Travel foibles – downs and then ups of starting a new adventure.

Shanghai was a risk. Geoff wanted not to be travelling and he wanted even less to be having the trip take any longer than it needed to. On the plane, brief stop, mainly sleeping in Singapore transit hotel and then continue on to wherever when we had to go.  Wendy wanted to make a change. Not go to Singapore or if we did to explore it a bit. Completely out of the question, too hot muggy and full of shops. Alternative tack was obviously required. Suggestions of maybe travelling via Dubai on Emirates and stopping there for a couple of nights --- “What on earth for!!! And I don’t like Emirates.” His only trip on them ever was to Sydney once and that was OK but as you get older you get more set in your ways and so it was that the compromise was a stop for 48 hours in Shanghai.

 We first went to Asia in 1981 for 6 weeks. Travelled to Singapore and then to Sarawak and  Sabah.Then mainland Malaysia and Singapore and home. It was good, although we did cut the trip short by a week and came home as we were sick of the heat and just wanted to eat fish and chips, which we did from the Hataitai fish and chip shop and I was promptly very ill. 5 months pregnant and hadn’t been sick on any of our trip until we got home to kiwi food.

A few visits since then but for me never to real China.   This was it.

 Flew Air New Zealand partly for cost reasons but mainly as we thought it would be better than the alternatives since we couldn’t fly on the favourite, Singapore!!  We are back of the plane flyers but I have never been as uncomfortable as I was on this trip. Seats were hard and the headrest is too high to be of any use to shorties but even for taller people like Geoff the headrest wouldn’t stay in one place so was of minimal use anyway. The food was marginally edible – scrambled eggs  in the morning were quite similar in texture to porridge which has been sieved and tinted a very light lemon colour; didn’t bother with wine as I was wanting to sleep; Entertainment system was lacking in content unless  you were aged between 4 -30 and not needing anything  worthwhile to watch; Staff had not learned the pleasures of turning their lips upwards ,armrests would not rise completely and I was stuck in between two people who were sound asleep.  
I did eventually get to sleep though I think with the help of some sleep support pills I had bought from the chemist that morning. Thank goodness for pills, --- one for my back and one for the sleeping --- eventually off to a happy place somewhere.

Arrived in Shanghai tired after a few very late nights and early mornings before we left Christchurch so not a good start but we were going to make the most of this holiday. My bag is very heavy and this is not what I had planned. I have a small pack as my carryon luggage which will double as my around Mont Blanc pack so I wanted to take either another light pack or a mid-sized wheeled suitcase.  As I am currently feeling in a thrifty frame of mind I did not want to buy something unnecessary but now realise that was very short sighted. At home we have three LARGE suitcases courtesy of trips the girls have taken. All too big to cart easily on a metro or similar, and also very big to store in the van when we pick it up. There are also 4 mid-sized cabin baggage cases which it turned out were just a bit small when I wanted to include marmite and honey etc, for the kiwi refugees.  I tried the smaller tramping packs and they were too small – sounds a bit like goldilocks and her friends, so on Friday at about 4pm decided it had to be my big pack and I had to pack it right then. Still trying to finish cleaning the house for tenants and waiting for Geoff to pack his bag so I could see if he had space for my extra necessities; he was still trying to finish a project so it was wiser not to interrupt or ask questions especially  if they related to dilemmas I had because of my packing inefficiencies!!. So all my good intentions of reassessing my luggage requirements went to the wall and I panicked, just packed stuff --- already reduced in quantity twice, into the big pack. It is heavy and I am a bit older than I was 40 years ago and so do not feel like walking through subway and metro crowds under load. Geoff is of a frame of mind to not ‘pander‘ to my load requirements so has a pack which is about 9 kilos lighter than mine. This has been discussed!!!!

The upshot is that when we landed at Pudong all good intentions of catching the Maglev and metro to our hotel vaporised and we got an expensive but VERY comfortable car into the city. It was the most comfortable I had been for about 20 hours.

Taxis can be an interesting window into new places. In a car with a local who knows the zone and can possibly introduce you to a new place. We have had a few of this kind in various places. In many places even if the level of English is not good the driver is very willing to practice. This driver was not of that variety. He knew the general direction and was assisted by a bossy sounding TomTom woman. He was intent on getting us to our destination as quickly as possible  -- maybe he knew Geoff wanted to be on the Maglev and was making up for it, but even  Geoff was concerned enough to lookup speed limits on freeways in China and ask him to slow down from 120 to 80. I suspect it was less a safety concern than a concern that we may have to pay the fine if he received one!!

Traffic was intense and moving fast and the closer we got to town it moved through high roadways above the ground. As part of the focus of this trip is housing alternatives we looked at the accommodation options with some interest but minimal admiration. So many really high and very boring and sterile looking apartment blocks. Some areas though where you could see the smaller lower level traditional streets and houses but many of these were in the process of being removed and we assumed would be replaced by something higher and with greater people capacity.

But there were trees, some older but including a new forest the city was trying to develop closer to the airport.

The area of the city we were aiming for is a mixture of old and new architecture styles and not many really high ones although these are obvious on the skyline.

Our hotel was the Old YMCA and opposite a big park and just a 5 minute walk from People ‘s Square which is a huge garden area in the centre of the city.

I had anticipated People’s Square being a bit like the pictures you see of Tianamen Square in Beijing – bare and barren and capable of holding major gatherings. People’s Square possibly reflects the history of the development of Shanghai as a multicultural city with a very strong international trade and commercial base. Large numbers of trees and small resting areas and recreational paths. One of many similar havens in the city. Trees give the city a calmness which belies the fact there are many millions of people living there.

Many of the streets are lined with Plane trees and these have even been retained despite the fact they limit the access for larger trucks and buses. The  London Plane tree is renowned as a good street tree and much of this reputation is justified by the success of it in Shanghai. The bark is beautiful and the greenery is gentle and not too dense so creates shade but not depressing darkness.

We parked outside the Hotel Marvel and walked in and up to our room, having paid a tip of too much to the taxi driver because we did not have any small money and were not sure of the tipping policy yet. Took the independent stance and carried our own bags to the room partly because we do and partly because we did not want to feel beholden to the porter until we had the tipping thing sorted. Felt a bit silly but put it down to tiredness and start of holiday/ return to Asia confusion. I opened the door to the room with some trepidation as despite excellent Trip Advisor reviews I had got  what I thought was a very good deal of $NZ 135 for two nights  and I was hoping it was not going to be a big let-down. No way. An excellent deal and a very comfortable huge room. I was smiling. We had arrived in Shanghai but decided a wee snooze would help us enjoy  our first steps outside so that is what we did. We fell asleep very easily and woke up 2 hours later ready for lunch and the city.