Touchdown : Shanghai

I left KLIA last night, well, it was more like this morning; on a 1.40am flight bound for Shanghai Pudong Int. Airport (SPIA). The flight was an uneventful one and I get to take short naps throughout the whole 5 hour flight. The only occasion wake ups I get were from the cabin crew who would annoyingly give a light nudge asking if I would wanna get a juice to drink or not. Anyway, I touched down on SPIA and managed to get through immigration and secure the baggages by about 7.30am.

The driver, Mr. Zhang would be picking me up by 8.30am, thus giving me ample of time to grab something to bite. This is the first time I come to China. Its so foreign, and yet resembles something similar to me. The culture, the people and the system. It all seems to blend well to me, and yet there are things which turned out to be a shocker. Talk about the duress of culture shock :P

Anyway I had some breakfast at an Italian restaurant at SPIA. The WIFI sucks and I couldnt connect to it at all, and while it did allow a connection, there was no data transfer. Didnt wanna waste much time, I just gobbled up whatever was laid on the table and rush to meet Mr. Zhang. From there he drove me in a 12 seater van/mini bus from SPIA to Jinhua. The trip took about 4 hours on a long and straight highway. China's a left hand drive country. However, I was so wrong to assume that the fast lane would, well, safely can be assumed to be on the left hand side... but it appears that its a norm to actually speed past any vehicle in any lanes... and that includes the emergency lane as well. And I am not talking about slow-mo here... Driving here would put the local Malaysian Mat Rempits to shame. I had to endure such adrenalin rush for 4 hours plus... and this comes with a real big shock when we had a 10 wheeler trailer going on head to head with us! Bugger was coming out from the R&R and going against the traffic. Beats the hell out of me what the driver wanted to do.

Anyway, I reached Jinhua safely in 1 piece and tucked into the World Trade Hotel aka NARADA. Its pretty cosy in here except the occasionally malfunction air conditioning system. The above is one of the quickie shot I took which shows the view out of my room's window. Nothing fancy to be honest. One of the cool thing is the room comes with a 100mbps internet cable and its super fast (when its working!). I will be exploring he local areas soon and keep on posting in here. For now, I gotta log off to try go search some food. :)

Cheers!

Zhai Jian! *ok my mandarin sucks*