My vacation Part 1: Shanghai Expo

After about 18 hours of flight + 2 hours of bus, I arrived in Guangzhou on the 20th and then headed to Hangzhou and Shanghai on the 22nd. It was a 4 days trip to Hangzhou, Shanghai Expo and Wuzhen organized by a Guangzhou local travel agency. It was a memorable [insert sarcastic tone] experience all around. First day at Hangzhou was nice as the weather was pleasant but the next two days devoted to the Shanghai Expo was…

In Hangzhou

I went to the Expo on a Saturday and it was expected to be crowded but not THAT crowded. Apparently, there were near 800,000 visitors that day. It didn’t help that it was pouring rain as the end of a typhoon approached the area. We lined up for the entrance of the Expo for about 1 ½ hour since 8:30. We experienced our first share of pushing and shoving by people and it was scary!

We were supposed to spend the whole day there and at 7 pm the bus would pick us up back to the motel. I was all happy to buy the Expo passport hoping to collect some stamps but ended up not entering any pavilions at all. It was announced regularly that if visitors want to visit pavilions such as China, Germany, England, etc. have to expect 6 hours of waiting…! Even a pavilion like Angola need an 1 ½ hour lineup. Remember it was pouring rain that day and I didn’t have an umbrella so I was soaked fast. I really didn’t want to line up for some hours so I just walked around and took some pictures of the outsides of some pavilions.

See the people and their umbrellas?

The Ukraine Pavilion, one of the better pictures I took

Everyone of the family were so fed up that we left earlier. We took the free shuttle to go to the nearest metro station. Experienced again some pushing and shoving and people cutting the line (Grrr…that’s what pissed me off the most). And then more pushing and shoving while waiting to get in the metro station. The staff just let a small number of people at a time and geez people couldn’t even let a father holding a child pass first by squishing them at a corner…I was so glad to return in one piece and didn’t die by being knocked down!

The public toilets at the Expo and they are surprisingly very clean...

We were supposed to return to the Expo the next day but after such horrific experience, we all didn’t care that we wasted the money; we didn’t go back. We were visiting Shanghai by ourselves comfortably and ding ding ding, it was raining that day too! We finished the trip with Wuzhen and it was more pleasant as the weather was better and it was the other side that we didn’t visit last year.

Wuzhen

Okay, I'm done ranting [not]...