Shanghai Sweat

It was so hot in Shanghai, even the air was sweating.

It's true that at 38 degrees there are many much hotter places on the planet-I've been to some of them. But combined with the pollution of millions of people this gets very uncomfortable. What makes it even worse is that people insist on artic air conditioning so every morning I woke up snivelling and sneezing.

I tried to show Sara places in Shanghai but as that was all mostly outside, we didn't get very far. We saw the site of the first Republican government of Korea, as well as Xintiandi, Tianzifang and the horrid, horrid Yu gardens. We also saw the Bund but again it was just packed with people.

One high point was when we found a nice hotpot restaurant to go to. (We asked at the hostel and they said "East Nanjing Road". This is like asking for a nice restaurant in Edinburgh and being advised to try the Royal Mile. Of course there are plenty of restaurants there, but are they any good?) This hotpot restaurant was slightly old style and used copper basins with the heating element in a cone in the middle. Normally it's just a bowl in the table. The food was nice but I had two quibbles. The first being that it was only water to cook food in- most places it is some sort of broth with mushrooms, peppers etc floating in it to add flavour. This meant ours lacked the tasty factor. The second quibble was that as the heating element was in the middle, there was left only a small area to put food. And whatever Sara put in opposite me, I couldn't reach, and vice versa.

Then Haagen Dasz as a treat. Yum yum.

There was a fight outside between a female ticket seller and some man. I had no idea what about, but we joined the police in standing around and watching amusedly.

The last day I got my passport back along with a Russia visa. Yaya! I now just need a Mongolian visa and was intending to get it today but the Embassy is closed because it's a Mongolian holiday and they are busy wrestling yaks.

As it was so hot in Shanghai, we decided to go see a film and then head to the airport. ("Where can we find a cinema?""East Nanjing Road") but couldn't find a good film on when we wanted so we headed to the airport and spent 3 hours waiting around. There were two monks waiting there too. After waiting 3 hours we almost missed the flight. Oops.

We got the maglev to the aiport. The maglev is the very fast train that levitates. The track looked just like some concrete slabs with nothing to stop the train flying off the sides. I don't trust physics. I'd already ridden it twice but the first I was stressing about being late and the second it only went to 300kph. This time it went to 430kph and those extra kph really do make a difference. You are going rather fast... the fun bit is it wobbles a lot. And when a train passes in the opposite direction the shock makes you start but as you are going so fast the train has passed before you can finish your start and so you just sit there with wide eyes and open mouth.