Shanghai

We were in Shanghai from 28Sep to 7Oct. It was Johnny's first trip to China and glad that he "survived". When my mum was there a week ago, her trip was affected by the typhoon. When we arrived, the weather was quite warm, not like the usual autumn weather.

The sky at SHA is very different from SIN. The place is hazy most of the time, the traffic is very messy, the pavements not all done properly, people can be pretty loud. What is interesting is that the buildings come in all shapes and sizes. The architecture can be very diversified. Some are much more modern than SIN.

Shopping wise, we didn't buy much. As usual, mainly spent on Kyrene's things. There is a place called Raffles City, they got all the brands/shops that you find here in SIN. But prices are a bit on the high side.

In general, the food in SHA is more salty than SIN. Personally, I find that its a bit like Taiwan food, eg. cold dishes like bamboo shoots, seaweeds. We tried the Da Niang jiao zi, I like it very much.

David and Stephanie have been great hosts. We made a short trip to Suzhou and Hangzhou to visit some of the places of interests there. As it was public holidays week in China, the places of interests were crowded and entrance fee went up. For some of the places, we decided to give it a miss, just not worth it to go join the crowd.

We had a nice dinner with a fantastic view on the day before we left. David's friends joined us for the dinner. They were telling us that typhoon is coming. I jokingly said that maybe we can't go back the next day. That night, no typhoon but our flight was delayed the next day. At arrival at the airport, upon check in, we were told that our flight would be delayed for 1.5hrs. Sigh, we spent 2hrs hanging out at the airport, nothing much we could do except to use the food vouchers to eat all we can.

The next day, read in the news that typhoon strike in SHA. Stephanie said it rained very heavily and gusty wind on the night we left. Whew... probably God is protecting us, let us come back to SIN before typhoon strike.