DFR Travels: Tuesday, April 16. Cloudy but pleasant.

We were on our way around 9:15. Today our mission was to get to the far side of this vast area known as Shanghai to visit an old fishing village which is now a destination for people looking for a pleasant day out without the hustle bustle of the big city.

Shanghai is vast, about 80 x 120 kilometres with a population of 24,000,000 souls. There does not seem to be a City Centre as such. It is just one vast continuous built-up area. We drove for over an hour and you would swear you were in the city except the traffic was lighter. Actually they seem to take a lot of care to plant trees and bushes and beautify the roadways. Speaking of roadways, the government does a pretty good job of collecting tolls to help finance a very good road and highway system.

At the outskirts of the village it was a pleasant stroll through a very narrow street where food vendors were displaying and in some cases cooking their food. We always stay away from such food stalls and try to eat in established restaurants. A slightly better chance of avoiding tummy issues at least.

We are definitely Foreigners and stand out as such, we occasionally see white people but very rarely. Our guide said that there would be people here from places where they would never have seen white people before: we get stares, waves and on more than one occasion I have seen people taking our picture.

At lunch time we ate in a restaurant that was over 100 years old. The food was basic but good and the three meals came to $15.00. Lunch was not included today so we treated the guide.

A stroll back to the car and the run back to the city where we stopped for a short run-down on how the silk worm works his magic ending up in garments.

Next we went to the Apple Store to try and get some help on improving the connectivity of my iPad. No luck so back to the hotel to have a bit of a quiet time and to try and send some pictures via this darned iPad! Today it appears that I am having relatively good luck.

Tonight we went to another gourmet restaurant that is in the residence of a former high official in the last Dynasty around 1907 [?]. Apparently when his party went out of favour he built a home for his favourite concubine and one for himself. He eventually became a banker. The restaurant grounds are crowded with shiny black high-end cars: Mercedes, Audis, Jags, BMW and Lexus, all with drivers waiting for their big-shot bosses to come out.

The food was picked by our guide who then left us to be on our own. We feel rather conscious of the fact that we are foreigners and the staff knows that we are unfamiliar with their customs, they do try to help us and often I catch them watching us curiously as we try to identify and eat the foods presented to us. So far the food has been delicious and I actually used chopsticks for about 33% of the meal, improving!

Tomorrow we have a noonish departure for a short flight to where we join the Yangzi River Cruise. I think that we have had enough of big Chinese cities for the time being, they are important to get an overall feel of the country and it has been very nice to have the use of a private car and driver with a personal guide but enough is enough of cities. Time for a change of scenery I think.