Due to being burnt and tired from yesterdays trek in the dusty city, today I decided to try and keep indoors.
First up I walked in the blazing sun for a couple of hours and spent a small fortune on coffee.
If you want to make 1000% profit, open a coffee chain in China. A cup of coffee from starbucks costs the same as a 3 course meal, yet all their stores are still busy.
Before anyone says try a local chain, there really isnt one. My hotel claims to make coffee but I think they add coffee creamer to coffee flavoured pudding cups. Theres Pacific coffee from Hong Kong which is too hit and miss, one time I think they forgot to put the coffee in, and theres Costa coffee from the UK that costs even more!
I did try a new place today, read on for that in the photos, it was a total failure.
Hence my travel tip, if in any asian country, Starbucks or brace yourself for an unpleasant new experience in beverage disasters.
After getting just a bit more burnt, I headed into the metro station for a game of station roulette. I studied the map for a while, and spotted the last station on one of the lines is called 'Aerospace Museum'. Double win for me, get to go to the edge of town and see some rusty old jets.
So I boarded the metro and settled in for the 30 minute or so ride, transferring twice.
Nearing the end of the line the train came up to the surface, amongst big fuel tanks, cranes, piles of asbestos and rubble and an endless sea of unfinished identical buildings. Strange place for a museum I thought.
Eventually the train got to the last station, and theres a sea of scooters and busses to ferry people beyond the reach of the metro. They eye me suspiciously.
I look around, and cant see any museum. I study the station map which is all in Chinese, and it seems to show theres nothing at all there, in fact theres really only 3 or 4 streets on the map.
Suspicious now, I head off towards the only large finished looking building I can see, passing what I think were pop up villages where construction workers live, in amongst some really old and small looking farms with old men singing to themselves looking after them.
The building turned out to be a concrete factory. As I head back, people are laughing at me, one guy crouching in the shadows speaks in perfect english.
Him: just admit you are lost already
Me: Never! You speak good English
Him: Yeah, Im from Chicago, Im here visiting my sick grandfather, I wish he would hurry up and die so I can go home
Me: OK...wheres the museum?
Him: I am pretty sure its one of those piles of rubble you are walking around, it was bulldozed a decade ago
Me: Fantastic.
Still one of my favourite buildings. There will be boring photos today as I never found my desired destination.
A sea of floating plant things in Peoples Square. Theres more to this square than I knew, including a fun park with a roller coaster, a waterfall, a lot of guys walking backwards, and guys who appear to be molesting trees.
My second coffee came from Marks and Spencer. It cost more than Starbucks. I went here because it was open, and the air conditioning was great.
Unfortunately, I dont think it was coffee. It tasted more like crushed ants. It certainly looks great, and I watched the guy using the manual machine freshly grind the beans, use the tamper, run water through it first, all the things you would expect. But wherever he got his coffee from, they must have accidentally cross bred it with ants.
This is my kind of street garden. Hundreds of metres of this street is lined with Chillies. I dont see any reason why you couldnt eat them? I could add them to my coffee to improve it.
Descending into the metro and there was a fancy underground mall with an excellent looking Xiao Long Bao place, and they were indeed excellent.
I only accidentally pierced one out of 10 with the chopsticks before it got in my mouth, which is a sign of good quality.
I also got a mystery soup, which I think may have been duck blood. It was very rich tasting, I added a lot of street chilli, ginger and vinegar.
The site of the former aerospace museum, now a transport hub and construction site. Why not change the name to FORMER aerospace museum?
I promised more waste management pics, this is the local recycling centre. People bring piles of cardboard and bags of cans, and get some sort of card stamped by the guy in the chair. I have seen my future.
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.