12 Hours in Shanghai
As someone who rarely travels in Asia outside the Philippines, connections on my occasional visits outside the US are opportunities for me to get out to countries I wouldn't otherwise get to visit, and of course see some birds I'm not used to seeing. I was initially a bit nervous when the cheapest flights connecting the Philippines and Hawaii connected through Shanghai, since I knew that China has a quite strict (read: expensive) visa process for Americans. However, it turned out that travelers with layovers in some major cities, including Shanghai, are allowed visa waivers for up to 5 or 6 days, providing they have an outgoing flight to a different country than the one they flew in from. Suddenly, long layovers didn't seem as bad. My layover in Shanghai on the way to Hawaii was only 8 hours or so, but I decided to try getting out of the airport anyway, in part just to figure out how the process went. As it turned out, it's actually a fairly quick process, as long...