Shanghai - Expo ABC

As with all things China in recent times, we shall go loud, direct and extravagant on our first post of Shanghai.

The EXPO!

With millions cluttering around China's pavilion, Yakki decided it could not grace his camera

Monday blues usually temper with people's willingness to do anything strenuous like queuing and jostling to enter a pavilion. So, we chose a Monday, 20 Sep, to explore the grounds.

We knew the Expo was going to be crowded, but a brilliant stroke of coincidence in our decision making meant we avoided visiting the Expo a day after Mid-Autumn Festival (23 Sep: highest attendance of 631,100+ visitors).

Still, there were thousands of eager Chinese competing to have their Expo passports chopped at the more illustrious (i.e. expensive) pavilions such as the U.K., Italy, Saudi Arabia, South Korea.

We were never gonna be crowd followers. Instead, we focused on short queues. And short queues alone.

First up was Brazil.

Brasil

The obvious thing for Brazil to do is to showcase their fanaticism of the beautiful game, displaying their fans, their footballers and many balls in one room.

Beside the apparent, they had four huge screens up in the ceiling, depicting the other things the Brazilians were good at. They had footages of a worker in an industrial plant, some agriculture process, kids playing in the neighbourhood to the beat of samba music.

Overall, a decent setup with its exhibits as well as adverts on PetroBras and Vale reflecting the fast-growing Brazilian economy.

Next we arrived in Canada.

Hypnotised

I don't really know how to describe the Canadian pavilion because from the outside it looked so simple, but the inside awed us with inexplicable exhibits.

Somehow, we just knew the Canadians were conveying sustainability, something-eco, something green. Enjoyable and funky, but we don't really know why. Made us wanna migrate to Canada, no?

A is for Angola.

The African nation's pavilion had a very simple layout. Simple exhibits of its people, produce and diamonds. We spent little time in there because we were looking for something extraordinary, something artsy to confound us.

And so we headed to our homeland, the Singapore Pavilion.