Shanghai and the night bus

Hi all,

I set off yesterday morning at 10am and got into Shanghai at 7am this morning - it had to be the longest (and strangest) journey of my life! The bus was late into the bus station, I kept going up to the desk in the station as nothing at all was in English and I was a little frightened it would come and go without me on it.. Eventually, 20minutes late it turned up and a bloke came and got me, put my bags on and then the driver motioned for me to take my shoes off - first time I've had to do that on a bus journey - then again this was no regular bus journey!

The bus, well - I knew it was an overnight bus, but instead of having seats it had bunk beds - about 36 in total - 1 row down each side of the bus and one row down the middle. I was in the middle on the top and at first I was certain I was going to fall off with each corner we turned. I napped a lot, but only in short stints as its amazing how much noise the drivers and random sleeping chinese people can make! The best bit was, the bus didn't have a loo - so each time you wanted the loo you'd have to go to the front, say toilet in chinese - nobody on the bus spoke any english (luckily I had it written down phonetically) and then the driver would pull over and you'd go at the side of the road - no privacy at all - it was quite funny.

Anyway, 21hrs later we eventually pulled up in Shanghai - I found the youth hostel pretty easily and got some breakfast (full english with knives and forks!! :-) - you may laugh, but it's the first time I've used a knife and fork in nearly 4 weeks!) and then checked in.

I've had a quick wander down Nanjing road, the main shopping road which leads to the Bund and is about 5mins away from the hostel just to get my bearings - there are people trying to sell you shoes, dvd's and watches every 20meters or so - I find it quite funny at the moment but I can see it might bug me after a few days.

I managed to get some great bargains on a set of chopsticks (for less than half price due to my amazing negotiating skills) and a new memory card for my camera (as I've been taking far too many photos and starting to run out of space) - the memory card I got for just over half the marked price and just slightly less than what it would have been if I'd bought it over the internet at home - but then I'd have had to pay shipping.

You can't bargain too much in the big department stores - but anywhere else it's worth screwing your face up, saying it's too much and they'll immediately knock something off - I tend to start at about 20% of what they say and it gets to about 50% of the price in the end. Shops sell a lot of the same thing so its easy just to walk away if its too much and start again in the next shop.

I'm just about to retrace my steps from this afternoon to the Bund where the Oriental pearl TV tower and a lot of the sky scrapers are as apparently it looks much nicer at night.

Talk to you all tomorrow!