The Love Bus

It's not very difficult to get around the city because the taxis here are affordable and as long as you ask the concierge to write your intended destination in chinese characters, you will have no problem directing the driver to where you want to go. BUT since we were a group of 25, there was a degree of difficulty in gathering everyone and moving from one place to the next. Fortunately, our tour package comes with a half-day tour of Shanghai, complete with a nice warm bus and a very reliable tour guide in Alex.

Our first stop was the Jade Buddha Temple which is well, uhm, ahhh, ehhh --- just your regular temple. My newest discovery is that jade not only comes in green pala. Pwede rin ivory colored. They also had a reclining buddha --- but maybe just 1/100th the size of the more popular one in Bangkok. Look, look, snap, snap, struggle to get everyone back in the bus! Off to the Bund we go.



The most popular view of Shanghai you will see in all travel books and postcards is the view taken from the Bund. This area is the equivalent of our Roxas Boulevard and the Dhow Creek in Dubai. Accross the Bund, you will see the skyline of Shanghai with the Oriental Pearl Tower as its most prominent structure. Along the area, you will find restuaurants, coffee shops, benches to lounge on, people flying kites, food carts and vendors selling silly items such as the mutating pig. The toy is thrashed on the floor/wall/glass panel (dapat slippery surface) and instantly sticks like a blob. Afterwhich, it comes together again and in a few seconds, mutates from a blob back to a pig. Gets? Ay, very hard to describe but all the kids were amused! Lola Linda bought 7 mutating pigs for our 7 little rascals.

At this point, Dad is complaining that his head is already spinning due to extreme fatigue brought about by passing the lunch hour without eating. So off we go to the Tian Hao(?) Silk Worm Factory for our free lunch and tour around their premises. Its your usual tourist trap but I guess we are smarter now. You don't actually have to buy something! Lunch was not noteworthy nor was the factory and its goodies so I would rather not elaborate on it. The last stop for our tour was the Yuyuan Garden.



The Yuyuan Garden is a famous classical garden located in the Chinatown of Shanghai. Isn't that funny? Chinatown in China? Heniway, the garden was finished in 1577 by a government officer of the Ming Dynasty named Pan Yunduan. Yu in Chinese means pleasing and satisfying, and this garden was specially built for Pan's parents as a place for them to enjoy a tranquil and happy time in their old age.

The garden is located in the middle of the Yuyuan Market and it is a very busy place with hordes of people milling around. Alex was very strict with his instructions that we should stick together and that he would give us free time after the garden to explore the market. Obviously, the oldies did not listen to his plea. They were too busy negotiating with the street vendors that a trip to the garden that should've been over in 30 minutes stretched to an hour and a half. Ergo, no more free time for us.

While walking around the garden, Alessi decides to sit on a rock previously occupied by Yanna and Annika. Reymond had just put her down so he could rest his aching neck. In a blink of an eye, Alessi loses her balance and falls face first on a bed of rocks. OMG. I almost fainted when I saw the blood oozing from her lips. I was already bracing myself for the worst. Thankfully, after being checked by the 3 doctors in our group (naks), they were able to determine that her wound did not need stitches. But her lip was really swelling -- talo si Angelina. My poor baby. But then again, it could've been worse. So I'm just thankful it was nothing more than a lip wound.



Because of the deaf and disobedient oldies, we no longer had time to explore the market. Due to time constraints (the half day city tour had already stretched to 530pm!), we just decided to come back tom. to eat and explore the other side of Yuyuan.

Since we enjoyed our lunch yesterday, we opted to have dinner at the other branch of Meilongzhen along Nanjing Road. This particular branch was located in an old, authentic Chinese house so we give this resto 100 for ambiance. But the service--naku, poor! I consider myself patient compared to my parents and my brothers but even I was losing my temper with the very, very slow service. Ang bagal talaga. Duling na ang mga tao in between dishes. So my advice is, take the Meilongzhen at the Westgate Mall. Avoid the one on Nanjing Road at all costs!

We brought the kids back to the hotel and after dressing them down and depositing them to their lolas and yayas, the young ones decided to go 'templing' at Wujiang Road. This area is known for their street food and it caters more to the locals than to foreign visitors. Once again, we were demoted to pointing at food ordered by the surrounding table because NONE of the servers spoke english. Its a good thing this group is well versed in the art of sign language! Besides, Alex also provided us with a list of important words to remember (i.e. ice/cold=ping, etc.) so all we had to do was point to the food and to our list of words. We gave new meaning to the famous Filipino slang turo-turo!

After stuffing ourselves silly with food that only God knows where it came from, we made our journey back to Jin Chang. We were already dreaming of our dimsum lunch at Yuyuan tom.!