China Travel Diary: Day 1 and Day 2

As what I have promised, this is a blogpost about my vacation to China from 25 December 2014 to 2 January 2015.

These are the things which I prepared before going to China:

• Went to malls and bought all the winter stuff. I think this one is obvious. :)
• Went to consult a doctor and asked for medicines (flu, cough, fever, etc), just in case if my body can't stand the weather difference between hot Indonesia and cold China, and if you have an allergic towards cold weather, you can consult your doctor and asked for medicines too. 
• Lip or body moisturiser if needed. I only need lip balm because my lip becomes really dry there. Some of the members in my tour said that their skin becomes really dry there, and according to them it was very painful. A lot of people said that Vaseline is very good, like you can apply it to your lips or any part of your skin. My mom bought it but I didn't use it. I use Baby lips from Maybelline for my lip balm. :)
• Tolak Angin. I dont know about you, but this medicine is really good and it always works well on me. I drank this every morning after I finished my breakfast. Even my tour guide offered me this medicine when I looked a bit sick there. So I guess this one is recommended(?) 
• Hair mask or conditioner, or anything that you usually use (so many hair products that I cant even name it one by one). My hair gets really tangled there because of the strong and cold wind, and I can barely brush it. Even the girls in my tour group experience the same thing. 
• Chinese people have a very healthy lifestyle. They don't add excessive seasonings to their food, so if you compare the food here in Indonesia and in China, they are a bit tasteless. If you are picky about food, you can bring your own seasonings like ketchup, chilli sauce, or maybe abon. Well, the food is still okay for me, so this is not a big problem.

This is just based on my own experience. I don't know if these are actually needed for you if you want to visit China, but like what most Indonesians said, sedia payung sebelum hujan. lol 

Day 1:

It was 25 December, and merry christmas! I spent my whole christmas day in the airport. I went to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport at 1 p.m. and had a flight to Singapore at around 5 p.m.

Right after I arrived at Changi airport, I went to the waiting room, because my next flight was at around 1 a.m. and I still had to wait like 5 more hours, so I charged my phone and had a free wifi in the waiting room.

Basically, I did nothing interesting there. I just stroll around, and had a dinner at Hard Rock cafe.

A very big portion!

Day 2:

I arrived at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, and the temperature was 4 degree as I arrived. I can feel the coldness right after I went out of the plane, even though I was still inside the room. So I quickly went to the toilet and wore my long johns, scarf, and all the things I need during winter.

From the airport, we are heading to Oriental Pearl Tower, where we could see the beautiful city of Shanghai from a great height. You can see both old and new Shanghai. Fyi, the city of Shanghai is divided into two - new Shanghai and old Shanghai, and they are separated by the Huang Pu river. Now, lets go back to the Oriental Pearl Tower because I am going to discuss about the new and old Shanghai again later.

The oriental pearl tower

This is me from where I stand

From the Oriental Pearl tower, we were heading to The Bund. This place runs along the western bank of Huang Pu river, so you can see the both the old and new Shanghai from here.

This is the old Shanghai

And this is the new Shanghai

Another photo of the old Shanghai. Pretty, right?

 As you can see from the photos above, the new Shanghai is more of a metropolitan city, with all of its tall buildings, whereas the old Shanghai is the opposite of it.

 Since I love the view of the old Shanghai very much, so why not taking OOTD pictures.

• Leather jacket, skirt, and scarf from Stradivarius
• Michael kors selma medium messenger
• Shoes, socks, and leggings from random winter store

 My sweater cannot be seen here, because it was covered with the scarf and the jacket. It is a knitted turtleneck sweater, and if you are wondering, I got it from Pull & Bear (you can see it on my very first photo above).

There was this annoying yet funny moment when I was taking these photos. So there was a groom and bride who were having a pre-wedding photoshoot that time, me and my mom was standing like more than 1 km away from them, so I guess we were not disturbing them. Then a few seconds later, the photographer came and approached us, telling us to go away because they were having their photoshoots, and I was like, what?! Anyway, I have finished taking my photos that time so it wasn't a big deal.

From The Bund, we went to have lunch at the nearby area.

After having our lunch, we went to the Yu Yuan garden. I cant really remember what we did that time, because I was super tired, but I have some photos to show.

 

 

 After that, we went to the market near Yu Yuan garden. It sells a lot of inexpensive stuff (some of them are cute, and you can buy them for souvenirs), and you can still negotiate with the price! It also sells Shanghai street foods. My family and I was super tired, and moreover the wind was blowing strongly and the weather was freezing cold, so we went to a restaurant instead. The restaurant there was veryyy warm and comfortable. They got amazing heaters! Well, most of the restaurants there have heater during winter seasons, and even the bus has one. But the main problem is it was still freezing cold despite the presence of heater. But this restaurant, it was so warm that you can take your coat off and enjoy your meal! You can even order some iced drinks if you want to (not sure if it is available for sale because the demand of cold drinks during winter tends to be low,  (economy, yes) but they sell some ice cream though.) I ordered the Xiao Long Bao, and the taste? decent. 

 

Our tour guide offered us to have dinner at the cruise to see the view of Shanghai at night. They said that the view is beautiful and the buildings are full of colourful lights, but sadly we couldn't make it because we were super tiredddddd. We didn't have proper sleep in the plane. I slept like less than 3 hours, that's why my face on all the photos above looks horrible. Well, it is always horrible. 

So, as ordered by all of the group members, we went to the hotel and had a rest.

This is my Day 1 and Day 2 of my China travel diary. Day 3 will be up on this blog soon so stay tuned!

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