Shattered in Shanghai...

Being the glamourous jet setters that we are, we popped over to Shanghai for the weekend. Such was our excitement at meeting our colleagues Clare and Tom over there, we went out. All night. Bed at 8am and up at 10.30 to go to the very Chinese... Tony & Guy. I nearly had a close shave (or cut) by managing to do the nodding off herd jerk motion whilst sat in the hair salon mid cut. Fortune and strong coffee prevailed.

We had dinner on the 89th floor of the tallest building in Shanghai, with great if nauseating views over the city. However, far more stomach churning was the view inside the hotel if you looked from the top floor down to the foyer. I have to admit, I held the camera over rather than sticking my head over - didn't want the people in the foyer to experience my dinner after me.

To the right of Clare and I in the next picture, you can see the Pearl TV tower (just behind the wine bottles!) which very obviously looks like two dragons playing with a string of pearls. Well, after a dose of Chinese wine it may do. Couldn't see it myself. Or much else by 8am...

Shanghai was incredible though... much more dramatic than Seoul as they seem to have a competition to put something bizarre on the top of every tower block, and they are much taller yet more spaced out than Seoul (the tower blocks that is, not the people). We also saw a model of what Shanghai is going to look like in the future, although most of it is there already - this picture only shows about half of the model, but it is absolutely mind boggling, and makes docklands look a little bit... little.

In addition, we popped over the river from the skyscrapers and were straight into the old town. If anyone gets any Chinese Christmas presents from me, they were really, really expensive, and I couldn't haggle them down at all. Honest.

In the old town we also saw some seriously serious statues. This red one in particular looked like I do in our offices after a whole day of extreme office heating.

I especially liked these statues in a Chinese Temple we visited (you can see the size of the real peoples heads at the bottom of the picture). They reminded me of Odd Job from James Bond, Mr Ben, and I'm sure I've seen a Ronnie Barker sketch looking like the one on the left... (for a close up you can double click on the picture)