Shanghai

I woke on Friday morning to meet Robbie's wife Yvette in their kitchen. I felt really bad as I had just arrived with Robbie last night unannounced. Yvette is originally from Holland but left 8 years ago and has since worked all over Europe and moved to Shanghai a year ago. She now worked with Robbie for a company in Shanghai that helps Western companies have products produced in China and the exported around the world. Yvette in the kitchen of her apartment

Talk about a small world I mentioned to Yvette that I wanted to meet up with Bernard Loras (one of my bosses at CW) daughter, Sophie and she not only knew her but was close friends with her. It was Sophie's birthday that weekend so her and her partner had gone to Beijing to run in the Great Wall marathon. Crazy! Running a Marathon is nuts but to run one up the Great Wall of China, insane. Anyway it appeared that I would not get to see Sophie on this stay in Shanghai.

Shanghai from Robbie and Yvette's house

I booked a train back to Hong Kong with Wayne which left on Monday so I had three days to see Shanghai. Most of the days I spent on my own exploring the city and getting to know Shanghai. Shanghai is huge and has so many people it blow my mind. Just to give you an idea how big we are talking: they have a population close to that of Australia living in a city with a smaller area then Melbourne! Traffic in Shanghai

There are just so many people and high riser buildings. The average height of buildings in Shanghai is 33 stores.








The city however is not just high riser but has little pockets of old French buildings called the French Concession and other areas of older Chinese buildings. The city like Melbourne is build around a river and has a lovely river area called the Bund.

The Bund in Shanghai

Taking the subway in Shanghai. I think it is worse than Japan!

Ok enough of sounding like a Lonely Plant. (Which is banned in China due to comments about Mao and Taiwan)

Mao and his army.

On Friday night Steve took Wayne and me out to 'Aussie drinks' which are a networking night for Australian expats (but lots of different expats go). I meet a few really interesting people. One guy was running a gold mine in Mongolian Gold mines. It appears mining is huge in Mongolia right now. After making a few friends we went to a bar called 'Maxi'. Steve and Wayne played some pool but I was really tried so went to bed early.


On Saturday night I went to an Irish bar with Yvette and Robbie to watch the FA Cup final. I am not really into soccer but thought I should learn before arriving in England. Everyone in the pub was going for Man U so were naturally rather pissed off at the result. I couldn't carry less and was glad someone actually scored.


On Sunday night Yvette and Robbie were having a dinner party so I helped them cook. well actually i just made garlic bread which ended up too garlicky. Four friends joined us for the dinner party. There was a French couple and a guy from Switzerland and a girl from Australia (Melbourne, RMIT architect student- haha small world).

It was a lovely evening and I headed off to Hong Kong the next day with Wayne. We were in the soft sleeper. A lot classier than I had ridden before. I got a whole cabin to myself!

My Cabin on the train. All class!

Wanye introduced me to the dining cart. I never knew there was one! We just chatted for most of the trip. Wayne did the trans-Mongolian trip 3 years a go so I got all the inside gossip.He got me even more excited about the trip. I did not think it was possible. The 20 hour trip back to Hong Kong flew by and I was soon back at Jess and Mike's place to get the rest of my stuff and start my trip!

I had to leave and come back to mainland China like this cos my visa would only let me stay 30 days at a time and I thought I would get most of my work for my dad out of the way first.