584. Shanghai | Yuyuan Garden

I just took a look at today's date on the calendar on my screen and almost had a mini heart attack when I realized I'm leaving for my next trip very soon - next week to be precise. It was planned quite a long time ago and I always kept thinking it's far away and we still had lots more time to plan...but as always, time had flown by way too fast and I feel I still have a million things to do before I leave!! I really wish I had more time in a day and/or was better at managing my time. Or just have less things I want to do overall. I wish I had more time for this blog, my second blog/website, catch up on all my magazine subscriptions as they come in (about 25 issues behind now? lol), not miss any yoga classes, work out more, cook more, etcetc...

Anyways, what inspired me to make this post was the fact that I had wanted to finish up all my Asia posts before I go on my trip. But as you can see, that didn't happen. I still have a lot more posts to make and there's now no way that I can finish them all before I leave. I'd have to post about 3 a day lol. So I guess I'll just have to mix up all my travel posts from now on.

I'm not sure if I mentioned yet where I'm going for my next trip? I'm not going overseas this time but I am going somewhere with a couple friends from overseas. I will reveal the destination closer to the date..can't wait!

For now, here are some photos from our days in Shanghai visiting Yuyuan Garden. It's a beautiful garden spread over 5 acres believed to have been built over 400 years ago during the Ming Dynasty. We only got to see a small part of it. I'd love to visit Shanghai again and explore more here because I really loved the architecture here.















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520. Day 6 | Yuyuan Garden, Shanghai

Today was the final day of our tour (that we joined..not of the whole Asia trip!). It went by really fast. We drove all the way from Huangshan back to Shanghai, which took about 6 hours. By the time we got to Shanghai, it was already early evening. Luckily my mom and I are staying in Shanghai for a few more days as we have some relatives here and they will be taking us around. I think the most famous landmark of Shanghai is the Oriental Pearl Tower. We saw it from a distance today..it's really beautiful and colourful. It constantly changes colours and sparkles. I can't wait to explore more of the city and The Bund! Also there is one place I've wanted to visit in Shanghai since 2010. That should be a clue for what it is lol..I actually posted about it on my secondary blog back then (now deleted). Hopefully we'll get a chance to visit.

Today in Shanghai we went around this place called Yuyuan (or Yu) Garden. I loved it there. Lots of street food and "xiaolongbao". I loved the old style of buildings and streets there.





On a side note - the worst thing about China is the toilet situation. Most of them you have to squat. & most of them are really dirty with no toilet paper. I encountered two of the worst today. It was raining the whole day (in Huangshan and Shanghai). The first one we were at this museum and I had to go...the washroom was kind of in a small separate building on its own, at the back. Not even a building. Maybe just a small shed. So I walked out in the rain and when I got there I see it just opened into one stall. There were no lights inside and it was just a hole in the ground. I had no choice but to use it lol..just the worst scenario I thought, in the dark and all wet from the rain. No sink to wash my hands either. But that wasn't the worst. The second one..we made a pit stop for lunch along the highway. The building we went into was this food court, half under construction. It turns out the washrooms were not built yet so they had porta pottys. It was still raining at this time. Porta pottys are the worst, even if they are actual sitting toilets. But these were squatting porta pottys, with the most horrible smell inside. Nowhere to wash our hands there either.

Sorry to end this post in this way lol. On a more positive note, since our tour has now ended..we get to sleep in a bit later tomorrow morning! Well, waking up at 7am (in 5 hours) instead of 5am wake ups like we did the past several days.

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