Hello again, Shanghai!!!
So just to be transparent... I was SO anxious about going to China again.
Lately, I've been enjoying traveling to the same place over and over again because I can just chill, I know what to expect, I am not pressured to have a checklist of things to do/places to visit - lots of reasons! Top of the mind reason is that we can try to live like locals. And it's interesting to immerse into a different culture and be in a different day-to-day life for a few days.
And China isn't that. It's unfamiliar, it's different... which means there are lots of things that we have to prep!
But come Day 0, wow! (Okay, not really Day 0. That's another story. Lol) Shanghai, you've proven once again why I loved you the first time we visited.
Shanghai is a right mix of old and new, simple and grand, unique and familiar.
We loved going around like locals - now becoming more familiar with the metro and the tools that we needed to thrive in their mind-blowing cashless culture. Now we have data signal 24/7 and we have Alipay so it made life so much easier!
It was extremely cheap to go around - bus only costs P16 and train is P24 minimum. And the Didi isn't bad too! We really like "naka luwag-luwag na kami" this time around. Lol
Food was amaziiiing, too! RR loved the fried dumplings so we had that twice. We would "splurge" but the bill would still be just around P500. Amazing, right?
We had lots of very interesting stories.
-Culture shock and almost getting scammed at the airport upon arrival
-Helping a Dutch couple with their CNY, connecting to data signal and getting an e-sim
-Agoda booking booboo
Saving those for later. :*