We arrived safely in Shanghai at about half past ten this morning after a long train ride from Hong Kong yesterday afternoon. We took what is called a "soft sleeper" and shared a compartment with a Chinese lady and her 8ish-year old son who seemed nice enough and spoke a few words of English. The beds were fairly comfortable and the compartment not too cramped - more space than on the train we took from Marrakech to Tangier.

Dinner was in the restaurant car - thankfully they had a menu in English as our Cantonese is shamefully non-existent; and as there is nowhere else to go on the train other than your compartment we retired afterwards to watch Singing in the Rain on the iPod, squashed onto one bunk so that we could share.

We were woken up this morning at about 7am by all of the children running around in the corridor, playing and shrieking; we hadn't got very much sleep at all as the lovely lady in our compartment snored more loudly than anyone we've ever heard before, and not just normal snoring either - there was also some wheezing and grunting thrown in too. We sorely needed earplugs and resolved to buy some at the earliest opportunity!

When we were waiting in Shanghai railway station to go through immigration and medical screening (just paperwork to say that we're not going to spread the swine flu epidemic across China) three ladies in the queue in front of us were having a shouting match which quickly turned into a cat fight with face-slapping and hair-pulling - we were really annoyed as it was all in Cantonese and so we had no idea what it was all about (very dramatic though, they drew blood and everything).

We took the Metro to our hostel which is lovely - quite big with a lounge and bar area, computers with internet access and, more importantly, washing machines and tumble dryers! We've met some other travellers and exchanged stories, picked up some tips on where to go and where not to go, booked our tickets and accommodation for Beijing, found a great restaurant where lunch cost us four pounds and was enormous, bought some fresh cherries and mango (discovered this in the Philippines and loved it), and discovered that Facebook is banned in China and so we are unable to use it. We've also bought ourselves some earplugs in readiness for the next train journey in case we end up sharing with another snoring monster.

Not sure yet what we're going to do with our two days in Shanghai but we're palnning to spend this evening looking through the Lonely Planet...

Hope you are all well.

Simon and Jane