Well the night train to Shanghai was an experience. I'm quite accustomed to foreign night trains - or at least I thought I was - till I went on a Chinese one! Nothing could have quite prepared us for the smoke den or the spitting. And 17 hours of people waking you you up with various retching noises is quite a long time! - Oh, and there were no doors to the compartments. Just particians with triple bunk beds and very little room to stand. I won't even go into the toilet facilities. We all left the train very dehydrated as that was better then having to use the 'hole in the floor straight onto the track facility'. I would like to question their reasoning that these kind of toilets are more hygenic than Western ones. Clearly they have never sat on one!

    Anyway, onto Shanghai. Ross quite liked it but I didn't really rate it that much. We walked round every room of the museum in under an hour which indicates what we thought of that! The natural history museum wasn't up to much either - suppose the minimal entrance fee could have told us that though. Ross did get a photo of some dinosaur or other so it was worthwhile in his eyes - and mine as it partically made up for the fact that I and the girls on the trip had dragged him round a market all morning! The two really good things we did in Shanghai was see The Bund at night and a Chinese acrobatics show. Of similar ilk to Afrika Afrika, the show was pretty cool with some scarey 'I can't look moments'. The act where they had 5 motorbikes going round in a cage was incredible but I was kind of glad when it was over and no-one had got hurt!

    We've discovered that it's also myth that only our Chinese food at home arrives smothered in MSG. It's in everything here too. Our group seems to be succombing to it's addictive properties already. They seem to put it in everything. Even the crisps we got for the train had MSG in them. Why?