It was raining in Shanghai when we arrived. We return to Jiang’an temple station since the bus to the airport could be found here. It took us a while to find a place where we could leave our luggage. Anton suggested trying it to one of the hotels. Fortunately, a Swissotel staff was helpful enough and checked our bags in without any payment. I didn’t see that because I was checking the bus station if there were left-luggage services around.

Hoorrayy! We finally tasted an authentic Chinese steamed bun (siopao). We ate it for breakfast.

Since we had nothing to do, we tried checking out Shanghai Expo. We took the metro to Changping Road station. Unfortunately, there were lots of people coming to the expo, so we didn’t attempt to get in. Our next stop is to check the malls and electronics shops. Via metro, we got off at Xuijahui. We were surprised that most malls here don’t have any food stalls inside. It took us some time to finally find a food court.

We then checked the electronics stores for laptop and ebook reader prices. We found out that electronics here are expensive. They’re cheaper by a few thousand here in the Philippines. Also, the specs of these laptops are outdated. Most specs are composed of 250-320GB hard drive, 1GB-2GB memory, the normal stuff. Also, we found that itouch, and ebook readers almost have the same price as ours. We never checked all the shops because we’re just seeing the same thing. Because of boredom, Anton even suggested watching karate kid just to experience watching movie in China. We thought, the movie is probably dubbed in Chinese anyway, so what’s the use? We then proceeded to our original plan, Qibao Old town.

Qibao Old Town (chi pao)

We were expecting a rural area when we got off at Qibao station. We were surprised to find a modern city. We found the old town only by accident since it was a bit far. It’s great that we visited this place. The town was bustling with people. There were shops everywhere. We even found a store that sells everything for RMB2(PHP14). We even found a delicious tikoy store. Too bad, we weren’t able to buy a lot. Qibao was different from what we explored during our previous 8 days. It has a Venice-like canal, where locals clean their mops, and probably dump their wastes. But the thing is, there are local boats constantly cleaning the canal. It probably is clean since it is green and has no foul odor. We tried the boat ride, which took exactly 20mins to get back and forth. Hesitantly, Anton also joined the boat ride. I was wondering why he’s so hesitant when there really is a slim chance of capsizing the boat. The water is calm, and the boat is paddled by a woman. The boat ride looks perfectly fine. I guess the only thing that’s missing is the serenade of the boat man (just like in Macau). Maybe that’s too much to ask for.hehehe

We spent most of our time in Qibao. We’re glad that we visited Qibao, it has saved us from a very boring day.hehe. BTW, Anton kept on checking the time, perhaps he’s too worried that we might not be able to get on the plane.hehehe

We had little time left but to eat dinner and buy some groeceries when we got back to Jiang’an temple station. At around 8pm, we finally had our last pictures of the area. It looked like Christmas because there were so many lights up in the area. We took the bus gong to the airport, and we finally saw what Shanghai really looks like at night. We never got to experience that because we were always in the subway.

That’s it… our 9 day China adventure has finally come to an end. Personally, I’ll be missing our death-march days, the mandarin lessons, the street food and of course, the happy moments that we three share.  :)