We reached shanghai in the evening, dropped our things at the (lousy) hotel, then went to meet uncle chua and family for dinner!

Having dinner with uncle chua, i expected a pretty atas place, but it was even nicer than I imagined!

The restaurant had lovely european decor, but served chinese food! The dishes there were really special too but I was too intimidated by uncle chua to take photos of the food.
The restaurant was located at some random ulu street 'called zhen ning lu.

So after dinner, (one of) uncle chua's chauffeurs fetched us to the "hotel" that uncle chua owned for a visit! Only upon reaching I realised it's not a hotel hotel, but more of holiday villas!

They bought over a number of conserved houses that were located in the previous french consession and converted them to holiday villas/restaurants etc. The houses were really lovely!

The interior design of the villas was super nice! They kept most of the architecture, just refurbished the place! It costs around 7000SGD per night to stay in one of those villas, and you'll know why after seeing the following photos!

Posh.

There were 2 butlers stationed in every house, taking turns to do chores for the residents 24/7! This lady is preparing fruits for us!

One of the bed rooms, there were 3 or 4 if i didn't remember wrongly.

Love the decor!

This lift is real and functioning!!


Bathroom at the attic!




If only we could stay there for a night! Super shiok!




Yummy fruits! Thanks butler!


Had a good time sitting around munching on the fruits while listening to auntie doris chat with mama and auntie guilan :)

We visited the shanghai world expo! Our main purpose of visit to shanghai! (Kinda. I think mine was more of shopping)

Entrance ticket.

Security personnel who looked like they were an army of soldiers.

The singapore pavillion!



It was the only pavillion that we could enter without queuing simply by flashing our ics!

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One of the "specialties" of the Singapore pavillion was the projection of Singapore's sights from the ceiling, that we could see using the fans they gave us.


I did feel a small sense of pride while I was in there lah. :)

Erm, by hitting some drum thingies with the music, pictures of singaporean stuff will appear on those plate thingies in the photo. Pretty lame.


After that we watched a video of Singapore, with ah du, lin junjie, stefanie sun and tanya chua singing and starring in. I'd say I'm most proud of them among all the things exhibited in the pavillion.

Btw, the expo was swarming with millions of (china) people! The whole expo area is really really big but there were people EVERYWHERE!

To enter pavillions of countries that were more popular, you had to queue up to 3/4 hours! None of us wanted to queue of course, and so we decided to enter the less known and visited countries. Rather than visiting pavillions of countries that we've visited before, tt was nice learning more about these small countries that i've never heard off and been to!

I've heard of bulgaria from olympics, and all I can associate to the country is rythmic gymnasts!

Montenegro, never heard of!

Seems like a pretty nice and scenic country! If i have a chance i'd wanna visit some of these countries in future!

Bosnia & omg i can't really read the second word. Even more ulu!

Georgia

Czech! We've been there :D

Never heard of Latvia, but the exterior of the pavillion's pretty!

Sweden

Estonia

There were random people sitting down/sleeping everywher in the expo! Most of them brought portable chairs to use while queueing!

On our way to the chinese pavillion, guess what we saw!

My favourite donuts in the world!! Mister donuts!! Unfortunately they don't have it Singapore :(

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The Pon Des are the best! Those with small little round balls making up the rings! Super chewy and yummy :D


So pretty :)

Us and the china pavillion! We could only take photos outside though. There was zero chance of entering 'cause millions of people were trying to get in, they had to queue for i think days to get in! You can only get in without queueing if u're uncle chua and touring the expo with the dpm and chinese officials :S

Taiwan pavillion!
It's one of my favourites!

The queue to enter the taiwan pavillion was uber long too! You have to queue for hours for the fast pass, and after obtaining that you prolly have to queue again. It's crazy. Nepal!

The closest we came to queueing! But it was actually very fast 'cause the queue was moving all the time.

I think this is a replica of some temple in nepal? Pretty cool.

Later on, we went for a walk on the elevated pedestrian walk!

Behind us is some place where performances were held i tink. It really looks like a UFO! There were soooo many people in it, it looked pretty freaky.

India! Nice!
Saudi arabia, very modern.

Israel
Cute picture of cute ming with cute hair! Her cute sister tied her cute hair and took the cute photo ;)

Qatar

Turkmenistan, has anyone heard of this country before?

Soon the sky grew dark, and all the pavillions were lit up with colourful lights! All the night shots are in the other camera though and the photos aren't uploaded :( Oh well, too lazy to!

After dinner, we went to confirm our booking at the hotel we were gonna move to on the third day! It was like 1000x better than the one we were staying in!


Just compare the exterior. This is the one we stayed in the first two nights:

And the next one. So glad we managed to get rooms there! Almost all the hotels were full due to the shanghai expo.


After that it was off to nanjing street for some shopping! It was as crowded as the expo. I think all the people who were at the expo in the day relocated to nanjing street at night.

I still remember years ago when i visited shanghai during cny, nanjing street was also jam packed with people. And i had a really really bad impression of shanghai 'cause everyone there just shoved you around like nobody's busines. Still experienced it this time round! Ughs annoying. And i've got to add that most of the shopkeepers' attitudes sucked! They were so rude especially after hearing our accent and realising we're foreigners. Ughs. Felt like slapping them.

But I still enjoyed shopping pretty much this trip la heh. More on that in my next post!

Btw, don't know why only one entry's shown on the main page of my blog now. Prolly 'cause the entries are too long! So if you haven't finished reading the krabi posts, click on the archives!