Yes, yes! Another Aquarium...

I first want to say Yuin is a perfect travel mate as he was just as enthusiastic and easy going as I was. He was a lot of fun to travel with and was always up for an adventure and stayed positive when things weren't always positive. I think China was a bit much for Harry as this was his last day of travel with us- he opted to stay in the hostel the next couple of days.

The three of us set out fairly early in the morning to get a full day of sights in! Our first stop was getting to the other side of the river. Now that may not seem like such a sight... but some genius (or not so) created this crazy tunnel to get you over to Pu Dong. I will describe the tunnel in a second, but first we had to buy the tickets to get on.

Complete confusion, it's China of course it was. Apparently you can get tickets which include different sights, but there was no explanation of the sights nor an English speaker to help sort it out. The risk was either missing out on something cool or paying for crap. The sights listed were: the tunnel (yes), the aquarium (yes), a sex exhibit (sounds intriguing) and a sea exhibit (maybe unnecessary with the aquarium). What the heck, we went for it all with smiles on our faces.

The tunnel:
Well, it is a sort of cable car but on tracks. You and your party get put in a single bubble of a train and off you go. The attraction apparently, is the light show created. Different lights and laser beams make patterns and designs along the walls of the tunnel (think old school Willy Wonka). You are completely surrounded by cool visuals. The only problem is that the music doesn't go with the lights, the train doesn't go fast enough and the visuals were not that cool. This was almost a really great experience- if done correctly it would have been, but it fell short. This had nothing on the light shows at Twilo (though some other factors helped that). This experience was really funny though as we once again found ourselves laughing at China's tourism. It seemed like this was created back in the early 80's. With our current technology this could have been great.... such a good idea, but such poor execution!

We wandered out and confusion set in as the signage for the next attractions were non existent. We somehow managed to find the Sea Exhibit. The Sea Exhibit was turtle tanks and some other completely forgettable inclusions. What did we just pay for?!

With the sea exhibit being what it was, I knew the sex exhibit would be a funny one. We managed to find it and oh my, just utter ridiculousness. Firstly, they had some explanations that were divided into 9 segments and stencilled on the walls. As I was trying to read them, I had to stop mid way on each because some bowl or sculpture was placed in front of the script, blocking all of the words! The exhibit was basically different sculptures, some modern some ancient of penis's, vagina's and people having sex. I have photo's... it was really funny, pointless and worth every penny! My personal favorite was a wooden sculpture of a cartoonish looking man with an over sized 3 foot long, 1 foot thick erection. He was chained up, all but the penis and it was titled something like: "This part of the body can't be chained down" or something crazy like that. The same artist also had a big wooden high-healed shoe with an equally large penis in it... not really sure where the artist was going with it... but it's art and not to be questioned!

We next made it to the aquarium!!!! I had high hopes as there were a lot of tourists running about. I am not sure how to begin, so I will just dive right in by saying one of the first rooms we see was filled with some fish tanks and average looking gold fish. The sign next to the tanks accurately read "Chinese Suckers". Yup, that was us. Do yourselves a favor, if you ever go to Shanghai skip everything in this entry! The aquarium may not have been worth it,but it was worth many laughs! The aquarium tank itself was tiny and waste high. It had a duck chillin in it. A duck in an aquarium, come on!!! There was another tank as you walk by the escalators... it had a plastic crocodile in it. It was PLASTIC!!!! There is no point in going on about this aquarium, while it is still better than the one in DC, all you could do is laugh at it.

Once again we had high hopes for our next tourist endeavour: The Pearl tower and lunch at the revolving restaurant in it. We bought the most expensive tickets, allowing us to go to all look out points and included lunch. Lunch, a disgusting buffet. We all know how I feel about them, so no need to continue on about the nastiness that is mass produced for tourists that don't know better and that sits out hours on end waiting to be consumed. We also went during the day, I have to say if you are going to do this, go at night and at least see the Bund, brightly lit in the nights sky. The other look out points were a disappointment as well, it was a foggy day and not much is visible. En route from one floor to another we passed through the space exhibit. Since when does China have enough space exploration experience to justify a space exhibit? The exhibit was a few life sized ET figures (no joke, ET was there), a space ride which was closed, a life sized man in a moon suit and a roller coaster. I skipped the roller coaster because I hate them, but Harry and Yuin went on it. It lasted all of 1 minute- enough said.

It was a bust of a day to say the very least. We spent a FORTUNE on the day alone and not one thing seemed worth it. However it was one of my most fun and memorable days on the trip and I have to say that Harry and Yuin were great sports about the whole thing too!

To try and salvage our day we decided to splurge on one more attraction. We got the info from our hotel and we were off to an unknown neighborhood, with just some Chinese characters in hand to give to the taxi driver that would bring us to the Shanghai circus!!!