Group Dynamics

8/1/15 

Why is it when you know you need to get sleep (i.e. trying to avoid jet lag), you’re almost always guaranteed to have a sleepless night? After a horribly restless night (while Nick wakes perfectly refreshed, como siempre) (NN: It is a gift!), we start our day with what may be the best breakfast spread I have ever seen! In addition to the usual Western continental breakfast fare of fruit, waffles, cereal & breads, they had REAL Chinese breakfast of wonton soup, stir-frys, steamed buns, and rice dishes. As someone who really doesn’t like breakfast foods, I was in awe! (Thinking of you, Yammy!) Minus the lack of sleep, the trip was off to a good start.

Shanghai is a bike town

Hanging plants along the highway - wonder if this is something they're doing to help with pollution

Cool Building

Shanghai Bazaar

Seeing as how this is our first group/guided/all-inclusive tour, we were more than a little curious as to what the experience would be like and what our fellow travelers would be like as well. We quickly found out at our orientation meeting after breakfast. Fortunately for us, late summer is low season for foreign travelers to China (probably the reason we got such a great deal through Groupon), and high season for Chinese tourists (kids being out of school and all). So our group was nice and small: only 14 people as compared to the normal 30-40. (I can’t even imagine the clusterf*ck it must be to wander around town in a mass of that many people.) But our group seems to be made up of mostly older (as we expected) but rather diverse group of people. An older couple from Australia (the wife of which is very garrulous and opinionated), a family from San Diego with a 15 year old daughter (who’s adorably cute and chatty), a grandmother from Minnesota with her 15 year old grandson, an uncle from Mexico with his 15 year old nephew (who seems way too shy to communicate with anyone other than his uncle and Nick), and a very finicky couple from Torrance and their French-Canadian neighbor (who seems to be quite the ladies’ man…we’re watching closely as it seems he and the grandma are hitting it off quite well ;) (NN: The French-Canadian guy is fantastic fun.) Everyone is very nice but you can see that this tour is definitely geared more toward the slower-paced traveler. The older ladies are somewhat more cautionary, skeptical and hesitant about things (not to mention free flowing with their complaints), and the guide takes this into consideration, always talking to us about safety, telling the women to always watch our step, and walking VERY slowly around town.

Chinese Dolls

You're never very far from those ubiquitous chains...

Shanghai Bazaar

But we see the benefit in a tour like this for a place like China. Not that we couldn’t have planned it and gotten around on our own if we tried, but since Nick acts as the pre-planner and I’m usually the boots-on-the-ground tour-guide, it was nice to leave the planning and responsibility to someone else and just wake up and go with the flow as the day unfolds. We don’t have to figure out what sights are worth cramming into which days, what modes of transportation will get us there most efficiently, or try to decipher the characters and find a good place to eat. That’s really nice about the tour. But we also see that the lack of independent travel means we miss the ability to just get out and roam around a city (at a slightly faster pace), stumbling upon things or getting to know a place by getting lost. But so far, having a local guide who speaks the language, can translate for us, provide us with history and local recommendations has been GREAT! Here’s my plug for Gate 1 and our tour guide Jason, definitely worth looking into if you’re toying with the idea of a future guided tour somewhere. (NN: Jason is pretty amazing. He was raised in Beijing, but has been to the US multiple times and understands the differences in the way of thinking between Chinese and Westerners, so having the ability to talk to him is enlightening.)

Dumpling making

Traditional puppet show

Bazaar shops

Bazaar alley

Bazaar pond

Bazaar tea house