So, Bush won. Grrrr! On the plus side he can't run again but I have to wonder what sort of mess life will be in when he's finished meddling. Still, life wouldn't have been that much better if Kerry had won, in my opinion. Most of the people in the hostel didn't want a Bush win either so I was in good company.

Having been in Shanghai for nearly a day already, I think I should perhaps offer up a few opinions on the place. The very first thing that struck me was the difference in weather. Shanghai is well over 1000km from Xi'an and in that distance the temperature had gone up considerably. The visibility was noticeably better too, the sky was actually blue for once.

The next most obvious thing was that we were able to walk for 50m outside the railway station before I heard someone dredging up some gunge from their throat. Since that time we've noticed only very few people spitting. The timing could not have been better, just a few more days and I would probably have thrown up at the noise. Overall, Shanghai is growing on me and I'm much happier being here than in Xi'an.

We got up quite late after our first night in Shanghai and some brunch seemed to be in order so we headed where our stomachs took us: Subway. Fortunately the staff who served us the previous day were not working at the time so it didn't feel too weird being back there. With our sandwich urges sated, we set out to complete our mission from the previous day.

Since it was once again a sunny day we walked all of the way from Subway to where we believed the Chinese Sex Museum was. Funnily enough we had been very near to the spot that we were looking for only the previous day. Had we actually persevered at that time we could have saved ourselves a trip today. The museum was no longer there. A man nearby just happened to have business cards for the museum that indicated that it was some distance away, possibly outside Shanghai. We were only trying to find it for the novelty factor so it wasn't worth spending any more time on it. Instead we decided to head for People's Square.

A short metro ride later and we were somewhere in the vicinity of the square. After accidentally running into a doughnut shop, we found the square and sat by some strange paving to enjoy the sunshine. After a few minutes the strange paving erupted with water and we realised that we had sat next to a fountain. Fortunately we were far enough away not to get wet. We were tempted to move on but that seemed just a bit too much like hard work. So we just sat and watched the fountain, absorbed the sunshine and tried not to get hit on the head by low flying kites. It was a very peaceful, relaxing and, perhaps, lazy way to spent an hour or so.

By this time the sun was getting very low and we didn't really fancy tackling any night life that night so we headed back to the hostel. After it was dark we ventured out and found a restaurant in a shopping centre that served reasonable food. We picked a nice, safe beef and green pepper dish and some wantons. The latter turned out to be a little safer than the former though as the green peppers were actually chillies. Fortunately I had a beer nearby with which I could control the pain. Claire took a couple of mouthfuls of Tsing Tao at one point and eventually became a bit tipsy.

We had a plan for the following morning to help solve our money problems. Our simple plan was to buy travelers' cheques from a bank using our credit cards. Based on our experience of doing this in England we worked out that a travelers' cheque purchase would not be treated as a cash advance by Nationwide and all we'd have to do from then on was exchange the cheques for money. We would have got away with it if wasn't for those pesky kids though. In China, travelers' cheques have to be purchased with cash and that was the root of all of our problems.

Freshly thwarted by several banks we found ourselves a late brunch in a building filled with several different restaurants, a Pizza Hut and a sandwich shop. We ignored all of the people waving menus at us and headed straight for the sandwich shop.

Fed and watered we decided to look into finding some transportation to the Yellow Mountain area. We knew that it was about 11 hours on a train or 8 on a bus but we needed someone to sell us the tickets. We trusted in our Lonely Planet guidebook and went on a 3km walk to find a friendly-sounding travel agent. When we finally found the road were looking for a horrible suspicion formed in my mind. I checked and, according to the Lonely Planet map, the dot indicating the building that we wanted was in the area that was now fenced in and occupied by diggers and cranes. The Lonely Planet guidebooks that we've had have all been a little bit behind the times when it comes to things like that.

Determined to accomplish something today we went off in search of the number 911 bus to take us to the zoo. I was a bit skeptical about it even existing anymore given that we were using Lonely Planet information again but we headed for the area we believed the route started in and asked several people about it. No one seemed to know about the number 911 bus and we decided to head to a market of some sort that was marked on our map of Shanghai (not the Lonely Planet one) just in case we could get a better idea of where to go from there.

On the way we past several kitchen implement shops and had a look inside as they were real shops that aren't on the tourist maps. We ended up buying a dumpling / pancake / dim sum steamer for only a few pounds, knowing that it'll cost about four times as much to post home but who cares.

The market was full of tourists when we got there and we had a quick browse on our way through to the other side. We gave up on our idea of going to the zoo because the sun was sinking very quickly in the sky. Instead we hopped in a taxi and got the driver to take us back to the Bund.

One of the most obvious tall buildings in Shanghai is the Oriental Pearl TV tower just over the river from the Bund. To get to the other side of the river, a taxi can be used to go through a traffic tunnel or there is a slightly more fun way. It may be more expensive than a taxi but the Bund Tourist Tunnel is fun to see.

We tried to wait so that we were in train on our own but a huge gaggle of Chinese people came down the escalator at just the wrong time. At least we were at the front of the train though with the best view.

The train (actually just a single carriage with big windows) rolled slowly through the tunnel as lights flashed around us and music played through a speaker. It was a wonderful but short journey and I wished that all trains could be like that. It would make any journey much more interesting.

Once on the other side we reached the Pearl tower quickly and bought tickets to get just over half way up. The view from 263m above the ground was good enough.

We had hoped to see a good sunset from that height but it was a bit disappointing really. It just got dark as a vaguely orange blob sank into the hazy horizon. After trying a couple of unsuccessful night time photos, we gave up and went in search of some supper.

On the way back through the Bund tunnel we had a carriage to ourselves and had the opportunity to listen as well as see. The funky, futuristic music was occasionally punctuated by seemingly random words, or at least the English ones were random. One such occurrence were the words "Fossil variance", or perhaps "Fossil variants". It reminded me of the words "chisel" and "pastry" for reasons that few people will understand.

After the train ride we found ourselves at the same building full of restaurants and cafes as we had been at earlier in the day and, as before, we were besieged by people with menus. One enterprising man noticed our steamer and pointed to some dumplings on his menu. Not entirely sure which restaurant to opt for we allowed ourselves to be guided to the lift by at least two people. I suppose we could have let them fight it out between themselves but we didn't. We used the commotion of the lift to decide between two nice looking places.

As we entered we were met by a chorus of "Welcome!" from the numerous members of staff waiting inside, it made me feel all wanted. The chairs turned out to be large sofas and the menu had several nice sounding dishes on it along with a few strange and dodgy sounding ones too. The meals we chose came with a couple of strange side dishes that weren't that pleasant. Claire made me try them.

After our supper we took a walk past the bright neon lights of the Nanjing Road and eventually hopped in a taxi as we didn't feel like squeezing into the number 71 bus again. Having only been in Shanghai for a few days I can't really claim to know the city inside and out as a taxi driver should but I'm sure that we took the longest possible route back to our hostel. At least we got there though and we settled in for an evening of wrestling with the slow internet connection. A Suntory beer (640ml, 3 RMB or 20 pence each) helped speed the internet up a bit, or maybe it just slowed me down. I like this place though (Shanghai Maggie Youth Hostel), it may have slow internet but the bargain beer more than makes up for it.

The following morning we decided that we weren't going to have enough time to do the Yellow Mountain any justice with the few days that we had left before returning to Hong Kong. Waking up late may have been a factor in that decision, it's becoming harder and harder to wake up each morning now. By the time we get home in December we won't be surfacing until midday at this rate!

Since arriving in China our bags have become a bit heavier and with the purchase of the steamer, certainly a bulky item, we had to do some posting. As with most of the countries that we've posted stuff from, Chinese post offices sell boxes for putting parcels in. We found one big enough for the things we wanted to send home and then spent the next 40 minutes filling in the forms. As expected the steamer cost several times more to post home than it did to buy it in the first place but we like it and we're looking forward to trying it out.

During the short walk back across the road to the hostel we bought some satsumas and bananas and managed to draw in a small crowd of onlookers as we utterly confused the poor woman who was selling the fruit. We then found out from Maggie which bus we needed and we were on our way.

We've been to a few zoos on our way round the world. Santiago, Sydney and Singapore if I remember correctly. We could say that our decision to visit Shanghai zoo was based solely on alliteration but actually it's the only one, that we know of, with a panda. Ok, Beijing zoo has pandas too but we didn't get time to go there. I'm fairly sure that I've never seen a real panda and it would have been more fun to see one in the wild but that would have been more difficult.

The zoo itself was a bit too much like a prison for my liking and some of the animals really weren't happy. I can't say that I blame them. Most of the cages were too small and just plain concrete. It probably didn't help that all of the Chinese visitors were shouting at the animals and banging on glass or railings to get their attention. A scene from the series Spaced sprang to mind: "Dance, Colin! Dance!"

The panda we saw was only about five years old and was happily chewing bamboo shoots for most of the time that we watched. At one point he did sit down on a bench and managed to look almost human.

We had a good look round at some of the other animals too; some vultures, tigers, hippos and elephants.

That night we went around the corner for supper to a restaurant recommended by Anson, one of the people working in the hostel. Unfortunately we were a bit stuck when it came to ordering as they didn't have any of the dishes that we had written down in my notepad. The waiter managed to point at a couple of things that he thought were similar and everything turned out ok.

Perhaps it would be easier to mention the days on which we don't sleep in late as there seem to be fewer of those. Sunday, being Sunday, was a lazy day though. We got up in time to go and find some lunch at a restaurant that Claire had read about in the Telegraph.

Mesa, or Manifesto-Mesa, was easy to find once we had an address, although had we not known that it was there, we could easily have missed it. They served mostly western dishes that have a hint of Chinese about them and Claire and I managed to decide on eating exactly the same things. Most of the other people that were there were ex-pats and they all seemed to know each other. Every time someone new entered the restaurant there was lots of air kissing and comparing of fashion accessories. Most of them wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of some celebrity magazine like Heat. The conversations we overheard were funny too.

We walked off lunch by wandering aimlessly for a while and bought a couple of DVDs to watch later in the communal sitting room. They were only 50p each but not what we would call legal. Having done this we decided that Sunday was a very lazy day and that we weren't going to do much else.

Back at the hostel we collected our train tickets for the following day. Anson had kindly booked us two seats to visit Hangzhou in the morning although the commission that the hostel charged was more than the cost of the tickets! We spent a little while using the internet (it's so slow I can't update the China photos properly - sorry) and then Claire got dragged into a conversation with a Singaporean lady and Anson.

The Singaporean lady was interested in our trip to Hangzhou. She thought it sounded adventurous and asked if she could tag along. That's one of those questions though that you don't feel that you can say no to and so we made plans to meet her at 6.45 the following morning.

Upstairs we put our laundry on and settled in to watch Taking Lives, one of our two DVDs. I'm not sure that it was worth the 50p that we paid for it as the plot was a bit on the predictable side. Avid fans of Angelina Jolie would enjoy it though, especially the depraved male ones. That was about it for Sunday.