Rocko's World Tour: On the road again...or should I say in the air again?

On our way! Can you guess where we are headed?

BTW, if you land around 5pm on a sunday you might want to take the maglev or get a private car. We waited almost an hour for a taxi.

I can see why people say Shanghai feels a bit European…because...well…it does…

I really like the waterfront

The view of Pudong would have been better without the haze but it's still pretty cool.

It's even better at night. I wish Toronto would decorate our buildings more.

Here are some views from the top of the Le Meridien Hotel - sorry about the fuzz, it is night and the windows weren't the cleanest.
The Bund

People's Square

The markets are what you would expect, though I’m not sure if this was officially a market or just a regular shopping street with people hawking their produce. Some of the produce was the freshest I’ve seen anywhere (and by that I mean the greens and mushrooms…obviously the living breathing stuff was pretty fresh too!).

It's hairy crab season (or chinese mitten crabs - more on that later) and they were everywhere. They are about the size of your hand and they are A LOT of work to eat. I'm not sure the effort is justified but they are a delicacy here.

It is strange that within a few blocks so much can change. We passed quite a number of building sites and I wonder how much of the quirky typical Chinese stuff will remain when there are luxury condos popping up all over. It would be a shame to lose the charm.

I know not many people comment on my blog, but does anyone know what this is?

The thing above was being sold at this market. The bird, fish and insect market which was, in a word, quirky.

Apparently they sell crickets to fight, which apparently they do naturally but I think the betting on them is illegal. I wouldn’t know where to start but some are cheap and some are expensive and I think the length of time they are able to fight factors into the cost but they all look like bugs to me.

They have cages and cages of songbirds and some of them have leashes physically attached to them. I forgot to take a picture. It was odd to see a songbird on a string.

HONK HONK honk honk Honk HONK HOnk honk honk HONK HONK

That is pretty much what Shanghai sounds like.

Of course they generally don't honk at you if you are a pedestrian they just drive straight at you and expect you to move. Bikes can come winging out of side streets or alleys, mopeds honk loudly as they run red lights and dodge traffic, red lights on right turns are at best treated like yield signs but mostly yielding is a foreign concept here. You know when you're crossing a street and a turning car stops to let you cross? Not likely to happen here. If the person happens to not want to try and kill you the cars behind will HONK HONK HONK or try and go around them. I did see locals just walk across these streets with not a care in the world while traffic swirled around them, but I could just not get used to it.

Food...glorious...food....

What? this doesn't look like breakfast to you?

How about this?

These are the famous shanghai soup filled dumplings. These are actually much bigger than the ones that you get at Asian Legend at home. Not sure if they are a different variety or whether this is the "proper" way. At the food court they sold these with straws in the top, I suppose you can drink the soup before you eat it, but here you just pop it down the hatch - once it has stopped steaming of course!

This is a hairy crab, also known as mitten crabs...see the mitts?

Here is some scale...they are obviously bigger than me...but the amount of meat you get out of them is smaller than me...I'm actually not sure it would even fill me up! Did i mention that it's a lot of work?

Shanghai has these magical vendors that show up on street corners at night. I don't know where they come from but they all have have their own carts and they cook all sorts of crazy stuff.

This is a chinese food court, well...a food court in china anyway, I’m glad it was self-serve because no one here could understand me while I butchered “har gau” or “xiu long bau” (and those probably aren’t spelled right either).

Of course this is china so they serve beer in the food court and it's even in my favourite size too. LARGE!

Mangosteens! We bought these off the street and I think the lady scammed us a bit. She told us one price and then refused to give us change, lesson learned - always carry small bills!