After two hours of standing in line, being pushed and shoved by angry, impatient tourists, we finally made it through the gate, into the Expo. Our first destination this morning was the Taiwan Pavilion, because in order to get into this exhibition, you had to first wait in line to get a fast pass, and then wait again to enter the Pavilion. However, despite the fact that we headed over straight to the Taiwanese Pavilion, the passes were all taken and so we had to give up.
After the disappointment at the Taiwanese Pavilion, Amanda headed over to New Zealand again to take some photographs, whereas I decided to check out Singapore. It took me an hour of waiting to finally make my way into the Pavilion. Fortunately, the exhibition did not disappoint me and I was able to see a wide range of cultural, technological and social aspects of living in Singapore. Because I have always taken some interest in Singapore as one of the biggest financial hubs in Asia, I was fascinated by both the cultural displays as well as the dazzling presentation of Singapore's high-tech, modern life style.
Amanda and I met up at noon and headed over to the Africa Joint Pavilion for lunch, for what turned out to be the highlight of my day. Except for a few bigger African nations such as Egypt and South Africa, the majority of the African Nations were grouped together in the Joint Pavilion. Instantly I headed over to Kenya and saw their exhibition, which was rather lacking in contents. Nevertheless, the large building contained not only cultural and historical displays but also an African bazaar. I managed to bargain with a Kenyan man and purchased a traditional woodcraft sculpture for Y 70, which is equivalent to about US$10. Amanda and I also purchased matching bracelets at the Guinean store, and Amanda managed to bring the price down from Y 40 to Y 20 by conversing with the natives in French!
We then took the ferry across Huangpu River to the other side of the Expo site, where theme Pavilions and Entertainment Hall was located. We first watched the Shaolin Warriors' performance and then walked for about 15 minutes in the scorching sun (the temperature was 39 degrees celsius) to get to the Future Pavilion (which turned out to be a rather sad attempt at amassing a whole bunch of futuristic technological stuff, while at the same time, trying to throw in a few eco-friendly phrases here and there just to keep up with the whole global green boom).
To catch the ferry back to the main part of the Expo park, we had to - yet again - wait in line for about about hour. By then, we had grown more accustomed to waiting and high population density and even managed to find a source of laughter amongst the crowd of people shoving us forward in a stationary and endless queue.
After a light dinner, we took a long walk across Sections A, B and C to zoom through all the interesting architecture and finally reached Egypt and South African Pavilions, the two pavilions with relatively shorter queues. Egypt had a lot of the same old mundane stuff: the Pyramind, Sphinx etc., whereas South Africa showed a various aspects about the country, starting with the World Cup at the entrance to South African art, wine and finally its modern technology. Lastly, we walked over to the Spanish Pavilion to see the famous "Big Baby," but by the time we got there, it was already 8:30pm and they were not letting anymore people. Sadly we had to call it a day and conclude our exploration of Shanghai World Expo.
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