Month: April 2008

Whether due to her porcelain skin, those big round eyes, or China’s One Child Policy, Ivy is drawing crowds, big crowds. We stopped for a while in an area just west of Xintandia to give Ivy some milk, and within a few minutes there were 20 or so locals grinning and clucking to IHT’s great delight (DAT was less delighted, WRT went to take some pics ;-)).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ivy’s been commanding a fair bit of attention since we arrived here in Shanghai and I’m not entirely sure why. Sure she’s gorgeous, but that doesn’t explain why a crowd forms whenever we stop in the street, or why when we’re on the underground everyone around needs to make eye contact. It can be unsettling, but mostly it’s flattering… There was one your guy taking photographs of Ivy on his Mobile while we were packed in on the tube, can’t say that’s happened before!

Having a great time in Shanghai, even though we

are missing Scarlett not being here. Weather has been good with 22 or 23c each day; the haze lifted on Thursday at which point we realised that we had a good view of Pudong from our room… Most of the time we’ve spent walking around (other than when I’ve been working) and as a walking city Shanghai is pretty good.   

Smiles all round…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Kite Flying old dudes….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flying into Pudong Airport you fly over the Donghai bridge, the longest sea bridge in the world, it’s pretty striking at over 20 miles long… That sets you up well for the pretty bazaar scale of Shanghai, the airport ups the ante! 

Once you’re in the terminal the scale of the place is incredible, you arrive half way along a single arrivals corridor that seems to stretch for over a kilometre in each direction, before getting onto the Maglev train into Shanghai itself… 

The train is spectacular partly because it feels so ordinary… Travelling at over 190 miles an hour seems pretty effortless when you’re floating on magnets; we didn’t actually get up to the top speed of 260 miles per hour, although that’s probably just as well since the entire journey only took 5 minutes as it was, anything over $3 per minute may have left me feeling slightly ripped off!

Like Bombay, Shanghai has just over 20 million inhabitants, around 90% of the population of Australia compressed into less than 0.1% of the land area 8-)… That density mixed with the new found wealth makes for a pretty impressive skyline. See below.