Day 2 in Shanghai, we woke bright and early.. the humidity made me hair curly.. hehehe..
We went for breakfast at the hotel and Ace just wanted to eat chocolate croissants and nothing else... bring him eat buffet very loogi money.. hahahah.. Force fed him some hash browns as well as I foresee us doing lots of walking...
Found two peach blossoms and since I am not sure if I will see more of these trees, decided to take pics with them.. but they look sort of sad and withered after weathering the really heavy rain the night before:(
After that, we went to book our tickets to watch the ERA circus that many of our friends recommended:) And then we are ready to go... today, we have alot to accomplish. In my mind, I would like to visit Yu Yuan, The Bund, Tian Zi Fang and the circus all in one day! Hopefully, we can complete all on our inteniary...First stop, Yu Yuan... It is supposedly this beautiful garden built in the ming dynasty and is currently preserved as it is known for his architectural wonders as well...
But before I go into that, I must tell you this story I heard tat made it one of the places I wanted to visit....
Long time ago, there was a group of people who were in Shanghai and they decided to go to Yu Yuan for some sight seeing. As the group consisted of Singaporeans and Malaysians, they were all excited to see some sights not so common in south east asia...
They all got into the cab and one Malaysian counterpart sat in front.. so naturally, he was the one who gave directions. With his heavy Malaysian accent, he told the driver, "我们要去预圆.." But because of his malaysian twang, it came out sounding like "我们要去鱼圆.."
Very unfortunately for them, there really was a FISHBALL ROAD in shanghai and so the driver brought them there instead!:) hahahaa... Anyway, I was told after this story, that it is amazing that the driver got it wrong as there are not that many sight seeing places and one of the must see place is Yu Yuan..
To avoid this mistake, we decided to take the metro there:) Hahahaha.. no lah, there is a metro stop right beside it and since our hotel is near the metro, we decided to take the metro as part of the travel adventure;)
Exploring the city as we walked.. red bus in front of a red house... The sign on top of the building says 红屋! Hehehe.. tat is our fav chinese restaurant in dubai leh!:)
When we arrived in Shanghai, we noticed tat many of the people were still dressed in woollen clothes. Max said he wanted to look like he fit in so he got out the wooley sweater that his friend gave him to wear. While walking, he said he feels he can blend in and look very Chinese..I, however, beg to differ:) Most of the chinese men wear wooly BUT plain coloured sweaters:) Max's sweater has got prints and I told him that these prints actually look very INDIAN! wahahahahahaahahahahahahhahaha... He insisted, however, that since these were purchased in London, they should look very english!
Too bad.. Ace is more than 1.3m, so no free travel for him on the metro..
Saw a magazine dispenser machine.. interesting.. wonder why I dun see them in Singapore:)
The thing is.. the moment Ace gets into the metro, he would want to treat this as a playground and will start to climb up and down the poles...
So he has been training his arms on the train.. but he is only allowed to do that on empty trains with adult supervision and unless there is no one else nearby...
When we alighted, there were no signs to say where Yu Yuan was.. so we decide to just follow the crowd... but the crowd petered out and so we just anyhow walk lah.. we found some lovely blooms.. here is a plum blossom:)
And the famous peach blossom.. it is supposed to be blooming season for peach blossoms and there was supposed to be some sort of flower exhibition but it was too far away from our hotel so I can only make do with taking photos here:)
Photog Max insisted I must look away so tat it looks nicer..
I insisted on taking one more looking at the camera:)
Then we saw it!
The streets of Yu Yuan...
And then we noticed something VERY STRANGE! That there was a old chinese couple in their fifties, standing right in the middle of the zebra crossing.. they put their bag down and stared at their camera as if fiddling with it to take pictures.. they were there for a good 3 minutes and they were oblivious to all the cars on the streets!We wondered why these people were like tat and found out later from a cab driver that it was the law in china that if anyone got run down by a car, it will ALWAYS be th driver's fault. Only in the case where the person run down has a letter in his pocket stating that he had purposely gone onto the roads to end his life will you be free from responsibilities!
Max says now we can close our eyes and cross the roads in China!:) ahahahahaha
We found a temple there but mindful of how we were made to pay in Lijiang, we decided to admire it from outside instead of going in;)
Beside the temple was an art street and these artistes are amazing! This one just used black ink, his fingers and paper and he can draw beautiful chinese style mountain and water paintings!
This one can make dough into your likeliness on the spot!
This one was not at his table but he can make insects from just grass!:)
This one is hand painting of a perfume bottles... the painting is so nice!!
Yue Lao temple.. praying for true love, anyone?:P
Old streets of Yu Yuan...
Inside we found many interesting shops that sold nice art pieces.. we found out later that you can bargain one.. listed price 75yuan.. after bargain can go down to 40 yuan and the same item cost at least 4 times as much in the airport!
And then by chance, we walked into this area outside the real YU YUAN garden.. the garden is by ticket entry.. which means you have to pay.. few people were willing to pay so they were all milling outside...
I tried to take pics without people and so the pic still looks beautiful and peaceful...
There was someone frying tea there as well...
And some geese in the pond!:)
This is a pic with the people! The orgininally very nice scenery became not so nice when I saw the crowd... wa kauz! Can die!! I suddenly wondered if it was a good idea to come here cos just looking at the crowd made me want to go home.. it gives a different perspective to the saying "人山人海"...BUT, let me just say tat this is still not the most number of people I have seen in one place in China... there was a more exciting people mountain people sea adventure awaiting me when I reached Hangzhou!:)
Anyway, we decided to buy a ticket and go into the preserved garden just to take a look at how it is like inside... and I WAS GLAD WE WENT IN!:)
(More about the garden in the next post...)
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