My Time in Korea: Shanghai

I spent my winter break in Shanghai. I intended to go to Malaysia for a couple of weeks, but I was unable to get the extra week needed off, and my traveling companion from back home didn't have the spirit to join me. Since I had a dual entry visa to China from my trip to Beijing, I decided to see Shanghai. Good choice. Shanghai was the opposite of Beijing; where Beijing was generally a dirty and unremarkable city with great tourist sites, Shanghai was a clean & modern city with fewer tourist sites. In other words, they are both great cities for different reasons. Since I had almost a week to stay in a city I could have seen in 2 days, I dedicated most of my time to getting the perfect shot of the famous Shanghai skyline. Not sure if I succeeded in that, but I had fun trying. I also experienced a blue moon on New Years Eve. That only happens every billion years or something. My 2 most memorable experiences: first, falling for the (apparently) infamous tea room scam: some nice, friendly, English-speaking young ladies decide to show their incredible hospitality by inviting me to an authentic Chinese tea room. The tea was great, and the tea presenter was entertaining in her presentation, which was more like Tom Cruise in Cocktail than a normal tea server. However, when it was time to leave, the bill was up to me to pay. There was nowhere for me to run off to, but oh well. So I paid (can't remember the amount) a steep price for some tea, it was a decent experience and just something to chalk up to inexperience. I should have known something was up when they wouldn't let me take pictures. My second experience came while waiting for the lights of the Oriental Pearl Tower to light up so I could take some skyline pics. I wandered around the neighborhood and found a hidden coffee shop. The owners were young kids who just returned from college in the States; they spoke English and were thrilled to have an American there (probably thrilled to have anyone, I was the only customer). Their hospitality was wonderful; they gave me a laptop to use, and made coffee with cool little designs in it:

On my way home, I had the pleasure of having a 5 hour layover in the BFE town of Dalian, which was remarkable only for the plastic flower forest just outside the airport: