Shanghai: 3rd time's the charm

The very first time we went to Shanghai, the marrieds and the Head Teachers split off from our group and went to the Animal Park and Aquarium. Ever since that weekend we have been trying to plan an "Animal Trip" to Shanghai but literally every weekend for the past 5 weekends has been rainy even though the week days previous have been sunny and beautiful. I'm happy to announce that this past weekend we successfully went to Shanghai and had an eventful "Animal Trip."

Welcome to Shanghai

When I got train tickets for the trip to Shanghai, I got them to go as soon as possible.  Apparently I got the train that left a little too soon because we had to run, literally, to catch our train. When we got on and were all settled, it was all worth it though because that was the nicest train, even nicer than the Korean Air, that I have ever ridden on.

We got there Friday night and quickly caught a taxi to try to catch the underground shopping place before it closed. The taxi driver was crazy and we had quite the hilarious and memorable ride.

Unfortunately we were too slow and the shopping place had closed, but nearby was our favorite rice and curry chicken place!

After getting chicken we cruised around The Bund for a little bit and took pictures near the Oriental Pearl Tower... no big deal ;)

The next day we woke up bright and early to head to the Wild Animal Park. Our hotel told us to catch this bus that would take us straight there but no one around the bus station could figure out what we wanted to what we were saying so it literally took us 1 1/2 until we found a mini bus that would drive us there for a decent price. Once we arrived the Welcoming Show was still going on and there were street performers lining the sidewalks along with all sorts of animals that you could pay to ride or take pictures with.

We planned out our day so that we could make it to all of the animal performances that were being put on. The first one we went to was the tiger feeding. They had a zip line that they wheeled out hooked meat to the tigers and made the tigers put on a show to get their food.

At on point the strung out the food just far enough that it was dangling over the water so the tigers had to jump up and land in the water to get it. I don't know if that is humane or not... but the tigers seemed to enjoy it and it was really entertaining to watch!

I'm in China, of course I had to take pictures of the pandas!

This was one of the final shows; it was almost like a circus performance with a little bit of everything.

Oh yea, and I held a baby white tiger, no big deal.

Oh yea, I rode an elephant :D

And a camel!

A flock of China babies on a sign, just because.

 

Then, after the Wild Animal Park we headed to the Ocean Aquarium. There were 3 different floors of all sorts of water creatures! All of the escalators were in a glass tunnel so you could watch the fish, ducks, and turtles swimming around as you went down.

 

At the Aquarium they also had different shows of feeding seals or penguins but the coolest show was the stingray. This guy was swimming around underwater with the sting ray and put on a bit of a show with them as he fed them… it was super cool.

Next we entered the worlds longest glass tunnel with all sorts of fish, sharks, creatures, coral, etc.

The speed trains are really nice, clean, and convenient but you just don't get the same experiences and stories that would would on a slow train. This boy and his Grandfather shared a seat next to me and he was the most darling thing. I glanced over at the phone he was playing with and I saw that he had secretly taken a picture of another blonde teacher that was sitting near us in ILP and so I let him take an actual picture of me and he thought that was the funnest thing. After that we just kept taking pictures of each other for a while.

Now this guy, this is classic. He whipped of his shirt and basically pranced around for a while to get attention. When the attention started to die down, he hopped up on his chair for everyone to see! When someone snitched on us and told him we were taking pictures he turned around all cocky and bold-like and then just got too embarrassed and had to sit down.

This lady boarded the train a few stops after we did. She started talking to us in English and we kept chatting the rest of the time. Encounters like this are priceless, I have so many pictures of the awesome people that we meet on K trains. We we became more comfortable and familiar with each other she offered her Chinese speaking skills to help us figure out a ticket situation and later secretly interpreted for us what people around us were talking about... often it was about us! Now I wonder just how often that happens!