Shanghai Part 1

Shanghai Part 1

Me and bob went to shanghai. on the way there we took the 11 hr "soft sleeper" train. this means 4 bunkbeds to a compartment. Me, bob and 2 strangers that also didn't know each other. We were assigned the top beds on our tickets. it cost about $70 each. It wasn't too bad. The train was very clean and so was the dining car. There was even a little bar where i talked to some people. Make note that bob was still sick and didnt sleep on the train that much so he was in for one humdinger of a day which started at 7am in the sweltering Shanghai sun/haze/smog.

the train station. there is a line to get into the building as well as a line to do everything else.

i don't know if you know this but there are kind of a lot of people in china.

look at that cleance btwn my head and the ceiling. that is a luxury that is not afforded to you on the "hard sleeper" train as we would find out 3 days later.

too small. what's up with all the footflops being too small for my feet in china?

not as beautiful as the dejeerling limited. not as funny or fun either.

kitchen in the dining car.

this is a hot water machine that people use for tea kettles and ramen cups. People were lined up to get their ramen on.

it says finger licking braised pork flavor in english.

I took a bunch of fotos of bob in the dead of the night. i had to set it at 1600 iso and 15 second exposure to get this magnificently grainy shot of bob. he told me later that day that he knew i was taking the photos and could hear me. even better!

ITS NOW TIME PEOPLE!

Bob was feeling amazing after no sleep and we had to pay 1 yuan to use the gross public bathroom to brush our teeth and wash up before our grueling day. They used a giant squeegee to clean the floor. gross.

i did not do a good job of capturing this sight. when we turned the corner we met this dedicated bike and scooter street that was bustling with thousands of people. this picture does not capture this. i slapped myself for you.

me and bob are idiots. we spend a lot of time arguing and yelling at each other over directions and maps and stuff. we wandered around for an hour trying to find the front of the train station and never even found it.

checking for leaks in the tube, i dont know why they don't use soap in their water.

Shanghai had the coolest hutongs i've seen in china so far. there is by far tons more laundry hung out to dry everywhere.

the police presence and traffic enforcement seems to be firmly in place in shanghai. the traffic is less crazy, less people cutting each other off. less crazy is still way more crazier than NY though. I saw tons of people getting tickets for what i am guessing is riding their bikes and scooters on the sidewalk. these guy here are at a lot of cross walks where they actually have a rope across the crosswalk until you can go. in beijing people just ride anything anywhere at anytime they want, it seems pretty lawless.

i love eggs. these things were delicious. some kind of pancake type thing with a fried egg.

this was the tourist tunnel. thats what its called. our timeout shanghai book from 2006 said it was way cool so we did it and it sucked so bad. it was a bunch of flashing lights and you ride on these little tram things at 1 mile per hr.

i like how some places have these on top of their walls. someone hand placed all these broken glass shards in this cement. people power amazement again!

there is a ton of bamboo used in Shanghai as scaffolding amongst many things. amazing. there are some 20 story buildings totally scaffolded with bamboo.

these images were all from the sexuality museum which was attatched to the tourish tunnel promotion. it was probably the only worthwhile part of the 3 part ticket we were suckered into buying. the 3rd part was this sh!tty sea world thing which was just a bunch of little freshwater fishtanks and crappy smelly stuffed models.