We met up with Ron’s INSEAD classmate Harry, who is from Shanghai, and Harry’s friend Chris. We had lunch at a restaurant called Butterfly Garden to introduce us to some Shanghainese food. Please see our album for more photos but my favorite dish was a sweet and warm dish of red dates stuffed with sweet rice cake:

After lunch we visited Chris’ store called Yogo Juice. The store was right near the restaurant and she treated us to some drinks. The serve fresh fruit yogurt smoothies similar to Jamba Juice in the US. I tried a hot drink made of a fruit called “acai“, pronounced “a-sah-ee”, made into a latte. It’s hard to describe the flavor because I think the soy milk kind of took over the flavor but it was a bit nutty. It is supposed to have tons of antioxidants.

Afterwards, Ron and I went walking around XinTianDi. There was a bit NYE concert featuring the Taiwanese girl group “S.H.E.” but unfortunately tickets couldn’t be purchased. Tickets could only be earned by spending over $500 in the mall and that ended a few weeks back. So unfortunately we missed out.

We did manage to book tours to Suzhou and Hangzhou for the next two days. The tourist information centers are actually pretty useful. We were a bit shocked though that the English speaking tours were THREE times more expensive than the Chinese speaking tours. Since we’re on a budget, we chose the Chinese speaking tours and Ron promised to translate for me.

We tried to find somewhere to go to watch fireworks or something so we tried Nanjing Rd but there were no fireworks, just another concert. Since it was getting close to midnight and we were pretty pooped out, we ended up taking a taxi home and watching fireworks inside the taxi cab! When we got back to the apartment, we watched the rest of the fireworks on TV.

We did have a midnight snack at McDonald’s where they have a taro pie (instead of an apple pie). It was yummy!

We have to meet the bus at 7am for our tour so I leave you with the slideshow of our photos for the day:

http://picasaweb.google.c…7ShanghaiDayOne

The first two airport shuttles were full when we tried to board this morning. They run every 10-15 minutes which was good but it seemed they get filled out pretty quickly. Eventually they let us board one but we had to stand then in the middle of the freeway we had to get off and get onto another bus. It was kind of strange but I guess we got there on time. Our flight ended up being delayed also so at least we had the time to go through that hassle.

We had an interesting breakfast on the airplane, my favorite was the item on the top left corner. It was a cold tofu dish accompanied by a sweet thick soy sauce. The soy sauce was quite delicious with the tofu but I couldn’t eat it all because it was a large portion.

Upon arriving in Shanghai, we had to take another airport shuttle to the place we’d be staying. We were renting a room from our flatmate’s friend’s apartment. She has a website where she offers short term rentals in Shanghai.

After we got to the apartment, we did some laundry and planned the rest of the week. Unfortunately I did not do my part and plan the last half of our trip to Shanghai and Macau so we did it all on arrival. It took up most of the afternoon so all we had time for was to have dinner.

We went to a Taiwanese Restaurant called Charmant and had some good ol’ Taiwanese delicacies.

Pickled cucumbers.

Rice with pork floss.

Taiwanese milk tea complete with pearls.

Cold noodles with peanut sauce and cucumbers.

(Not-so-stinky) tofu.

Taiwanese sandwich.

Three cup chicken (yummy basil).

Since we were taking it easy today, we stayed in to watch another Korean movie. This one called “She’s On Duty” which was kind of corny but pretty funny.