Shanghai World Expo or how to visit 25 pavilions in 1 day!

17 June

Day 204: Shanghai

Today we are going to Shanghai world expo! Around 200 pavilions represented different countries, Companies and continents are participating to the Expo. As we have heard, the lines to get into pavilion can be from 1 hour till 4-5 hours for the most popular ones.

China pavillion is supposed to be interesting, but to get the in you need to come at 9 am in teh morning for the reservation ticket, and only with that reservation you can get inside...so we passed :D

We bought the tickets for the expo in a supermarket, for 160 Yuan/each (thanks to Eloi, who knew about that, so we did not have to stay in line for the tickests), took subway and finally arrived to the entrance.

First pavilion was Sri Lanka , which was really small and easy to get in.

Next one, Pakistan, took me 45 minutes in a line….

and after that, we said – enough to queue!

Next pavillion was Marocco. We just got to the VIP entrance (the special separate entrance for special guests or people who have special reservations) and saw a guy from Marocco, standing outside and looking around. As soon as this guy saw Juli, he said: "Salam aleikum" and Juli said "aleikum as salam". Somehow, the guy thought Juli is from somewhere nearby haha And it was partially true, since Spain is an neibough country :-D Obviously we got in without waiting in line....

To the next 23 pavilions we got in a similar way...

Just went to the VIP entrance, told we work for Spanish pavilion or just asked to let us in, and apparently all of the pavilion stuff, let us in with no problem. The only one “unbreakable” pavilion was Japan :-D

We visited: Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Morocco, Arabia Saudi, United Arabic Emirates, India, Nepal, Korea, Philippines, Iraq, Laos, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Romania, Spain, Latvia, Mexico, Chili, Turkey, Myanmar, South Africa, United African Pavilion and two more I can’t remember :-D

Even not waiting in line, we were exhausted...what to say about the people who waited for hours to get in...

Ok, this is United Arabic Emirates...

South Korea...

Vietnam...

Australia...

Arabia Saudi had a really special pavillion, you were standing on a moving circular line and around they were projecting beacutiful images of the country, so you kind of had a feeling to be inside the action...really nice!!

Nepal...

Spanish pavillion had 3 rooms...

First room had a really nice vido projection, related to Picasso, Spanish holidays (San Fermin), also live flamenco performance and videos of Gasol, Nadal and Spanish National Footbal team...really impressive, one of the best we have seen!

Romanian pavillion was one of the most impressive from outside - it had a shape of a cut apple..but the performance was really poor...the band which was playing music was not even dressed in national dresses or something, it looked like some performance at the village market (i am trying to pick nicer words actually, because of our Romanian friends, but it was really bad!!

In Latvia pavillion they had a air tunnel, where you could actually fly. We had luck that one of the guys working there was couchsurfer and they arranged for Juli to try flying too, in between the official performance for the visitors.

Russian pavillion was actually beautiful, but did not talk much about Russia. It was based on a Russian fairy tale, nice decorated, but the one who doesn't know the story would not definitely understand anything :-)

Eloi had a friend, working in Mexico pavillion, so we could chat a bit with the guys and even take some pics haha

Chile pavillion is another one that we liked a lot! Really creative and orignial. We also had chats with guys working there, Spanish language helped :-D

South Africa pavillion...

Africa united pavillion...

The other curious thing about the EXPO, is that you can buy an EXPO passport (which looks similar to normal passport), which has pages with names of all countries from the EXPO and in the exit of every pavillion you can put a stamp (visa) from this country. Some Chinese got really obsessive about getting all visas in their passport, we even have heard that you can sell the passport wtih all visas for something around 200 Euro online haha

We arrived to Maggies place and she was so kind to cook for us a really tasty Chinese dinner (Maggi, you have to open your restaurant one day...after you come back from Tibet :-D