Update on Shanghai Expo?
 

I'll be in Shanghai for a week in early August. I have a friend of a friend who is showing me the city -- he was an engineer or supervisor for some of the construction at Expo. He is suggesting I get a three day ticket and he will accompany me there -- he's been many times already but loves going and knows some of the "ins and outs". Is three days too much time to dedicate to the Expo when I've never been to China before? We're also talking about doing two day trips to other places (a water town and Hangzhou).

with so much to do in and around S, it would seem wrong to spend 3 days on one limited site, imo

If your friend knows the ins and outs, then one day should be plenty, especially if he can get you past the incredibly LONG lines at all the pavilions. We spent one day at the Expo in mid-May and found the crush of people tiring, and the lines 2-3 hours long just to enter a single pavilion. We talked with people who had endured the lines and most everyone said the insides were underwhelming travel promos for the countries. We spent our time just looking at the pavilions' architecture and enjoyed that. There is so much more to explore in Shanghai and its environs!

One day is nowhere near enough for the Expo (you'll see 1/4 at best) - it is vast. However on a limited time trip to Shanghai one day is enough to get the feel of the place. Don't queue - there is enough to see without wasting 1 or 2 hours to spend 10 - 15 mins inside a pavilion. Enjoy the exteriors, take a look at those without queues, take in a couple of shows (the African ones are great - especially the drummers from Burundi) and take in the atmosphere. I did get into the main pavilions on a couple of my trips by waiting until around 21.00 in the evening when the queues were virtually non-exisitent (however when the Expo is really busy even that isn't true). Go from ca. 12.00 thru 22.00 for a less stressful experience.

Well, I was being vague, so my friend already got me a three day ticket (actually less I think that even two one day tickets). So maybe we'll just go in one evening, and also one afternoon, or maybe two.

I appreciate the idea that I won't see it all, but I suppose choosing between seeing A LOT of the Expo and seeing A LOT of Shaghai and the area -- I'd really prefer the latter.

I am in Shanghai now, just did the Expo today. I decided to buy a one day ticket and if I wanted to go back i would buy another one day. It would be cheaper than a three day ticket and I was quite sure I did not want to spend 3 days of the 5 I have here at the Expo. While I am glad I went, I will not be buying a ticket for a second day.
Sammie

Sammie - thanks for that info. We will be going during the closing week of expo and we are spending a week in Shanghai
Will probably go for 1 day. Would you be kind enough to list a few highlights. Thank you

Ympepe - I will be glad to post more when I get home in about 10 days. Am working off iPad and know i'll be more complete with keyboard.
Sammie

Thanks Sammie- looking forward to your insight.

Patrick, Glad you have a friend in Shanghai to show you around, definitely go to a watertown and other cities too.

ympepe - We will be there around the same time, and will post a Shanghai GTG (get-together)topic on this board late September. If you are interested in joining us, please watch for it.

Thank you - I will.

ympepe - Just back on US ground and am reporting in as promise. Great trip to China but will only hit Expo topic here.

I am glad I went but as said before, one day was enough for me. It was very hot and humid. It rained the two days before and was overcast so no blaring sun and that REALLY helped. The lines to the individual exhibits were very long - hours of people crammed in close together in winding lines. Remember there is a cultural difference as to personal space so you are packed in very close. If you leave a little space (for air) people just move ahead of you. And I'll admit, there is very little (if anything) for which I will stand in line for hours.

We went to two - Peru and South Africa. They were okay but honestly not worth the wait. We also went to a couple of the pavilions that were continent based - Africa, Central and South America. I've been to both Africa and Central/South America (admittedly many years ago) and thought they were good and no wait. I would do this for others had there been time and energy (mostly energy).

There's a shuttle on site, it's an electric golf cart type vehicle but seats about 10. Costs only about $2. We hopped on it at one end and rode it all the way to the other - great decision. I believe you can get off at different stops along the way. We got to see the place, look at the exterior of the exhibits, all the people and the etc. I'd say do it just for that reason alone.

I think we went in through gate 8 or 9. We had been at the opposite end (by USA) of the Expo from the China Exhibit and doubt we'd have made it there had we not ridden the cart. The China Exhibit exterior was very impressive as were a couple of other building - again the lines too long for me. Seeing this end of the Expo is a must.

We took the ferry across the river to the more corporate exhibits - kind of bland but wandered into the Chinese Private Enterprise Pavilion. We had no idea what we were going to see and understood very little about it all. However, at the end of the tour (it's short) they have a show (again, not too long) that was FABULOUS! It's hard to describe but I later learned the theme was cells so the balls that floated during the show must have been somehow reflective of that. Lights, music, special effects - outstanding. I'd say that was the best part of the Expo for me.

I don't know if you will have quite as many tourists in October. Through out our trip we saw many tours - bus after bus and most were Chinese. A fair number of students so perhaps they will be back in school but still a lot of non-student age tourists.

Plan on buying lots of cold water along the way, take an umbrella for shade or at least a hat. Maybe a fan and highly suggest wearing the type of clothing that athletes wear to wick away the moisture. We were very glad for that investment in clothing for all of China.
Sammie

October is a 'special' month at the Expo. Firstly because it is the Chinese National Day week (and that means the Expo will be absolutely crazily packed with the whole country on holiday - I would avoid it at all costs during that time) and secondly because it is the last month it will be open (closing on the 31st October) and there will be special performances, dignitaries visiting etc. Not the best month to visit the Expo. It will also be cooler than the extremely hot period of the Summer (mid July thru mid Sept) and that will attract more local residents.

Forgot to mention - you can NOT take fluids into the Expo (the scanner WILL catch you !) but there are plenty of free water fountains around the Expo and personally I just take in an empty camel pack and buy some ice filled drinks from one of the food outlets and empty them into the pack (I bought mine from Burger King at US$1 per large drink) - stays cool for longer and no hassle carrying around your drinks.

Sammie and ShanghaiMantra Most grateful for your time. Hadn't even thought about Chinese National Day week. Will investigate what that is.

Hi Patrick and everyone, thanks for the comments. It answered one of the questions that I had. I plan to go to ShangHai for 4-5 days in September. Based on the comments, I plan on attending the Expo for 1 day as well and will do my best to look at the exteriors of the different pavilions.

Sammie, thanks for the wonderful pavilion report and tips!

The hotel conceirge said they can help me buy tickets for 160yuan + 20yuan service fee. But for children and elder tickets, I have to go and buy for myself. Do they ask for ID for elders ticket? Not sure if a driver license from the US will be accepted as I don't want to carry passports around.

Should I buy the standard ticket from the hotel or will the tickets be available when I arrive at Shanghai? Where are tickets available for purchasing? Should I just stand on line for them (I will need adults, elders, and children tickets - not sure if they are all different lines for these age groups).

Mashi_m,
Before you spend a lot of time and energy on where and how to get children and senior tickets look at how much of a savings it is. I am all for saving dough, but you don't want to spin over a few dollars. We opted for getting our tickets through the concierge at the 160 yuan (what is that, $23) and a 15 or 20 yuan service for all, not per ticket.
Sammie

I do know that my "friend" in Shanghai has bought my senior ticket for me. He obviously did not have a senior ID for me.

I have expressed the concerns here about spending too much time there, and he agrees but feels he knows the "ins and outs" of how not to spend so much time in line. I'm hoping he is right.

Hi Sammie,

Unfortunately the hotel said they can only purchase a standard ticket but that I must go on my own to purchase the senior and childrens fares (I wonder if ID check is the reason for this). So if I have to stand on line, I might as well go and get them all myself. I agree that a small service charge to pay is nothing if it can save me the pain of standing on line.

Do you know if it is the same ticket counter to purchase standard, senior, and children tickets or are there different counters for each age group? Thanks.

Arrived at Expo yesterday about 9:30, a little later than we had hoped. My Shanghai friend who has been there numerous times wore me out. We did 18 pavillions, including the multi-country African one and the multi-country Central/South American one. We got tickets on arrival for the cultural show at 7 PM in the huge arena, and that was a nice sit down break for an hour and half, followed by walking outside for the dancing waters show, then more pavillions including Australia, the last to close just before 11 when we left exhausted.

The senior tickets he bought for me without having an ID were 100 each (one day tickets) and no one checked ID when I used them either, just inserted them in the machine and entered.

We're thinking we want to go back maybe on Sunday and arrive early to reserve for the Chinese Pavillion and also do India, Taiwan, and a few of those in the Asia area which we didn't do. The longest we waited was an hour and 15 minutes for Russia, 2nd longest was maybe 20 minutes for US.

I'm not sure I'll be doing much walking today as we are staying in Shanghai and my feet feel like they could fall off any minute! I wish I knew how much I walked yesterday, but it was many, many miles. And it was incredibly hot -- I guess near 100 F.

It is the most organized of any such event I've ever seen, lots of resting places, lots of restrooms conveniently located and kept spotless, stations for free drinking water, tons of trash containers, and lots of people always cleaning up everywhere. Also plenty of information spots if you need it, and lots of transportation from area to area.

Thanks for letting us know how your first day went!

Hey, glad to hear you made it to China! I'm exhausted just reading this... Will you be doing a TR while you're traveling?

We two old Aussies are just back from four days in Shanghai too, spending two at expo. We are early risers, and independent travellers, so we went early. It was so hot, as Patrick said, and we are nearly seventy, so we found it tiring, but fun.

We caught a ferry from the northern end of the Bund the first day, and a bus from the southern end the next day. The bus involved further ferry crossings at the expo sight. Both efficient, bit of a walk from the bus in the heat, so we caught a taxi back.

We saw the French Pavillion (don't bother), the Spanish had a great sound and light in a long cave-like tunnel, with a Spanish dancer at the end of the film, and a really enormous animatronic baby with differing facial expressions looking down at you. Turkey had exhibits from ancient times, effectively displayed (Ephesus and Miletus), as did Angola. Denmark has the original Little Mermaid, loved it. Australia's is well done too, telling our history with comical figurines and state of the art movie theatre in the round.

Lots of pavillions had two, three, four or more hour waits - no way! Nothing is worth standing around in 100degree heat for that long, though the cooling systems for a lot of queues were good - otherwise, there would be bodies everywhere.

At 10am, we could have reserved the Chinese Pavillion for 6pm, maybe. But we didn't have the energy to wait around that long, unfortunately. I hope NeoPatrick is standing up to the heat better!

That said, our room at the Seagull on the Bund was brilliant, with views from the Pearl Tower and high rise Pudong, straight down the S bend in the river and right down the Bund with its interesting human activity, greenery and European buildings, and around to the Garden Bridge. I don't think you could get a more interesting place to spend a few hours recovery - watching in air conditioned comfort - a life saver! After the brightly lit tour boats stopped cruising round about 11pm, the barges came by at least every thirty seconds, sometimes three or four at a time, laden with coal or other goods.

I think one day to water town is worth to go, I suggest travel to wuzhen one day.

Patrick:

Wow, you're in my birthtown already! Thanks for the mini report on the World Expo, I feel for you, with all the walking in that kind of heat, it's a challenge.

My vote for the one day watertown is Tongli, see what your friend proposes.

Yesterday's paper in Shanghai reported that Wed. when we were at Expo was the hottest day of the year on record -- at 39.5. That's 103. It also mentioned that there were fewer people at Expo due to the extremee heat. I'm glad I didn't know it was THAT hot or it would have seemed worse, but it is cooling off a day or two at a time now supposedly.

Off to Hangzhou today.

Don't get me started on how involved Hangzhou became. We bought train tickets to there the day before, but foolisly waited until we got to Hangzhou in the morning to buy return tickets -- uh-oh -- they were all sold out. My friend said not to worry, that we'd take a bus -- lots of buses -- so at the end of the day we took a city bus to the North "long distance" bus terminal (that took 1 hour and 15 minutes to get there, only to find that the last bus from there had left at 6 (it was now nearly 7), but they showed a bus from the south terminal which according to the computer still had 20 places left at 8:15. So off we went in a taxi to the south station, only to arrive just in time, but no places on the bus after all -- so another taxi to the train station to see if anyway we could get on a late train -- nope all sold out. So we ended up taking an ("illegal"?) bus for 65 each (the deluxe train is 54), buying out tickets from a hawker at the train station where they knew all trains were sold out and suddenly came up with a bus to run for cash only.

So we got back to Shanghai South Train station at about 11:45 and then took a taxi to our hotel (no subways still running. Phew.

So regarding Tongli? We heard buses were selling out, and it was very scary after our experience yesterday. I wanted to do the Shanghai Museum and Jing'an Temple which we did, then my friend said we could go to another water village closer -- so we did -- Zhujiajiao which is at the end of line 2 and then a one hour ten minute bus. I don't know what the other water towns are like, but this one was just fine, seemingly all Chinese tourists and not American ones at all. Had a boat ride, walked a couple miles, and had a great dinner of odd things.

Sorry to drone on and this will be in full trip report I promise.

By the way, so much for that famous advice here "never buy your tickets before last minute". But I guess that doesn't count for anything near Shanghai when Expo is going on. It's a zoo here to do anything right now.

Uh-oh it is, your "friend" is out of touch, locals know well to buy round trip tix for short train or bus trips. At least he got you to Zujiajiao, my bro-in-law was born there and his nephew runs the porcelain goods store near the 2nd bridge. Watertowns are lovely tho in my opinion "see one, seen all".

If you haven't been, spend 1/2 hour at the super crowded Old Town Bazaar, peek at the elegant little Suzhou-style garden; then take a walk in the relatively quiet area of the old french concession starting from Huashan Road walking south on Wukang Road, stop for a drink/bite at "Lost Heaven" along the way on Gaoyuo Road, that will sooth your frazzled nerves.

Shanghainese, too funny. My friend did admit that he has never been to Tongli, although he has a friend there.
And his exact words were "if you've seen one water town, you've seen them all."

The funny thing about buying tickets to Hangzhou is that I found them on line for something like $8 each and I could reserve the day before, but sounding like someone who posts here, he insisted that would be paying too much and the ONLY way to do it is to go to the train station, where we stood in line over half an hour to pay the same price for them that they were online -- without the lines. What am I missing here? We went to the train station to buy the tickets to Hangzhou just before they closed at 9:30 PM -- sure enough at 9:30 they closed the lines and the hundreds left standing in line couldn't buy any tickets. As he said the lines during the day are often hours long -- at night it was only a half hour line, but we nearly got messed up because he thought it was open till 10 and not just 9:30.

Part of the reason for his selecting Zuijiajio is that you CAN'T buy the bus tickets in advance, it is a local, first come-first served bus which was fine and which runs every 20 minutes fro the end of Line 2.

We did quite a walk in the French Concession the other day, which I really enjoyed, and I guess that Old Town Bazaar is the place by Yu Gardens? Crowded doesn't begin to describe it. Also a surprising highlight was a visit to the library where he had to return and pick up some books for his parents. I found the whole process fascinating.

Patrick, I think many of us would enjoy following along on your SE Asia trip. What do you think about a separate thread devoted to your trip?

"Also a surprising highlight was a visit to the library where he had to return and pick up some books for his parents. I found the whole process fascinating." - sounds interesting - how was it different from your library in the US?

I agree with Marija - I was expecting a NeoPatrick TR thread...

I plan to do a regular trip report, just got a little carried away here.

How was the library different? Well, more computer oriented than ours -- everything is done by computer. But he returned several types of books and each had to be returned to a different department. Then to take out a book, he found it on the computer -- they have rows of them, and filled out a request online, then waited about 10 minutes and picked up that book at the desk. You never look at actual books so far as I could tell, except for a room with ancient books.

Very interesting NeoPatrick - I actually do most of my library stuff by computer these days (search the catalog and request the book online, get an email when it's available, pick it up from a special section of the library, maybe check it out myself, renew online) but I can certainly wander around the bookshelves if I want to.

I also thought it was interesting that they checked each book very carefully, rifling through all pages -- presumably to make sure no pages were missing. And I suppose I'm probably simply out of touch living in a small town -- probably most big city US libraries are much more computerized these days as well.

Well, my library isn't up to Shanghai standards - no 10 minute turnround! And I sometimes wish they would check books when they're returned (although it's far too labor intensive for the US) - I recently found that the map in the back of Fodor's Montreal had disappeared from most of the copies.

Interesting about the library and how they check the books upon return. It's not only the library! While checking out of a Chinese hotel, the desk clerk excused himself to go check the room, presumably to make sure I didn't steal any hangers or the shoe horn. If I hadn't been forewarned of this practice, I'd have started to wonder if maybe I have that kleptomaniac look about me LOL.

I'd forgotten about that, Nutella. Happened to me too in Chinese hotels away from the east coast.