So if you get the drift this trip was actually born out of the desire to travel on a premium class flight on my birthday, to extract even better treatment than usual. Considered Suites, then later expanded the criteria to First so that there are more destination choices, eventually settled for Shanghai. The A380 schedule for Shanghai was a bit limited though, and had I chose to fly later in the month I would have scored a Suite, but I weighed my options and decided that the birthday aspect was more important and I had not tried F yet so I went for an F Saver redemption. And kept fingers crossed for an upgauge lol but anyway spoiler alert, it did not happen. And for the return leg I went for a J redemption, initially was contemplating just forking out $200 for a Y flight back since it’s only about 5 hours, but a couple of weeks of procrastination and the prices went up so it didn’t make much sense anymore so I just redeemed the J ticket. 

Will detail the flight experiences later on as usual but let’s just say the F didn’t feel like a major step up from J, or maybe I didn’t milk hard enough hahaha. It was still a beyond comfortable flight but probably won’t spend the extra miles on it anymore in future (in this case it was an extra 15k miles). First world problems lol. 

So, Shanghai. China. 10 years ago it was probably not somewhere I would ever consider, I think that attitude softened a bit a few years later when the gang talked about a Beijing trip that didn’t work out eventually. Then in recent years post-COVID with XHS the popularity just exploded so I did think about it…and given that my Asian destinations are starting to run dry I thought I would give it a shot. I’m still quite concerned about food options and general hygiene practices but I figured that this should be less prevalent in major cities like Shanghai. But in general there’s this apprehension that I can’t explain, so much so that I decided that I didn’t have to do a solo trip and opened invitation for people to join me. 

And lo and behold the BFF took up the offer haha. That happened pretty last minute though so I did have to adjust my rough plans slightly, for instance I had planned two day trips out of Shanghai to Hangzhou and Suzhou respectively, in the end I cut Suzhou away and eventually even Hangzhou didn’t make it because the weather was not the most desirable. 

But for someone who took didn’t like the idea of traveling in China for the longest time, I must say I enjoyed the trip more than I think I would. Food was mostly good (maybe also partly because I went for things that I knew I definitely would enjoy, didn’t particularly tried new things), I thought things were mostly cheap though I didn’t shop much nor did I maximize Taobao deliveries. Everything was so convenient on app - payment, reservations, private hire etc, everything went smoothly when I was setting them up and worked during the trip, and for the first time in my life I didn’t have to exchange foreign currency when going for an overseas trip. 

The biggest downside was the weather - aside from the first day I arrived which was really warm (but I only reached late afternoon so I didn’t have to endure it much), it literally rained everyday. Which I surprisingly wasn’t mad about, even cancelling the Hangzhou day trip because the main attractions (西湖 etc) are all outdoorsy which demanded better weather than what we have (and for some reason I was a bit tired at the beginning of the trip where this was scheduled and the idea of traveling on a train sounded very draining for some reason). So partly because of the rain our pace is kinda slow and we (I) didn’t pack much into each day’s itinerary so that was a pretty relaxing trip. I only regret not stopping for more cafes etc because oddly traffic congestion was an issue and it took very long to get from point to point (and for the Didi to arrive to begin with). 

But yeah, I saw mostly what I want to see, and in fact I really don’t mind going back again because there are things that I missed out on - though maybe I’d explore other Chinese cities. If it goes well there may just be another one coming up at the end of the year….