Day 4: Tongli - Shanghai (Part II)

Tongli 同里

Continued walks around the famous water town.

Houses beside the stream.

 

Meaningful thought of the day: We've always been walking and forget to stop. Hundreds tastes of life, all in the "tea house".

 

Time for lunch! There were many restaurants beside the stream. The menu was displayed near the entrance of each restaurant. We compared the price and found that they were all the same. And strangely enough, even the tablecloths were all the same, so were the utensils. So we simply picked one.

Of course we had to order this famous dish in Tongli - pork knuckle 猪脚. Tasted as good as my mom's cooking. Not bad.

 

Still freezing cold even after lunch.

 

Chocolate flavoured peral milk tea 珍珠奶茶.

 

Leaving Tongli.

 

Sitting at the back of the electric car.

We slept like pigs again on the way back.

Xintiandi 新天地

Reaching Shanghai my brother's home in the evening feeling less exhausted compared to the previous nights. As we spent some of our time merely sitting on the bus or in the restaurants. As promised by brother, we were taken out to dinner in Xintiandi 新天地. This place was the angmo's favourite hangout - it was filled with expensive restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, saloons etc. Places that those who earn USD or Euro could afford. We had the most expensive dinner I could imagine.

A bar called Luna in Xintiandi.

 

First up, the appetizer or so-called 冷菜 (cold dish). This was supposed to come before all the main courses. It was pre-cooked and they don't reheat it or anything. It was simply taken out from the fridge and directly served. That's the way Shanghainese eat.

 

Check out the expensive menu. Of course it was my brother's treat.

 

We ordered the 蟹粉豆腐 Crab Meat with Bean Curd.

辣子鸡 & 虾  Fried chicken & prawn with dried chili.

 

蟹粉豆腐 Crab Meat with Bean Curd.

Potatoes and long beans. Strangely enough, this tasted very much like my mom's cooking. Very Malaysian indeed.

 

Close up of the crab meat with bean curd. This dish was, to me, super expensive. Not worth its price.

 

梅子酱蒸鱼 Sour plum sauce steam fish. Before ordering this my brother was consulting the waiter whether the fish would have small bones which made it difficult for us to eat. The waiter assured him that it wouldn't. When he served the fish we were quite pleased with how it looked. He then cut the fish in half, and took out its backbone, leaving it totally bone-less. Hmmm... so this was how it felt to dine in a high class restaurant. Lolz.

 

葱油面 Noodles with onions.

 

东坡肉 Dongpo pork. Super, super oily. I told my brother mom's pork was way better than this. He couldn't agree more.

 

Vidal Sassoon in Xintiandi. My sister-in-law said a haircut costs RMB1k here. Madness.

Shanghai World Financial Centre 上海环球金融中心观光厅

The night was still young!!! And we were well on schedule. We asked brother to drop us off at the Shanghai World Financial Centre and continued our eventful night.

There were 3 levels of observatory deck, and to go to each you have to pay a different price:

94F - RMB100

94F + 97F - RMB110

94F + 97F + 100F - RMB150

That was day light robbery, but what to do. We bought 2 tickets to the highest floor.

In the elevator.

 

430 m above ground!

 

 

We first went to the highest floor - Skywalk 100, located at 474m above ground. 

The world's highest observatory.

 

Couldn't look.

 

The Shanghai World Expo monster.

 

The elevator indicating that we were on the 100th floor.

 

Yup there were transparent glass-made tiles on the floor which permitted you to look through it as if you were walking on sky, thus the "Skywalk 100".

 

The whole skywalk thing was really nothing impressive because it wasn't like all the floor tiles were transparent, but only part of them were. Thus we didn't really get the skywalk feeling. And also, the building itself was actually shaped like a handbag and the 100th floor lies on the strap of the handbag (referring to picture below). So can you imagine that when we look through the transparent floor tiles, we were actually looking partly at the 97th floor below us (the body of the handbag), which was kind of a spoil-spot.

Handbag-shaped building.

Mr. Chin was pretty disappointed that he couldn't take any good night scenes due to some reasons:
1. It was too misty.
2. The bright light on one of the tall buildings had basically blocked the lights of other buildings. So all the pictures had a big patch of bright yellowish light, which didn't look very nice.
3. The glass showed reflection of the person taking the picture.

Mr. Chin was complaining that pictures took at the bund look better than these.

Going down.

Mr. Chin looking happy.

 

Not-worth-the-money-tickets.

 

This was the building with a bright light bulb that I was talking about. It looked better on the 97th floor.

 

TV showing Jackie Chan singing on the 94th floor.

 

Pale face due to acrophobia.

 

Yup, we had to walk all the way back. Discovered this sef-service library on the way back.

 

Very useful device. Promote reading among citizens. And very user-friendly too.

Passed by the police station on the way back.