We made it!
After 12 hours of fidgety flight time, not much sleep and many games of Monopoly Deal (a packing essential), we arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport at the brain-fog inducing time of 5.45am. It was a nice, comfortable flight with Air China from London Gatwick, and had all the usual amenities – inflight ents system (I watched a ridiculous Dwyane ‘The Rock’ Johnson movie about a giant monkey being weaponised by a pathogen called ‘Rampage’, while Zach played games – Firewatch & Civ6 – on his Steam Deck), cushions & blankets, dinner & breakfast.
We decided to go for it with the Metro rather than get a taxi transfer to our hotel as we’d looked it up before leaving the UK and it looked pretty simple. A bit of a head scratch on how to buy a ticket led Zach to discover the pure genius of Alipay – spoiler alert, this app will feature A LOT in our China travel recommends – you can’t function in the country without it! For the grand total of 60p per human, we whizzed our way through security and onto the subway to Yuyuan Garden station. A short and rainy waddle later, and we were at our hotel, The Campanile Bund Hotel, who let us check in at 8am… which was bloody ace as we were feeling pretty boggled from jet lag and desperately needed an almighty power nap.
The hotel was clean, basic (Holiday Inn vibes) and in a good spot to get to all the main attractions. I would recommend it based on its location and the fact we were there to mooch and not spend too much time in the hotel. Links shared at the end of this post.
Our next little intelligence test was getting our phones working. We’d read about the notorious ‘Great Firewall’, which only allows Chinese apps and websites to work (meaning no WhatsApp, no Instagram etc.). My biggest concern was letting the fam know we had landed safely, meanwhile ‘child of the internet’ Zach was worried his sanity wouldn’t withstand 23 days without it. We wrestled with various sims, esims and VPNs until we both found a system that works – one phone to function in China, one to stay in touch with the outside world. (We’ll do a blog post on all these logistics separately!)
Mega snooze in the bag and technology made our bitch, we confidently strode out onto the streets of Shanghai… and yes, it was still raining!
DAY 1
Our first stop was the Yuyuan Garden Old Town, which surrounds the Yuyuan Gardens. It’s a proper mish-mash of old, traditional Chinese architecture & more modern-looking shops. Street vendors were selling various snacks and jewellery seemed to be an especially popular item for sale in this area. You’ll hear the loud clanking of metal as jewellers form silver rings and bracelets to order, right in front of your eyes.
Shopping isn’t really something either of us enjoy, so we just took in the atmosphere and acclimatised for a couple of hours. After a bit of aimless wandering, we happened across a really pretty park called Gucheng Park, lined with towering bamboo, twisting pathways and various ponds. Soaked to our skin by this point (and yes we packed a coat mum!), we sought refuge in a stylish cafe for a Kāfēi (coffee), called One Stop Coffee. It was very chic, almost Scandi-style decor & we ordered a cappuccino, fresh ginger & Yuzu tea and a slice of Carrot Cake – all were top notch and gratefully received!
The rain finally subsided enough to head back out and by this time, night had taken over day and Shanghai had sprung to life – now a sea of colourful lights, screens and LED billboards.
We wandered along the Huangpu River to The Bund, where you get views of the skyscrapers opposite – including the famous Oriental Pearl. Even with enough bulbs to power every influencers light rings around the globe for eternity, we couldn’t clock the whole Pearl due to the amount of fog, so resigned to return the next day.
Food was becoming a necessity by this point – a 3am inflight brekkie & a slice of carrot cake between 2 is not quite the sustenance needed for a big city stomp (step count: 19,351), so we went to a veggie restaurant that I – the vegetarian and food prepper – found before we left the UK. We asked for veggie goodness and Songyuelou restaurant provided! We smashed through a steaming bowl of delicious noodle soup (Tāng) that came with an assortment of veg & tofu toppings, tasty dumplings and a drink for the grand total of 9 quid.
Food in our bellies, we had a second wind, so decided to keep walking – past many a crazy cat cafe and obligatory restroom stop – to the hyper-colour Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street. It’s a very modern shopping street with flashing, fluorescent advertising which felt to us a lot like Times Square in New York City. The production value and quality of the adverts blaring out from the screens was mesmerising, and even though we didn’t buy anything (our groaning backpacks were grateful), it was nice to just take in the vibe of the city at night.
DAY 2
Jet lag is no joke kids!
We both woke up feeling like we’d been slapped in the chops with Moby dick’s, dick – so slept in until about 11am before doing a mild flap about the city to find cash (something we’d failed to remember to do at 2 separate airports).
After a snack & coffee, we got our heads back in the game and, with the help of a kind barista, found a bank. Naturally, we didn’t think twice about getting into the world’s creepiest lift up to the trading floor of China’s Agricultural Bank… much to the dismay of one of its staff. Clearly we were not supposed to be up there! He did helpfully guide us back down to street level where he showed us the ATM, concealed behind a frosted glass door. TOP CHINA TIP: ATMs are hidden behind doors – very reminiscent of phone booths in the UK – just yank on a few and hope for the best. Seems like a legit technique…
We decided to head out of the city for the day. I’m not a massive city bod and had read about Zhujiajiao Ancient Town in some ‘to do’ guides online, so that became the mission.
To get there from our hotel we took the Metro from Nanjing Road East (subway line 2/light green) and changed at Hongqiao Station for line 17 (red/brown). It took about 1 hour 10 mins and cost a whopping total of 80p per ticket. When you arrive, it’s only about a 10 minute walk to the Ancient town area, so don’t let the bikers offering lifts convince you to part with your cash – although they were more distracted by Zach & asking him how big his er…’chopstick’ was… a bit of casual racism to start the day! Zach was very entertained and striding noticeably more confidently for the rest of the day…
The Ancient Town is a beautiful maze of quaint shops, tea houses & eateries – 1000+ buildings of Ming & Qing dynasties weaving around waterways, pavilions and 36 different arched bridges. We stopped for an iced coffee (Bīng kāfēi), overlooking the water as wooden boats and their oarsmen rowed hat-wearing tourists around. We were also treated to some live music from a young Guqin musician, who surprised us with her rendition of Billie Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’. It was really cool to see the traditional and the modern thrown together – so far this seems to be a strong theme in China!
Finally we paid £4 each to enter the Kezhi Gardens, which houses the only remaining post office of Qing dynasty in Eastern China. The building’s architecture was rich, dark wood covered in carvings of animals – including hundreds of bats which apparently are meant to bring good luck.
You can feed the hungry Koi Carp in the various ponds for 20p per bag of fish food (paying on Alipay of course). Turns out Zach does a very good guppy impression and will now and forever be known as ‘koi boi, the fish whisperer’.
After a fab day, we returned to Shanghai where we found another veggie restaurant called ‘The Vegetarian Lifestyle’. I have never been happier reading a menu – there were meat replacement options up the wazuu and we chowed on a sour soup with veggie sausage, sweet n sour ‘chicken’, steamed dumplings & a potato & ‘chicken’ curry. It all slapped harder than Will Smith at an award ceremony.
To top our mega day off (step count: 26,385), we returned to The Bund to book a cruise down the Huangpu river. The process is all fairly idiot proof – a big, well-lit ticket office and a single dock to enter from. We booked the final boat at 10pm which cost about £15 each for the 45min cruise. The weather was on our side and we saw all the towering, glittering buildings in all their glory – including the Oriental Pearl! Because we got the last boat, it wasn’t too crowded (except for the poor drunk dude who was vomming in the bin behind us).
It was a lovely (and funny) way to wrap up our Shanghai adventure. Next stop… Wangxian Valley!
H&Z x
Links:
The Awkward Travellers 
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