I was excited. I had a great time in Taiwan, but it was finally time to go back to the mainland. In fact, according to Taiwan I had overstayed my visa by two days. not  exactly my fault, just a simple oversight when booking my tickets. Two-thousand Taiwan dollars, and a one-year “no-free-visa” ban later and I was on my way back to the mainland. Being in mainland China just has a certain feeling to it, something that HK, and Taiwan just doesn’t seem to have.

Shortly after I arrived in Shanghai, I felt kinda like I was home again. My phone worked, the street food smelled like stuff I knew, there wasn’t 10 7-11s on every street, I could buy things I liked again. It felt good. Later that evening I picked up Marina from the airport, as she had come to join me on my holiday.

Our first stop on the holiday tour was in Xitang “water town”, which is kinda like a Chinese Venice, Italy. With a river running through the middle, the city offered a great display in the evenings with hanging lanterns, floating candles, and romantic boat rides. Xitang isn’t really one of the “see things, do things” kinda places, it was more of a “sit on a porch, drinking beer and reading a book all afternoon” place; and the latter is precisely what we did.

» Read more: Back to the Mainland