30 August 2012
Bottle opener
I never went up the giant pair of pants whilst in Beijing, and until now I havent been up the bottle opener in Shanghai.
These are both names of large buildings in China. The bottle opener claims to have the worlds highest observation deck, as awarded by an Irish beer company. I kind of doubt this claim because Dubai managed to construct a building nearly twice as high as any before it, and so long as no ones planning to blow it up that day you are allowed to go up it and look out the window.
None the less, Shanghai seems especially proud of their bottle opener. Getting up to the top goes in many stages.
First you line up for your ticket, strangely at dusk which I assume is the most popular time, there was no line, there were however bollards to allow 1000 or more people to line up.
Then you descend downwards and watch an interactive diorama about Shanghai.
Following this you get to watch a short movie, which is reminiscent of the North Korean mass games. I especially liked when smiling babies heads came flying through the top of the bottle opener itself, vomiting rainbows of joy!
Then you get to go to see a presentaion on how the double decker lifts work, in 3 languages (Chinese, Japanese, Chinglish).
Finally you are allowed in the lift, but before it starts moving theres a flashing lights presentation.
You alight at only the 94th floor before going up a long escelator to the 97th floor.
Then finally, one last lift, with strobe lights for effect, and you are allowed out onto the 100th floor!
Time to reflect on the bottle opener. I rank this only the 3rd best massive building observation deck I have been up, here they are in order!
1. Osaka Umeda sky building - gets the top spot cause you are allowed outside on the roof, its nowhere near as high but its just so much better because you are outside.
2. Taipei 101. Its 1 better. No actually Taipei 101 is super impressive because its just so much higher than everything else in Taipei. Plus you get up close to the counter weight thing they stick in there because of daily earthquakes.
3. Bottle opener, proper name Shanghai World Financial Centre. I forgot to add above that exiting the building requires walking a labyrinth of expensive restaurants over 3 floors!
4. Tokyo metropolitan building. Dont ignore it, its free!
Interactive diorama. The rainbow was a preview of the movie you get in the next room, which I didnt photograph.
View from the top, looking down on the nearly as high dark and mysterious building they constructed right next door. I think it has an observation deck too.
Those are all very high buildings. Tom cruise did something on the roof of one of them in one of his mission impossible movies. Not the recent one, that was Dubai. Anything Shanghai can do, Dubai can do better, well except for food, culture, value, proximity to other places, history. Both cities have a lot of wealthy scary Russians getting about though.
This is the view in the very top. Its really not that crowded at all.
Sections of the floor are clear. This website is brought to you by New Balance.
Bonus photo with less glass reflections.
The best view I ever had whilst relieving myself. Girls dont get this luxury. Not only do you have to figure out squat toilets, but now you get no view either.
The top of the scary building lit up in white. OK no more photos from up here.
I was up the top of there somewhere. You cant see the actual bottle opener opening, google it if you dont know what it looks like
Food photo! I had one of my favourite meals for Lunch, so why not another for dinner? In the bottom of the super enormous super brand mall I found a Taiwan noodle joint. The beef noodle soup was great, thick hand cut noodles. Tea was good too.
Too many places to eat, not enough time to try them all.
Yet another tourist photo. Along the boardwalk theres lots of very annoying people selling high powered lasers. They shine them on you to get your attention. I had to walk for most of the night with my eyes closed.
These are seriously bright, eyeball damaging lasers, they shine them up at buildings to prove how bright they are.
I have no doubt they would happily shine them at helicopters, which in Australia nearly brought about the re introduction of the death penalty a few years ago.