China - Day 3

Trip day 3 began with a trip to the Bund - it's a nice little area on the Yangtze River with an excellent view of the Shanghai Skyline. When we got out of the cab at the Bund, I immediatly saw the AIA building! That's AIG China. I work for AIG so I was pretty impressed at their rockin location in Shanghai.

The AIA building


The Bund


Some of the many many Asian people to take pictures with us. You can already see how thrilled Tiffany is about this and it's only day 3!


Then we went over to Nanjing St - the busiest commercial street in Shanghai. We had a bit of a problem in one of the department stores there. We wanted to use the restroom and the information desk told us it was on the 2nd floor. Simple enough, we hopped on the elevator but everytime one of us would try to push the button someone would step in front of the buttons and stop us. Very odd. Finally we got off on the 4th floor and took the stairs down.

Here we are out in front of the department store:



Since we enjoyed Old Town so much the day before we decided to go back and do a little shopping since it was our last day in Shanghai. On the way there we ran into some street vendors and Tiffany and I bought copies of The Little Red Book to bring home. Since I'm a huge Chinese history buff I was so stoked about this we decided to take a picture with the vendor.




It was so nice strolling around Old Town popping in and out of stores all afternoon. We even ran into a puppet show with some great dolls. I really regret not purchasing a puppet, but I was afraid it would break on the way home. Maybe if I ever go again I'll take some bubble wrap with me and buy one, LOL! Here are some photos from our afternoon.





We had to try Chinese McD's




This was a pet in a cafe we stopped in for a drink.








After we finished at Old Town we headed for the train station. Oh my what a ride! We took a cab of course and had our friendliest cabby yet - Jack. He was very fond of us and enjoyed praticing his english. He even listened to the American Radio station. At one point we all enjoyed an impromptu karaokee session to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." But then we hit a traffic jam. And Jack changed. Jack became the face of Chinese road rage. It was horrible. Zooming in and out of traffic, driving up on the sidewalks, at one point we were millimeters from being t-boned by a minibus because Jack decided to pull a U-turn in the middle of a crowded street. I have never been so thankful to get out of a vehicle in all my life. We took this photo the day before, but it was only fitting to include it with this post.



Once inside the train station we found the waiting room for our train and it was packed!! We had yet to realize what a huge deal National Day is in China (I'll explain more about this later), but sufice it to say that the waiting room was about the size of a large gymnasium and it was completely full - as in wall to wall people - and we were the only non-asians in the whole place. You could just feel the slanty eyes staring at you!



Soon enough it was our turn to board the train. It was an overnight train so there were 4 tiny beds in each room. We had asked to be placed in the same room but quickly realized that we were in pairs in rooms next door to each other. Not cool!! We decided to plop down in one room and see if we could switch with whoever came along. The first guy to come along switched with us, no problem! Then came Asshole as we would refer to him from here on out. He refused to switch. No doubt the perve couldn't resist the temptation of sleeping with 3 young American girls. I even offered him money and the jerk wouldn't switch. It's not like the rooms were any different. Asshole. Finally Tiffany ran crying into the other room and the 3 nice, non-perve men agreed to switch with us so that Asshole could have the bed he was assigned and we could still be together. It was ridiculous that they had to do that but we were so thankful. This is for you Asshole!



On a side note, it is so much fun to call people terrible names without them knowing what you are saying. I know we called him asshole 10 times and he had no clue, LOL!

PS spell check isn't working so forgive all my misspellings!!