Shanghai Visit

My friends and I finally got the chance to visit mainland China. Getting the visa was a very difficult thing to get. It was also our fault for getting it last minute. My visa, (which is valid for 10 years!!), cost 500 US dollars......hopefully I'll be coming back to China every year and it will all be worth it in the end.

We wanted to see the city of Shanghai. Unfortunately we didn't have the best experience there. The people were very rude, maybe because we were American tourists or whatever but we just got horrible looks and shoved a lot.

The city is quite dirty. Garbage everywhere, locals spitting right in front of you, people sneezing, coughing, passing gas without caring who sees/hears. There is no such thing as personal space. A lot of people would stand uncomfortably close to us for no reason, and they didn't seem to care if we felt uncomfortable or not.

On our first full day there we went to the top of Shanghai Tower, which is the second tallest building in the world. This was a really cool experience. The elevator ride was insanely fast. The speed the elevator travels is 43 mph which is the fastest in the world and it goes up to the 119th floor in 53 seconds. In the elevator you don't feel the speed at all. Once we got to the top and exited the elevator, and insane amount of wind came at us. It was because of the elevator shaft has so much air in it I'm assuming...

Once we got to see out the huge floor to ceiling windows, the view looked fake. For me usually when I'm high up in a building I can feel the altitude but I didn't feel it as much in this building. I wished it was a bit clearer outside, as the fog prevented us from seeing the horizon more. We stayed up there for about an hour taking pictures and admiring the view just by walking around the floor, which had 360 degree views of the whole city.

That night we went to a somewhat nice, trendy bar, and we had quite possibly the worst service ever. We got there at 12 or so. and the bar 'closed' just a bit before 1, or so they said it did. We got one round of drinks and our server said we'd have to order another one immediately right after if we wanted one because the bar was closing. We waited a little bit to get another round, and it took a while to even get them. Another group of 6 people came in around 12:30 and sat down right next to us. They got served several rounds of drinks while we were still finishing our first round. NO server came to us for probably 30 minutes... I went up to the bar itself and tried to order something but the bartender said its closed...meanwhile there were people at the bar drinking freshly served cocktails. I walked back to the table and within 10 minutes the whole place started to close and tables were being cleaned...and the one directly next to us was completely clean.

Servers kept passing us and looking at us. Usually at a normal restaurant servers come to your table every now and then to check on you to see if you need anything or whatever. It was around 1:15 and we were still sitting there just waiting and waiting for at least someone to come to us to give us a check or something!!!! Meanwhile the whole restaurants lights have been on for about 20 minutes, so there wasn't anymore dim lighting...waiters clearly saw us. At this point we've had enough and felt so disrespected.

Eventually somebody noticed we were distinctly staring at them and they came over and asked what we wanted. We told them and complained. They obviously felt sorry and told us it was their fault...and kept saying how sorry about how horrible the service was...it went on for a while of us talking back and forth of us complaining and them apologizing. Anyways, in the end, the service sucked and they felt bad and took off the service charge of our checks, but we still paid full price of our drinks, which we shouldn't have. This ruined our night pretty much.

On Saturday my friend, whom is obsessed with Disney, decided we were all going to Shanghai Disneyland. I wasn't looking forward to it since we had to wake up at 7:30 to get there by 9 and wait on line for it to open at 10. We arrived a little bit later than we wanted and it was PACKED! I am not a huge fan of roller coasters or anything like that, but I was happy enough to go with them. We spent the whole day there and it was actually really fun and I'm glad I went.