Shanghai

Shanghai was an interesting city..there wasn't much to see, but I'm sure if we stayed longer I would take some daytrips to the outer areas. I got to walk along the Bund riverwalk and view the amazing contrast of modern day buildings and the older buildings leftover from the Europeans. We also went to the IFC building, the tallest building in Shanghai, and the view was so beautiful! But it cost an arm and a leg to get up there. There was also the Bund Tunnel which goes under the river and it shows the Chinese interpretation of heaven and hell. To be honest, it was the cheesiest thing I've ever seen, with blowup figures and tacky Christmas lights, but it was definitely a sight. I suppose we were just experiencing some of the culture.

Our hotel was right next to the main pedestrian street with lots of shopping, so of course Maibritt and I made several trips, but not much lucky with actual buying. We were approached by the usuals, "bag, watch. gucci, prada!". I got used to ignoring people while I was in China. There was also a mall nearby, and I went there to get Subway, luckily they understood english! Most of the food in the "food" court was dessert! If anything, more locals were going for the sweet stuff rather than real food. It's amazing to see how the Chinese absolutely love sweets now! Everywhere I went in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China there were tons of bakeries and dessert shops.

We traveled to our company visits by coach and many of our lunches were provided. My fave company visit in China was to Philips. We had an excellent speaker who gave us a clear history and Philips' goals in China. There was even a Human Resources presentation which felt like they were trying to recruit us, but hey, why not?

I hung out with Maibritt a lot since we were roomies for the trip and she even got me to do some morning exercises! Most nights we stayed in and caught up on TV via internet since there wasn't much else to see around the city. Overall, a really relaxing trip and a nice change of pace from my crazy traveling before.