Finally, an update! Once again it's a travel-post, but this time I'm with my family in China instead of alone in Europe. My dad wanted to bring us to the World Expo, so my brother took leave off work to join us. An uncle came along too, for a business meeting with my dad on the second day of the trip.
Arriving at the Shanghai airport, the first thing you notice is the sheer number of Asian people. In Malaysia, we make up about a third of the population, and we're a minority in the States. In Shanghai, it's skyscrapers and
Asians as far as the eye can see. Anyways, at the airport, my bro decided that we should spring forty RMB a head on the maglev train to the city. It's one of the fastest trains in world and only needed seven minutes to reach Shanghai City.
Brother and I in the train. Damn, that's fast! It reached 432km/h but I didn't manage to get a good photo. Ridiculous! Also, since it's not touching the tracks (MAGnetic LEVitation) it was a super smooth ride.
After some trouble with our rooms and further haggling with the manager of our supposedly-five star hotel (it seems that you can haggle with anyone in
China!), we got our rooms all sorted out and went to look around town.
View from our hotel room. We hit an electronics mall where countless
dodgy Chinese people tried to scam us on everything; I'm pretty sure we were scammed even on things we thought were good deals, meh. Bought some useful stuff - hard disks, digital photo frames, usb drives - and some awesome junk - solar-powered iPhone charger (?), video-camera shaped like car-keys, usb TV receiver (?!!?!).
At night, we went for dinner with some of my dad's Chinese business partners. Had Cantonese cuisine for dinner; it was really different from Malaysian Chinese food! They didn't eat much rice, but had lots and lots of "Song" (dishes). It came up to more than 17 dishes by the time were done. Tasty stuff.
Le Pops had a business lunch (23 dishes wtf) the next day, so my mom, brother and I decided to sight-see and eat.
One of the streets we were on had huge Cartier, Ermenegildo Zegna, and Louis Vuitton buildings. Like a super version of or "Pavillion" back home.
Random street food.After much hunting, we found the famous "Sheng Jian Xiao Long Bao", where we had lunch.
I freaking love Xiao Long Bao! This is a fried version though, delicious all the same.
Look at that and tell me it doesn't make your mouth water. Come on. Crispy yet fragrant skin encasing tasty, tasty pork with a meaty broth in between the two. Mmmmm.
It buuurns!And the place is pretty "clean" too!
Every country should use these instead of the conventional A-B-C grades.
We passed by a bunch of strange shops through the day.
I'm pretty sure that's "Guardian".. hmmm. (Meh, turns out they're owned by the same country.)
Wth, this is a terrible name for.. anything.
"Hmmm, these shoes are kinda pricey.. What For? " then turn away -_-
My mom went back while my bro and I continued our adventure in Chinaland.
Along the way, we found tons of mistranslated signs. Hilarious failures in English.
First, a mild one:
Ceh
then, an awesome one:
?!?!?!?
One of the things we wanted to see was the newly-opened Apple Store in East Pudong (Shanghai is split into East and West Pudong; our hotel was on West, across the river from East). Eventually, we found it. Very nicely built and in prime location.
Exactly the same as the on in NYC though.
We spent the next hour or so trying to rush back to West Pudong for dinner with family and a new business dude. The two of us walked around for half an hour trying to hail a cab, but it turns out that cabs don't want to cross the river at rush hour, and buses would take hours. Had no choice but to take the train again and ended up late anyway.
One of the many dishes for the night: Tiger Prawns with dried chillies. Yum yum.
One my dad's favorite dishes, crabmeat (actual crab meat, not that pink-and-white garbage) with smooth tofu. Even in Shanghai, not many restaurants can make this dish well; it was pretty damn good. A+.
Went for a walk around the area after we were done and had some Haagen-Dazs for 20 ringgit a cup.
Here's an amazingly unglam pic; we ALL look bad!
Bro, Me, Uncle and Dad.
So we finally went for the expo the next day. We bought tickets late in the morning, so there was virtually no queue. Here's how far the queue can get:
WHAT
THE
BALLS.You know you're f*cked when they have to colour-code the queue fences.
We had to take an internal train to the actual expo-site. Five hundred thousand people a day visit the expo. FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND. Way too many people. Almost every country in the world had set up a "Pavilion", and people line up to line up to get in. Queues were about four-hours long per Pavilion wtf. The buildings were all really cool though!
Dunno which country; all the square things are kind of mobile and wave in the wind!
The Swiss Pavilion 
German PavilionThere's no way a couple of cranky old businessmen (dad and uncle) were going to line up for four-hours just to get into a building about a place they'd already been to. I didn't exactly fancy the idea either.
Turns out there are some tricks to get into some pavilions without the queue! Some, like Spain involved getting "Stamps" from booths about Spanish cities somewhere else in the expo. Others allowed free entry after you bought 200RMB tickets for dance shows. Lucky for us, we could get in the French and Belgian Pavilions simply by eating at their restaurants.
DAMN FRENCH RESTAURANT SUPER EXPENSIVE. Lunch sets at the French Pavilion cost us 400RMB (about RM200) each, wtf. And here's the wine list:
Wtf, 24k RMB bottle of wine. It's 200% MORE expensive than usual too. Crazy.
Here we are having beer and bread (bro taking pics). Beer was an additional 50RMB per person.
Lunch time!
My appetizer, pate de foie gras with a citrus-y sauce. Very nice.
My mom's shrimp appetizer thing.
My main course, lamb with baby carrots and some sort of pea paste.
Mom's main course, fish and risotto.
Bro's fish thing. Forgot.
Crumble in a roasted mango for dessert. Très bien!
My mom's green tea and chocolate mousse with ice-cream. I hate mousse.
THE END of Part One! Next time: Inside the Pavilions and more food!
As usual, some fun pics for your entertainment:
Ouch.
Slightly Depressing.
Long-Exposure shot of star trails above the Fuertes observatory in Cornell.
:)
Food was great and the building was really nice from outside, but the inside left a lot to be desired.
Random centrepieces and sculptures in every room, with famous photos and paintings along the walls. Honestly it's nothing that you can't see online.
Tourists were pretty funny though.
Whoop-dee-doo, went all the way to China and (could have) queued up for three hours to see Louis Vuitton bags!
They even dressed up some crazy lady to stand around and waggle her arms around, which was somehow supposed to promote LV. I don't get it.
See the little 1Malaysia up there -_-
No idea what this is supposed to be.
Are those.. crocs?!?
Thiiiiiis hot.
Here we are drinking some nice Belgian beer and cider. Had some wonderful Belgian fries too. Fun fact: fries were invented in Belgium; they make the best fries in the world, they're double-fried and served with mayo.
Gold tennis racquet anyone?
Sad jeweler working in a fishbowl. Poor guy would work on a diamond for a few minutes, hold it up for everyone to see, then work on it some more. All. Day. Long.
Creepy damn things
Not like this
4-hour queue, didn't bother.
The colours were constantly changing and moving along the length of the bridge; it went full rainbow every now and then, pretty cool!
Their performance included dudes getting floated around the top of the building by some massive fans somewhere inside.
Quite freaky to watch. Those things are just tubes that flap around in the wind, like the ones you see next to auto-showrooms.
Fail, I say.
Way too true
Dawwwwwww
You're a horrible, horrible person.
