Lots of photos in this post. Took forever to upload them in Wordpress’ tedious format but here we go!

The photo above is of a big Xiao Long Bao with a straw in it so you can suck out the soup. It was rather strange and pretty delicious.

Obamao

I’ve never really appreciated these insects from up-close before. They are so cool looking.

China is amazing if you’re into bikes. The bike culture here is totally next level, and you see some really weird and funny stuff.

!!!!!!

We visited Taikang Lu which is a touristy district that is kinda like a cross between Vancouver’s Yaletown and Gastown. Lots of art and photo galleries (lots more photo than art galleries actually) and some pretty cool photo mini museums. Tons of nice bars and whatnot too. I didn’t really enjoy myself there because it was such a tourist trap, but it’s really cool to see what the young people of Shanghai are doing with their surroundings, setting up all these rad stores.

Dawggers

Love the tubing on these bikes

Road safety

Red Bull here is owned by a different corporation than the one in Austria, so even the name is different.

Gambring

ATM

Mad textures on some of these buildings

I take

Appropriate

We went to this really dope antique market at Dongtai road. Bought some wicked stuff and befriended some locals who recognized and were interested in Vina’s Olympus OM1 camera. I love this place, and there’s some really cool spots around it too.

V

Vina shooting photos in the alleys where people live along Dongtai market.

Cycle motivation

In my last blog post I talked about these and promised a picture, here it is!! Hand warmers on your handlebars for when it gets cold. Brilliant.

In China you can smoke everywhere. Even the hotel room provides an ashtray with matches, requesting only that you don’t smoke on the bed and light the whole place on fire. The smoking culture here is insane. Everyone smokes, and cigarettes average about $3CDN a pack and can get cheaper too. Vina and I have temporarily become smokers.

Our local restaurant spot near the hotel. In our opinion this is the best restaurant in Shanghai. About $1CDN a plate and frakin delicious.

We hit up the ‘bird and insect market’ which is close to the the Dongtai antique market. This place is INSANE. If you are ever in Shanghai do not miss coming here. So the story with these crickets is that cricket fighting has always been a hobby to the Chinese, so they’ll come to places like this market to survey crickets (sometimes with a  magnifying glass) to bring out and fight. I know they kinda look dead in this photo but they were very much alive. The whole market is absolutely crazy, it’s like the Chinese version of a pet store.

All those baskets have crickets in them. The noise was absolutely deafening.

Awesome ad brah

Lots of birds here too. I shot mostly DSLR photos here so I don’t have many photos from my Canon S90 to post here, but we took some video too so hopefully will be able to upload those soon! The bird and insect market was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me. So bizarre.

Ate food at some nearby local spots. Get yo grease on.

Windows failing everywhere

So Macdonalds here has chicken wings, and they are f’in awesome. The middle ones are by far the best tho.

Shanghai

Expo advertising is everywhere, they are pushing it incredibly hard

After going to the fake market

CAT

Another type of Red Bull can. The other one is the uncarbonated golden can that you can find typically in Asia, but I’m not sure what this one is like. Gonna try it the next time I see it, but I think it’s just like the other one but with EXTRA quantities of Red Bull.

Denise, Vina’s friend from Vancouver whose been showing us around Shanghai. She’s fantastic, thank you Denise!!

We hit this club called M3 where there were sharks. This place was swanky in a shitty way and very gangster style. We got out of there quick. Not fun.

Guo Tie dumplings at the best restaurant in Shanghai. This dish is like a tongue orgasm.

Finally we hit up the much talked about Expo. It was like an architectural amusement park.

Really cool transport car things that were silent (electric) which made them even more futuristic seeming.

Lots of tourist groups here, and since everyone in the group wears the same hat for identification, it was pretty fun to see all the hat fashion going on.

walker

The Chinese pavilion, which was quite enormous. They all have things to see inside them but we only went into 3 pavilions because the lineups were long and Vina and I just don’t do lineups, so instead we walked the entire area and browsed the outsides of every pavilion. It took 8 hours to see them all. It would probably take 2 or 3 full days to see the insides of every one.

Some surprising, rad stuff to see

Scale was crazy at the expo. They poured money into this place and it showed.

The same giant funnel as the picture above this. Really crazy.

Some companies have got to research their english names better

But some english names are so charming it’s best that they don’t research them too much

METAL BEARS!!!

AAAAHHHHHHH

I love these bears

Hangin’ on

Food court stylin

Flabs

Food court cards

Local expo

The Singapore pavilion which was actually quite interesting looking and very popular. They did way better than I was expecting with this, proud!

hmmm

The Australian pavilion, the first one we went into and only because the line moved fast. It sucked. We bounced quick.

This orange light was about the coolest part of the Australian pavilion.

Washrooms here are a litttle different from Canada. Stools are common. Get on squattin.

Denmark pavilion was nice because…

You could ride bikes around that thing! So fun looking!!! Too bad the lineup was long so we didn’t do it, but yeah.

FASHION

Sucker for shapers

Line walking

Canada pavilion

This was definitely one of the nicer pavilions in the place and there were lots of people checking this place out. Interesting integration of metal and wood. Stoked.

Jia Na Da

Brazil pavilion had a nice exterior.

Eating KFC

Make square fun time

Last photo. Vina took this of me in the UK Pavilion which is called the Seed Cathedral. This pavilion has garnered a fare amount of attention on the blogosphere so we were eager to see it, and even with all the hype it completely blew us away. It would not be an exaggeration to call this a masterpiece. It’s fucking brilliant, and in my opinion a very obvious highlight of the whole Expo. We spent a lot of time both inside and outside, just staring at this incredible piece of art/sculpture/building. Totally amazing. Shot lots of photos of it on the DSLR. :D

That’s it for now. We want to shoot photos of bridges today (I’m really obsessed with the expressways and bridges here, they’re so beautifully constructed) so that should be fun. Also, we went clubbing last night after the Expo but our cameras ran out of batteries so we couldn’t document it, but it was such an eye-opening experience. Dubstep in Shanghai, who would’ve thought. Should be going out tonight so hopefully I’ll have some  more photos of the very vibrant nightlife scene in the next post!