23rd March - Shanghai

Woke up feeling pretty crappy but didn't want to waste another day in Shanghai so Matt planned a days travel itinerary so we could do all the other stuff we'd wanted to do.

We started off the day by going to the Post Office to post Eve's present. It wasn't too difficult but I did wish that I'd had the forethought to ask someone to write down what the present was in Chinese instead of having to spoil the surprise by stating what was in in on the customs declaration form they stick on the front. We also tried to post a few other things home but after the guy had spent ages processing it all, we decided that it wasn't worth the price of posting it and asked him for it back. Considering how much messing around he'd had to do he was quite pleasent about it all - which is more than most of the other people we've come across in public service roles can manage.

We then took the metro to find the electronics market which was meant to be at one of the stations. We searched the station and round about it a little but couldn't see it. It was grey, damp and cold and the area was pretty rough looking so we didn't venture too far. I was secretly relieved to be spared the wet and nippy trudge around a load of stuff I would not recognise or ever work out how to use but I did feel sorry for Matt because he was looking forward to it. Typically, we spotted it when we were already on the Metro and heading to the next place but Matt refused to go back.

Next stop was Pudong, the area across the river where all of the skyscrapers were. It wasn't what we expacted and was very run-down. We'd expected to see suited business people glued to their mobile phones and on their way to their next lunch meeting but just seemed to be a combination of high-end business and low-end social housing. It was quite odd to see where the base of the sky-scrapers originated when they'd looked so impressive from the Bund. After freezing our butts off for a while, we thought we'd head to the area of the Buddhist temple, have a gander at the giant jade buddha residing there and try to find some of the vegetarian food that the guidebook claimed would be abundant.

The Metro stop was named after the Jing'an temple and it wasn't hard to find when we got out of the station. It's golden curling roof made a stunning contrast with the adjacent high-rises and it looked totally out of the place in the city. Stranger still, when we got closer, we started to wonder if it was the wrong place as the bottom level seemed to be occupied by expensive shops and boutiques.

It didn't look open and we were getting hungry so we circled it looking for any one of the vegetarian restaurants that were supposed to cater to the droves of Buddhist visitors arriving there every year. When we couldn't find one we tried the Tourist Info, hoping that we might be met with more enthusiasm than we've exerienced so far. We were almost overwhelmed by their indifference but one of them did at least bother to let us know that the nearest vegetarian restaurant was apparently a bus ride away.

We really could not be bothered with the buses and so looked at what was on offer inside the metro station. We found a 'Gourmet Noodle' place that sold vegetable noodles and so stopped there before I got too hungry grumpy. It was vastly disappointing and seemed to contain some weird sponge-like animal/vegetable but there nothing much too offensive about noodles in watery veg stock.

The only higlight of the day was finding a Carrefour and actually getting our hands on some much desired and eagerly searched for French bread and blue cheese! Carrefour has been the staple of our European travels and so finding one that sold a few continental bits was pretty heavenly after a rubbish day.