Evan Carmichael and Nina spend their first day in Shanghai after a sea voyage, hitting Nanjing Road's crowds and the Bund's historic waterfront. They struggle with Starbucks Wi‑Fi requiring a Chinese phone number, discover Google and YouTube don't work, and sample local food like spinach stir‑fry and barley soup.
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Another day, another adventure. We're finally getting off the boat after 2 days at sea, and we're going to Shanghai. We're gonna try to get some good shopping in for Nina.
Ah, fingers crossed.
But first, breakfast time! Eggs.
Hash browns.
What's this? Is this miso soup? And the usual, congee with shredded pork, bacon, eggs, sausages, hash browns, and 3 boxes of Froot Loops. 'Cause that's how you start your day, friends. And coffee and orange juice coming soon. Okay, we just arrived in Shanghai after a 40-minute bus tour, uh, shuttle to get here. We're gonna explore, but this is where they dropped us off. So there's a really cool monument here. Nina's taking pictures. Hi, Nina. Hi. She's taking pictures of me taking video of her. And then across the way is the famous, uh, I guess business district with that tower. I don't know what it's called, but you see that tower in all the Shanghai videos. So if we If we have time, we'll cross over there, but first we're going to head to Nanjing, which is a pedestrian-only street, to do a little shopping and maybe get some food. Hello Shanghai! Beautiful day in the city. So we've been in Shanghai for, what, 10 minutes? And 10 minutes into our amazing Shanghai trip, we found a Starbucks! Let's see what they have here. So I've got my venti caramel frappuccino.
It's basically a grande in America.
Yeah, venti size. And Nina has— what do you have?
Simply Caramel.
What?
Simply Caramel latte.
Oh, okay.
Cheers!
We're kind of upset because to get on the internet here, you have to have a Chinese cell phone number that they text you a login to get into. Come on, Starbucks! How many tourists are coming here? You expect them to have a Chinese cell phone to get— anyway, I don't know. I might ban Starbucks from Shanghai now because of this. Very poorly done, Starbucks. You should be attracting tourists, not pushing them away. One thing that hits you pretty quickly is just how many people there are in Shanghai. Nina's holding on to me. Don't want to lose you. Okay, so this is Nanjing Road, which is supposed to be pedestrian only. One of the main streets, big shopping street in Shanghai. So we're gonna go look at the stores, hopefully buy something for Nina. Holy cow, people everywhere. We made our first purchase in Shanghai. Oh, let's see. Bottle of water. It's actually, it's a huge, it's 2 liters. I've never seen a 2-liter bottle like that. Anyway, we're gonna go back out and, uh, you may be noticing as I point to the feet that Nina and I are both rocking the 5-toe shoes, getting a lot of looks for this, but Nina's feet are starting to hurt because she hasn't really gotten used to them yet. You can't wear them just for a full day because it starts to hurt your feet until you get used to how you're supposed to walk in them. So we're gonna go outside and Nina will change her shoes. So we're at a restaurant here in Shanghai and we came because they had Wi-Fi, but it's a challenge because China blocks Facebook and Google and Gmail and YouTube, but I can't get access to any of the stuff that I want to access. So I've been fooling around, I've been trying to get proxy sites, you know, so Google doesn't work, so you have to use Baidu, which is their search engine, and type in proxy browsing, and you go to any of them, and China has also blocked all of the proxy browsers. So I can't log into my YouTube channel to update my numbers or see the comments, I can't get into my Gmail, you know, I try to load it on my phone, and it says I had 183 messages, but it's just showing blank. And I can't get on Facebook Messenger to ask any of my friends to help me out with this. So very frustrating, very frustrating. But we'll see what happens. Nina, meanwhile, what are you up to? She has a Chinese WeChat. Oh well, I guess we'll put that frustration aside and see what's up for lunch. So what is this?
This is the spinach stir-fry with the mushrooms. Meat wrappers.
Meat wrappers?
It's chicken. I asked for chicken.
Meat chicken wrapper? Okay, let's try one.
Oh, I asked for no spicy.
Mmm. Pretty good, huh? Yum. We're at the Old Gate of Shanghai where it used to be— I think this used to be the city walls. There's this big huge gate, but as usual, there's chaos everywhere. Welcome to Shanghai. People have been friendly though, giving us directions, but it's just like massive chaos. Noise. They compete over who makes more noise. And just feel the streets. Don't pay attention to street signs and stop signals. Just go, go, go. What do you think, babe? Nina's happy. Okay, we're here on the Bund, which is a popular sightseeing place along the water and making our way back to the bus. But you can see here all the old buildings along the water, and on the other side are most of the new buildings, from the skyscrapers on the other side of the river. And as usual, people Everywhere. Annina got a Coke.
It is $5 for cold Coke. $4 is not cold.
Oh, well, there we go. $5 for cold Coke. How does it taste? Refreshing?
Mmm.
Okay, we had a really busy day in Shanghai of walking. Lots of walking. And we came home and just crashed on the bed for what, an hour?
About that.
Yeah, about that. I had a shower. I feel nice and relaxed. So we're off to dinner and then we're supposed to go dancing. We'll see what happens. I have a salad with dried tomatoes. Nina's got a barley soup and—
I like the soup.
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