This will be about my 1st trip to China & Japan. I headed to Shanghai because my brother was heading there for a business trip so my mum and I decided to tag along After 3 days in Shanghai, my mum and I would fly to Osaka to continue the trip. Originally wanted to go to Okinawa but I think you need a car to get around in Okinawa and I haven't driven since passing my driving test 3 years ago! And because I really really wanted to go to Universal Studios Japan.
This trip was only planned like 3 weeks before we left so it was pretty rushed. We booked Singapore-Shanghai return tickets on SQ for a steal at ~$500 per person. I think there was some two-to-go deal or something. And booked Shanghai-Osaka return tickets on China Eastern for also ~$500. This would probably be cheaper than flying home directly from Osaka.
For hotels, in Shanghai we crashed my brother's hotel room at Hilton Shanghai, while we booked Hotel Monterey Grasmere Osaka which is pretty conveniently located just above JR Namba station, beside the bus terminal and beside the entrance to Osaka-Namba subway station. It is also a short 5min walk to the food street Dotonbori and shopping area at Shinsaibashi.
Day 1 - 11 Dec 2017
The flight was at 1.15am, and we got served supper at that time! I thought we would be getting breakfast. Upon landing, there was a super long queue at immigration. After finally clearing that, we went to the taxi stand because taxis are really quite cheap in Shanghai.
Unfortunately, we got assigned to a pretty horrifying taxi driver. The taxi smelled terribly of cigarettes, the driver turned down the windows which was good to remove the smell of cigs, but then there was pollution. Worse, the driver kept coughing then at one moment he just poked his head out of the window and spat out omg. (This spitting thing is common place in China, but it never fails to disgust us lol.) The traffic was really bad too, so we took about 1.5h to reach Hilton. The fare was around 43sgd, which wasn't too bad.
This is the junior suite at Hilton Shanghai! There isn't anything extra, it's just that the room is humongous haha.
After putting our stuff down, we went to the executive lounge for free breakfast. It was pretty good - omelettes, waffles, bacon, muffin, croissant, porridge, xiao long bao, smoked salmon, salad. Feasting!!
While my brother stayed behind to do work, my mum and I left the hotel around 11 to start exploring. My plan was just to walk the entire Nanjing road that spans from Jingan district (where Hilton is) to The Bund (Waitan). It's pretty damn long and takes about an hour plus without stopping. But of course we stopped to shop so we took ages and only reached The Bund at around 430.
It was really hard to shop though since it's winter and everywhere is selling coats and long sleeved shirts only! We only managed to buy a few pieces of clothing from this place called Old Navy, as well as the usual H&M. Also tried the royal milk tea whose packaging looks exactly like Liho's. And they have cheese milk tea too. First time drinking hot milk tea, but it was super shiok in this weather. I think the temperature was around 7-8 degrees Celsius.
After a super duper long walk, finally reached The Bund and of course, took many many pictures.
I had watched Jieqiong & Somi's Battle Trip to Shanghai where they took some underground tunnel to the opposite side of the Huangpu river so I wanted to do that too. After a long time trying to find the entrance to the underground tunnel, we bought the most expensive package, which was return tickets for the underground tunnel and a ticket to go up the Oriental Pearl Tower for about 50sgd.
I wanted to see the sunset at the tower, but unfortunately I kept getting lost, so when we managed to go up, it was dark. Oh well, night views aren't too bad either. There was also some history of the buildings but it seemed like I was the only person interested in reading those lol.
There was another level for a transparent viewing deck. That was REALLY cold. I thought that was it but we got directed to some 'vision of shanghai in the next 70 years', then to an arcade area, followed by another observatory deck (with finally no glass windows!) and then finally to the last lift in the middle of the tower to go down.
Had to rush back to Puxi (west of Huangpu river) from where we were (Pudong - east of Huangpu river) to meet my brother for dinner. We had SUCH trouble hailing a cab but we finally got one and got to the restaurant at almost 8. The place is called Di Shui Dong along Mao Ming Nan Road, and it serves Wuhan cuisine. We ordered the double headed fish, chicken, vegetables and steamed egg. Everything except the egg was mad spicy!! But it was delicious :)
Took a 25min stroll back to our hotel to burn off fats after dinner haha!
Day 2 - 12 Dec 2017
We had breakfast at the lounge, then headed out to try the metro system. The plan was to go to Zhujiajiao ancient water town, so we got off at DaShiJie station and walked to Pu'an road to take the Huzhu Express Line. It's hard to miss it because there's so many people queuing!
The bus ride was about an hour and brought us to Zhujiajiao. The ancient town itself is a short 5-10min walk away. Decided to buy tickets to 8 places in the town for 60rmb because it's pretty cheap, but you could get away with not buying the tickets as the town is free to enter.
There are a lot of shops along the river, lots of food to try. Tried some pomegranate juice!
We were on a mission to cover the 8 spots. First was the Kezhi garden which was quite nice and QUIET. It's essentially a super huge garden built by some governor.
The second stop is a watercolour exhibition!
Third was the Yuanjin buddhist temple.
City of god temple, where we got scammed into donating for them to 'pray for our family's peace and health' lol.
The next few places were nothing much - a great post office, another art exhibition, a handicraft place and a TCM place.
We tried some street food too for lunch - a large cracker that tasted salty but was good, a sesame bing which was sweet, and something else that I don't know the name of but it's like a tiny tausahpiah? They were all quite nice! Got some of the sesame pastries, the tausahpiah tasting ones and some walnut crackers to bring home.
It was around 4 by them so we headed to the bus station to go back.
It was almost 6 by the time we reached because of the traffic. From Pu'an Lu, we walked to the shopping area. With some nice views along the way too.
Went to Raffles City and got amused by how popular BreadTalk is there. Also tried Godiva ice cream!!
From there, headed to People's Underground Square to find the 'sprawling underground mall'. With much difficulty, because the station is HUGE. but anyway we did find it and it was quite sprawling but it was all winter clothes as expected!
Also tried some food! There was a franchise branch selling wrapped Peking duck so we got those. Yum, I LOVE Peking duck.
We then we headed to Yang's Fried Dumpling to try their famous shengjian, which is fried xiaolongbao. Not bad, though I didn't know there's soup inside so i spilled mine :(
That's it for the long day 2, after which we took the train back.
Day 3 - 13 Dec 2017
Skipped the hotel breakfast and went to try their 'traditional breakfast' at some particular corner of a particular street. Had dabing (for 2RMB omg) and a jianbing (5RMB) for a pretty filling breakfast. Wanted to try the danbing but the guy refused to answer me and just kept repeating tian (sweet) or xian (salty) for my dabing so...
Took the metro to Yuyuan station to go to the Yu garden which is another tourist trap. Tickets in are 30rmb which is pretty cheap. Some nice ancient pavilions, ponds and gardens inside - good for photo taking!
Note those warriors on the rooftop!
Spent about an hour there cos the place is quite big (and very confusing cos I can't tell the difference between this tower and that tower, this garden and that garden).
Outside the garden, there's a whole area of stalls along the 'old street'. Bought choudoufu. which wasn't very smelly.
And then decided to queue up for the Nanxiang xiaolongbaos cos we're Singaporeans and we love queuing. It's 22rmb for 12 pork + crab xlbs which is super duper cheap!! Dintaifung in Sg sells 10 for $10. My verdict: the dtf one nicer haha. The nanxiang one is apparently more Shanghainese style so the skin is thicker.
Also, the ordering system is very stressful. Surviving in china is just very stressful cos people don't have a sense of orderliness haha.
After that, headed to Xintiandi via metro to start our tour of the french concession area. Xintiandi is just a giant fancy mall. And then we went to times square, which is another fancy mall. There are a ton of malls, and they all have super bad business.
Pretty french concession area!
My brother was done with work and wanted to meet us at Garden Hotel which has nice architecture so we walked almost 30min to that place.
After that, we walked around the area along Huaihai road and Renjin road for more French architecture haha.
Decided to head to Tianzifang cos I read that it was interesting so we spent another 20min walking there. And stopped to get some scallion pancakes (I think?) along the way, and a hot chocolate at Familymart, which was going at 1 for 1 LOL.
Tianzifang is a really nice quaint area, a bit like Insadong of korea.
I love buying weird useless stuff, so I bought a wooden train (I collect transport items in every country. Wanted to get the ancient mini cooper which looked super nice but was significantly more ex), THREE photos (they are blue, green and orange themed and would make an awesome series imo) and an ancient timepiece.
My brother kept wanting to go to this place called Grandma's for dinner, so we took a taxi to a mall at Xujiahui, but turns out we were at the WRONG GRANDMA'S. So we took a taxi to the correct mall (which was near where we originally were ._.)....and got told it closed down a while ago LOL. So we ended up eating at some random dimsum place called dimdimsum. But the non dimsum food was way better than their dimsum haha.
Took another taxi to another mall to visit the xiaomi store cos my brother wanted to get xiaomi stuff, and then finally a taxi back to the hotel. That's the end of our short 3 days in Shanghai! I think we did manage to see quite a bit. My first proper trip to China was to Shandong with my school about 10 years ago, and I've been to Xiamen as a day trip from HK and Zhuhai as a day trip from Macau so this was my first proper China holiday. I think Zhujiajiao and Tianzifang were the best parts.
Osaka in the next part!