I’m Back From Shanghai !!

Finally. After 8 activities-packed days in Shanghai….. I’m BACK!!! To be exact, it was not Shanghai trip but a round-up trip covering Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuzhen, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Wuxi…. all in 8 days! It is normal when we book a vacation package to China that seldom travel agencies would organise trip to only 1 single traval destination or city of China. Instead, few cities in the same region of China would normally be covered in a single package unless it is a ‘Free and Easy’ package where only flight ticket and accomodations are included. For example, if someone wishes to visit Suzhou by all-inclusive package, he would need to book a vacation package that covering few cities in the South east region of China, like the one I booked and just got back from. There isn’t any or very few vacation packages that let you spend 8 days in Suzhou alone.

From Shanghai Trip

Since this is my first travel to Shanghai and even China (and heard well enough bad experiences of security threats and con incidence), I found it alright and made more sense to join this kind of all-inclusive travel package. However, after got back from Shanghai, I realised 8 days are basically nothing if you want to explore most of the travel sites of these cities and I would say only 30% of them are covered in my trip. Moreover, social securities are found to be much better than expectation due to the continuing effort of China government to revive its image.

From Shanghai Trip

These are the two photos of China and Shanghai’s trademark: The Bund of Shanghai and bicycles. In this coming weeks, I will post more and more stories of my first travel to China and its biggest city, Shanghai. For these exciting travel experiences, you may prefer to subscribe to my RSS feed for free updates. See ya. - Travel Feeder.

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The recent global financial meltdown started in US when its real estate market bubble burst and banking instituition went insolvent. Soon after the US, other world’s major financial instituitions reacted fast to slump to a new low and the crude oil price index has dropped to a recording low price since 5 years ago! This chain link effect is further evident in many part of the world’s equity market and hence the global economy are facing a slump.

Many would start to worry about the recession cycle of every 10 years after 1997 and started to cut their daily spending in all respects with beliefs in the terminology of ‘Money Is King‘. Theoretically, the first budget we are going to cut is our travel budget , which is sad for me personally (my travel blog would be less active… ). Nevertheless, my response to it is a big ‘NO‘! We should not cancel our vacation plan. Contrariwise, we should travel more at this moment of global economy slumping . Why? Here are the top 5 reasons (or excuses… *giggle*):

1. So fed up? Go and Relax! - We are having intense pressure in our life and it’s even more during this period. Our already subtle income and assets appreciation has suddenly became negligible and we are so fed up after all the hard earned money depreciated over night! What should we do? Go travel and relax! ;
2. Save monies on Air tickets and Hotel - Especially during the economy crisis, our travel would cost us a lot lesser as all vendors are offering cheap bargain in order to survive. Air tickets, hostel rate, eating-out are all going to be cheaper! ‘Demand and supply‘ rules;
3. Save Energy of offices for this non-productive period - During the economy slump, less demand means less productive in our office and business. What we could do is to shut down office or factory to save energy and Go Travel! (This is a bit ‘hard sell’ mate…);
4. Search for new opportunity - Go travel! Open our eyes and search for new opportunity of new business in abroad. We may find some great ideas in other part of the world that could to be adopted in our country instead, and
5. Stimulate the global economy - Com’on! The global economy is already slumping! Spend more to stimulate the global economy so it could recover faster!! Bravo!

‘What a nonsense excuses!’ At least I feel better with my vacation plan to Shanghai next month . Another 32 days to my 8D7N Shanghai autumn travel… countdown continues…. - Travel Feeder.

Tik..tuk…tik..tuk… The clock start counting down! Yes, I’m going to Shanghai this winter! The countdown began yesterday after we have booked a travel package to Shanghai at MATTA fair, Putra World Trade Centre, KL, Malaysia! You can feel my excitement from the number of Exclamation marks with that I’ve ended all the above sentence!!! Ha.. Ha… I have opted for a packaged travel to Shanghai because of these top 5 reasons:

1. This is my first ever travel to China;
2. For safety reason especially Shanghai where I’ve heard enough stories of friends being ‘conned’ by the local (sorry to those friends from Shanghai);
3. We need a guided tour to cover so many travel sites in a limited time (8 Days only);
4. We are altogether 5 persons in the group as I’m going with my family old folks!, and
5. The promotion during the MATTA fair was really attractive! (In terms of price off course).

MATTA fair is the biggest and most popular travel fair held twice a year, in March and September in Malaysia. During this 26th edition of MATTA fair, from 5th to 7th of September, nearly thousand booths are gathered together offering attractive travel packages, inbound or outbound travel, air tickets, ground trips and more to visitors. Lucky draws and great prizes are to be given away to those lucky one. 

We spent almost 6 hours there to do an overall research on various packages of Shanghai trip including prices, itinery and all those what’s, when’s, where’s and how’s… until we have our decision made with this travel agency, Regal Worldwide (holidays) Sdn Bhd. This is among the most well known travel agencies in KL and it was also why we opted for them: Reliability. We don’t want to sacrifice our vacation for that little price difference between agencies, if the agency go busted. Most importantly, the more popular is the travel agency, the less chance for a trip to be cancelled due to insufficient sign-up’s in the package!

After all, we got a 8D7N Shanghai/ Hang Zou/ Nanking/ Xu Zou/ Wu Zhen all-inclusive package deal for RM 2,375.00 per pax which I think is not too bad . The departure date is going to be on 15th November 2008 from the KLIA. Wow, slightly more than 2 months time from now!!! Tik..tuk…tik..tuk… start counting down again…. - Travel Feeder.