come.

We did seem to catch some glimpses of the 'real' Shanghai occassionally, but what that is we can't say, everything seemed to be a mash of styles, ages, classes, a confusion as what it wants to be or even what has been.

Shanghai

At the estuary of the Huangpu river, the city rightfully calls itself the gateway to China. It's a city with a million faces, sounds and smells, bustling, noisy, densely polluted; the backstreets of Shanghai are a near permanent construction site, a primordial soup that bore the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, and now the soil from which a new China grows.

Crumbling ramshackle buildings cluster beneath colossal space-age edifices, the roads are rough and the taxi drivers rougher, ploughing an unstoppable madcap furrow, regardless of man or beast, much like the pedestrians themselves.

Shanghai carries itself with a casual, almost slovenly swagger, self-assurance, nonchalance, a seething and aggressive existence. After the clinical theme park that is Japan, Shanghai is like a different planet.

The Su Zhou Hao

This is the Boat we were on for exactly 46.15 hours, Starting last Friday the 4th and arriving on the 6th, and I still have those sea legs now.

Bye Bye Japan! Morning of the 5th

On the boat entertainment

Canteen

Arriving in Shanghai

Last night in Japan

Worse for wear after an overnight bus from Tokyo to Osaka, we find ourselves in the peaceful, yet slightly surreal Nagai Youth Hostel, a gently curving corridor of dorms and guest rooms, peppered with baths and the usual suspects of facilities, at the back end of a gigantic stadium. At the moment of writing, Hayley is relaxing in an onsen whilst I am typing against the clock of a coin-operated computer, slower than a leaden tortoise with a hangover. Soon, we shall go for food in Osaka, the culinary capital of Japan.

Yum.

To Osaka - Leaving Japan

After a tearful and unexpected audience of well wishers wished us goodbye from Oda, we made ourselves at home in Brian and Kaoris lovely place, the hostess with the mostest was Mr Hughes, who fed and watered us with an American style breakfast the first morning and a continental style breakfast the next morning, after a drunken bout of Kareoke with all our lovely friends...


Thank you Brian! x

Wednesday night we had booked for a 12 hour, overnight journey to Osaka, the port we would be leaving from for our ferry to Shanghai. We arranged to have a last minute farewell with a few friends in the crazyness of Tokyo Station. We tearfully said goodbye to, Brian, Jula, Rosie and Kim & Kame, (Katsuhisa) just for the records Kim!

Kim and Kame

Jula

and Rosie

Ahhhhhhh.........

So there is no Plan B, or Plan C.....

It's soon come around, and in 7 days we'll be getting on the boat, and waving a fond farewell to the coast of Japan, to sail through the Yellow Sea over 2 days, to land on the 6th of April in the port of Shanghai, China.

So we've had a few things to do before we go, as you can imagine.

I am writing all this down on here because I want to remember it and I hope it might help or interest other people too as some people's websites have helped us. This could be starting something that I can't actually finish... but we'll see.

• Buy Boat tickets - We are sailing from Osaka at12:00 noon on the 4th of April, and arrive in Shanghai on the 6th at about 2pm. This cost 26,500 (each for first class, which means a bed in a room with 4 others).





• Get Visas - First we got the Mongolia Visa which took one week and we picked it up at the beginning of March. It cost 3,500 yen (17.50 Pounds). Secondly the Russian Visa, which took two weeks and cost 1,000 yen (5 Pounds). Third is the Chinese Visa which is currently being processed at the embassy, as we speak and takes about five days, and costs 3,000 yen (15 Pounds).





• Get Insurance - We went with World Nomads.Two Months cover exactly, starting from the day we leave.





• Book Shipping - Japan Luggage Express have been very helpful and are taking everything we own (almost) in 19 boxes, tomorrow. The paperwork has been huge but everything is ready except for one box. NUMBER 13 - This box will house this computer that I'm typing on now, and listening to the radio too as all our music is packed away.





• Pack what we're taking - that's another story..........

We're packing! - well we have been 'packing' for the past week, it seems none stop and but tomorrow everything will be taken away on the back of a van to be packed inside a 1mx1msq crate, and shipped over the seas all the way to blighty, where Chris' mum will one day greet these boxes and take them all home to store for us. Thank you!

So we're off..............................................................................................................................

So where are we going Chris?.........................................................................................

Bye Bye Japan!

Plan A

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