Day 1-2 Singapore-Kuala Lumpur-Shanghai Pudong

Well the silk road adventure begins hereforth... after a few days of hectic Paediatrics clinical examinations and the vivas, i cl gh tr finally boarded the malaysia airines flight that will bring us to shanghai with a transfer at kuala lumpur. flight was pretty uneventful except for the fact we met wendy, minghui and zhentang at singapore changi (they were connecting to london..), and guanhao was so distracted that he followed wendy to the london-bound gate. the shanghai flight was pretty uneventful. we were of course stuck in the middle 5 seats, much to my chagrin.. the much-talked about malaysia airlines' cabin service wasn't at all outstanding... the china-based stewardesses aren't exactly friendly but she lightened up after seeing that we were all young and fluent in mandarin. watched "A Night at the Museum" on the PTV, and felt my brain cells degenerate slightly..

touching down at pudong international airport.. sailing through a pretty slow but fairly ok immigration/customs, we took the super fast maglev train that would bring us within 8 minutes to the city centre longyang metro station. it was a pretty fast train but nothing really tHAt special.. anyhow we got onto a metro that brought us to henan road station (nanjing road east).. here's when i really got a rude reminder of the type of personalities china has to offer ... one rude ass just simply butted in between the queue to purchase metro tickets.. god , and to think shenzhen was the last of that kind of experience..

my experience of shanghai wasn't at all positive.. shanghai is basically divided into the newer pudong (dong as in east , pu as in the huangpu river ) and the older, somewhat more rustic pussy er.. i mean puxi. while pudong was all cosmopolitan and all, shanghai was essentially just another city landscape fortified with rude and inconsiderate individuals and one hell of a traffic situation. the air was polluted, and the lack of real tourist attractions besides the crazy Bund sightseeing tunnel (where the only highlight was seeing funeral dolls wave at us amidst glitzy lights) and the overrated jinmao tower (where we only got to see a huge cloud of ash over the city no thanks to the billion of shanghainese smokers).. the cruise along the huangpu jiang was just another ripoff.. you probably can't see much except for ships/tankers which is akin to a cruise along tanjong pagar psa harbour.. the day just ended up so tiring and exhausting coz' we endeavoured to walk from place to place, but after reaffiriming from lonely planet ( I so LOVE that book!) that walking in shanghai is a total nightmare, we decided that the cab was a much better option .. it was so cheap anyway.. we soon learnt of services like the 114 telephone service through which we can seek advice for almost any matter under the sun i.e. train tickets, number of your favourite condom dealer etc...
the food was cheap and pretty good , however the flavour tended to be overpowering at times.. stuff like duck's tongue, duck's chin, kidney brewed with essence of urea... cl didn't seem too happy about our eclectic choice of meals that night, while tr was munching away on the duck's chin like nobody's business.