Another train to Shanghai and we arrive early on the morning of the 15th. The Whore of the Orient? Perhaps not these days. Lots of skyscrapers and alot of money flying around. We decide to sample the only Maglev train in the world open to paying passengers, between Shanghai's main airport and the city centre. Now this may sound like a strange thing to do but when you have trundled across Siberia on an old, wooden, German-made, Russian train at 30 km/h to travel 30 km in 8 minutes at a top speed of 430 km/h in China is exciting. The experience really is mad, almost as good as flying, but not quite. Cars on the motorway to the side of the track going in the same direction look like they are driving backwards.
We get back to the city after the return leg of our Maglev and decide to take in the view in the bar at the top of the Hyatt hotel in Pudong (the area with all the skyscrapers). Although its cloudy that day, but the Gin & Tonic is excellent. We also take in the massive atrium in the hotel which is silly-high. We cross the river back to the Bund, buy a couple of fake Rolex and take a taxi across town to meet Billy, a chap Mohsin and Justin knew from Uni. Billy takes us to a dumpling restaurant where the food is great - its all about the scolding-hot sauce inside each dumpling, full of flavour.
We dont get up to much the next day apart from walking, shopping and eating street food. We managed to find a chain of shops of my middle namesake. And Mohsin had a cut-throat razor shave. It was all very exciting but in my opinion the city did not have an atmosphere as good as Beijing (but it does have a big magnet train).
The morning after we board the ferry to Japan, experiencing a testing exit from Chinese customs - they made each of us open our bags up and pull everything out, even when leaving their country! Alas we get on the ferry and its great, not to big and pretty quiet, although alot of westerners on board. We cross the choppy South China Sea on the first day and come closer the the Japanese Archipelago (string of Islands) on the second. We spent our time perfecting our ping pong techniques, and of course purchasing the ship t-shirt.
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