Sunday, December 28, 2014

Revisiting My Top 8 Travel List

A few years ago I was in a rut, being under employed and sitting at my parents house a lot, trying to write a travel blog while not traveling. Not an easy task. While at home, I created a list of 8 things I wanted to do while traveling.

I mentioned that at the time, friends from home felt like I had traveled everywhere to which I disagreed. I still disagree, but I do acknowledge that I have done a lot. I have even tackled some of the things on my top 8 list, with plans to bring down a couple more. I still maintain that the more I travel the more I realize I have been no where.

Below is the list, updated with my current idea on when it will be completed, or comments on if it has been completed. The link to blog posts relating to my experience has also been provided in case you missed them, or would like to relive them.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Shanghai Roads


In my area of the city, Qibao, I live on Zhongchun road. This road is set up like many other busy roads throughout the city. It runs pretty much North/South and in the middle of the road there is a median that seperates the traffic going in different directions. This prevents cars from making a left hand turn into driveways and some side streets. Instead, they need to make a U turn at the next traffic light, and then the turn they wish to make will be a right hand one.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Crowds

One thing of note about Shanghai are the crowds. This isn't a surprise when you consider there are over 24 million people living in Shanghai. That makes it the largest city in the world population wise, although there is more room for the crowds of people compared to some of the other more populated cities.

That doesn't change the fact that it is crowded. Especially when all these millions of people are doing something popular, like traveling on the metro, going grocery shopping or site seeing at the Bund.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Xiao Long Bao

It's not like me to write about food. I am certainly not very adventurous when it comes to food.

Case in point, I spent 365 days living in Korea and I estimate that I went to McDonald's around 250 times. Perhaps slightly less because sometimes I went to Burger King or had pizza. The main thing is I ate at North American fast food joints a lot. I'm a little ashamed to admit that, but if you know me it probably isn't hard to believe that was the case.

I didn't even try the famous bibimbop. I also barely tried kimbap because I didn't really like it. These were both very common meals or snacks that people ate there. I just stuck to french fries and chicken nuggets.

Starting out in Shanghai with my girlfriend Michelle however made food and trying new foods a little more of a priority. The most famous food in Shanghai is xiao long bao (show long bow is how I pronounce it, but they don't always understand me. When that happens I have to show them a picture from my phone of the chinese words 小籠饅頭). It is sometimes known as the Shanghai soup dumpling.

Lots of places sell these dumplings, but we wanted to have our first taste of them to be the very best. Researching online we found that the best could be found in the Yu Yuan garden area. Apparently that is where all the tourists go to get the dumplings, including Chinese tourists. It is also the first, or a branch of the first xiao long bao restaurant.