Airline adventures and Shanghai start

So I'm here, in Shanghai, after what surprisingly wasn't that bad of a journey (aside from an hour or so in Hong Kong, which I'll get to in a moment) at the hotel in which my friends Gang and Rosie are staying.

To start from the beginning, the 14-hour-40-minute flight from LAX to Hong Kong wasn't actually as unbearable as I would've expected it to be. Maybe it's just a function of getting older, or getting more used to these cross-country flights that I'm always doing now. In any case, I slept on and off for quite some time and watched a couple of movies and presto! I was landing in Hong Kong.


I like taking pictures of scenery and landscapes, so I took pictures of Hong Kong airport as I was waiting. (particularly because of the pretty mountains in the back.)

Unfortunately, I got into the terminal to discover that my flight to Shanghai had been canceled, and so I had to stand in line behind this guy from Italy who was getting increasingly ticked off that the super-overworked woman behind the counter couldn't magically make his tickets appear out of nowhere. If I hadn't been so nervous that I would be stuck in Hong Kong for ages I probably would have felt sorrier for the clerk and more irritated at the man.

On second thought, though, there are MUCH worse airports to be stuck in for a long layover than Hong Kong airport. It's a beautiful airport and the duty-free shopping is astounding.

The flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai was fine, after I managed to get on one (it was only 2 hours and yet they served a full meal of which I of course took full advantage. Take that, American airlines!) Again indulging my like of random scenic pictures, I took some snapshots of a random Hong Kong village:


My first impression upon getting into Shanghai and the cab ride to this hotel was the absolute grayness of the sky -- I'm from LA, so it's not as if I'm a stranger to air pollution, but at the least the sky is blue. Here it was just absolutely gray. I can't decide if it's because of smog or fog...I'm inclined to think the former, since it's already early afternoon.

In that vein, this is (one of) the views from one of the rooms at this hotel:


There's some interesting-looking ruin-type things in the front of this second photo but I'm not entirely sure what they are.

My most overwhelming impression, in the end, though, is that it reminds me a lot of being in Taiwan -- the super-strong AC (which, apparently, is called 空调 in China, as opposed to 冷气 which is what I always grew up saying) and the muggy, humid, hot air outside. I guess I'm back in Asia!