Once upon a time in Shanghai

During the last week of March 2012, we visited Shanghai for airshow exhibition. Stayed at Marriott Hongqiao Hotel. The hotel is just 15 minutes from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and Hongqiao Railway Station.

Since we are a member of Marriot, can get free access to WIFI. Can use skype to contact my family.

When we arrived at Pudong Airport, I made a query of our hotel booking at the Marriott counter and they told me which hotel I had booked. I told them a Marriott Hotel and they told me that there are 4 Marriott hotels in Shanghai… which one?? Lol

During free hours, we took the opportunity to visit the city and part of the activity is to buy goodies for family and friends at the town centre of Shanghai. we took the underground railway (Shanghai Metro).  We bought the tickets at the counter since the ticket auto machine is in Chinese. First time we were not aware that we can change the language from Chinese to English.  If you try to buy from the auto machine, look at the right top corner there is an icon for change to English. 

The subway station is huge and the train has more than 10 coaches, as compared to our LRT, the train over here is 10 times longer than ours. There are 11 Metro lines, 278 stations and over 434 kilometres of tracks in operation and the longest network in the world. Wow, my boss told me that China has changed a lot for last 20 years ago when he visited in 1992. 

Shanghai is a shopping paradise, with various bustling commercial streets and shopping centers beckoning the visitors. Shopping malls in Shanghai are most fashionable inside country as Shanghai is the window of modern China.

One of the places we went is the Metro City located at Zhaojiabang Road. Metro City is one of the most famous places for electronics such as computers, software, phones, and mp3 players. The building looks like a giant glass golf ball. When we went inside, it looks like we are inside Plaza Imbi or Digital Mall. 

We also went to the shopping centers near the People Square and Nanjing Road. There is one Muslim restaurant that offers very fair foods. Look for Hankou Road.

  

The most challenging is we need to find Muslim restaurant for halal foods. Luckily we found few and surprisingly, the first dinner we had at 1001 Night Restaurant located at 4 Heng Shan Road was amazing. The restaurant offers acceptable and good foods but the best thing is that they have an entertainment by a beautiful belly dancer danced in Arabic rhythm like a Sinbad movie. lol

There is one restaurant we went named Uighur Restaurant located at Yi Shan Road. The best about this restaurant is they have the best grilled lamb.

 

This restaurant also provides entertainment by getting the guests to join them singing and dancing on the stage. The entertainer (a guy and a lady) will pick up randomly the guests and pull them to do the choo-choo train and dragged all to the stage and they all will start singing and dancing with this Uighur song (The local said it is Mongolian dance). lol

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The last day we went to Grand Taj Indian Restaurant at Gubei Road. It is quite tricky to find where the restaurant is. You can see the restaurant signage on the left but actually the restaurant is located on the right. The best dining we ever had for the last 3 days in Shanghai.  

My advice is that if you want to take a taxi, please ask the hotel conceige to write the address in Chinese so that the taxi driver can send you to the correct address.  Most of taxi drivers are hardly to speak English.

My second advice is that if you take a taxi, pray hard because their driving is like that they own the road because they simply do a U-turn on the road with double lines and even the opposite road has incoming cars.  Wow!!

Next -Part 2 - Shanghai Airshow Exhibition