The Cash vs. Time Dilemma
Ever spend hours scouring the internet for the cheapest possible flight, only to realise it’s that price because you’ll be stuck in an airport for a painful amount of time for a layover…? Well, if so, you’ve probably found yourself in a bit of a pickle; do you spend another few hundred quid on a ticket that doesn’t take thirty hours? Or not?
For me, when time’s tight, spending the extra usually feels like a good investment. But, for our most recent purchase – a one-way ticket for our sabbatical – we thought, “Why not?” I mean, spending half a day in Shanghai sounds kinda intriguing!
The Shanghai Layover Trick!
In China, if your layover is twenty-four hours or less, you can simply fill out a form on arrival, waltz through customs, and voila! You’re free to explore the city – assuming it’s not the dead of night. I wouldn’t bother if everything’s closed… But hey, who am I to tell you what not to do?
After our meaty eleven hour flight with China Eastern (who leave a bit to be desired), we headed straight to the Maglev ticket booth, handily located just downstairs from arrivals. For eighty-five Yen per person, you get a Maglev + Metro day pass – which means unlimited metro rides and one Maglev trip in either direction. That’s about a tenner by the way, pretty decent value to my mind! Also the Shanghai metro is pretty good, even by my snobbish British standards! If the London Underground is a 10/10, then Shanghai’s probably a solid 7.5. But, a hell of a lot cleaner, zero tramps and without a single whiff of stale urine. Even so, we still managed to rack up over twenty thousand steps, so make sure to bring comfy shoes!
The 24-Hour Visa Process: Highs and Lows
The highs? The process is surprisingly simple. You get off the plane, tell the transfers person you’re heading out for a few hours, fill in a form, and breeze through customs. Easy peasy. Then it’s just a matter of navigating the Maglev and metro systems – simple.
The lows? Well, customs was stereotypically sluggish and disinterested, but the real kicker was airport security on our return from the city. I’ve never seen someone so unengaged from their job, which, let’s be honest, is not exactly comforting when it comes to airport security! Their negligence nearly gave Mary-Ann an aneurysm when she realized her passport had vanished… A few frantic moments felt like hours! Only to find it sitting at the security guy’s feet after he’d carelessly attempted to dump the contents of her bag into a tray. Then there was my boarding pass… It only just escaped their clutches and came back to me looking like it had been through a shredder. Good times!
First Stop: The Bund
Our first port of call was ‘The Bund’. We took metro line 2, and got off at East Nanjing Road – which is just a ten minute stroll away. I’ve no idea what the name means, but it’s a basically a scenic promenade or embankment along the river with a pretty epic view of the skyline. Like all big cities these days, Shanghai loves its funky, angular buildings – none of those pesky right angles or any of those boring straight-edges.
I’ve heard you can go up one of the towers for a better view of the city, but we skipped that and decided to prance over to our next stop: Yu Yuan Garden.
Yu Yuan Garden: The Best Stop of the Day
Because I am a sucker for pain, I decided we should walk to the gardens – it’s about half an hour’s walk. But honestly, once we had walked back to the station and decided upon our route, I don’t think taking the metro wouldn’t have saved us much time. Wear good shoes and enjoy the walk!
The gardens were brilliant, easily the highlight of the day. Although, it was crawling with guided tour groups and influencers in flowy dresses setting up tripods in obnoxious positions… Usually in doorways! It served as a very painful reminder of that time Mary-Ann and I dabbled such behaviour… My toes are still yet to uncurl. Entry to Yu Yuan Garden was around five quid, which is an absolute bargain when you consider that Blenheim Palace costs more like forty! Well worth it, and after you are done, you can mill around the surrounding shopping area.
You’ll see more traditional buildings, although I doubt they are four hundred years old like the ones in the gardens are! But, what with all the incense wafting through the air, the food vendors and the Eastern medicine shops, you could quite easily pretend to be in a different century… just don’t look at the Starbucks sign and hoards of western tourists…
Make sure to give some of the food a go! It was great fun playing a delicious game of ‘steamed bun roulette’ – the language barrier made it impossible to even guess what lays within their pillowy exteriors. To be honest, even having eaten it, I am still unsure what was inside it… but it was tasty!
Shanghai Old Street: A Wild Goose Chase
After Yu Yuan, I thought it would be a good idea to check out ‘Shanghai Old Street,’ something that tickled my fancy on ‘Maps.me’ (a brilliant app by the way). Spoiler alert – don’t bother unless you’re into dodging, and occasionally marvelling at sizeable dog turds, then every-so-often looking up to glance at boarded-up buildings! We quickly about-faced and made our way to People’s Square and People’s Park instead.
A Brief Aside: The Traffic Dance
Again, we opted to walk, it’s about twenty minutes at a decent pace. It was quite a lot of walking, but we had just spent eleven hours on a plane, so it was good to be moving. Just be very wary of the utterly baffling road system! I am sure there is a method somewhere in all the madness, but it isn’t one I could understand. There are loads of zebra crossings, which is good, but they’re often confusingly huge, or in strange locations… For example, we saw one that lead straight into a wall, without a footpath to land on! Fortunately, they are usually accompanied by lights, but this isn’t as it seems either! The presence of a green man pointed at you, and a red circle pointing at the cars, doesn’t seem to mean you are not going to be squashed by a string of traffic. Quite the opposite actually – we found ourselves dodging mopeds and cars while traversing these ‘crossings’. The locals do the same though, perhaps it’s like some kind of Chinese traffic dance! You need to feel the rhythm of the road and move in unison with the huge chunks of metal hurtling towards you… What makes it worse, is that there is a lot of electric cars, which renders one of your senses rather obsolete; you can’t hear them coming! So, just be alert when wandering through streets of Shanghai!
People’s Square & Park: A Slice of Local Life (I think)
People’s Square? Underwhelming, unless there’s an event happening. Just a big open space with a marble square in front of an art museum (which we didn’t go into, though I wish we had). The park, however, was much more interesting. As the name suggest, it’s really seems to be where the locals go to chat, play incomprehensible card games, and escape their phones. At times, it actually felt like stepping onto a movie set, with groups of old Chinese men huddled over small stone tables playing games with bamboo all around, and beer bottles in paper bags at their feet. We also spent some time following signs to a ‘waterfall,’ which we failed to locate, but we did stumble upon a random Costa among the bamboo, and a weirdly lack-lustre theme park! A very curious place!
Food: Playing it Safe… Ish
By this point, our sedated post-flight appetites had begun to rouse, so it was time to look for sustenance! We headed to Nanjing Pedestrian Street, which was just over the road from the park. Unfortunately, the majority of the food options there were the usual fast food chains we see in the UK… KFC, Subway, etc. But we eventually we found a food court tucked inside a shopping mall that was crammed in between and above the shops on the main strip. It was full of locals, which felt like a good sign – it felt authentic and genuine to me anyway! Helped by the gangs of Chinese pensioners vying for the choice fish balls from one particularly popular vendor. After a brief lap of the place, we dove in – me with a heaping plate of Peking duck, and Mary-Ann with her usual fried rice fix. It was cheap, absolutely delicious, and I’m happy to report that despite our feeble British guts, we avoided any adverse gastric consequences!
Wrapping Up the Layover
With full bellies (extremely full in my case), we waddled outside to give Nanjing pedestrian street one last gander, then headed back to the station where it all started – East Nanjing Road, metro line 2.
It was a very efficient, cheap and enjoyable day out, I have to say, we even got back to the airport in time for Mary-Ann to take her mandatory power nap for an hour… I might have used that time to pop into the science and technology museum, which is enroute to the airport, but that’ll have to be one for next time!
So, if you find yourself with an annoyingly long lay over in Shanghai, make the most of it! It’s super easy, pretty dang cheap and absolutely worth it.
Stay bald folks.
Toodles,
Jack.
