Shanghaiist’s worst travel experience ever was on a 15-hour “sleeper bus” (ha!) from southern Shandong Province back to Shanghai. Packed to the rafters, Arctic January temperatures, layers of ice on broken windows, an ancient, festering interior dotted with rusty metal benches and the occasional sodden blanket (actual interior, pictured), black smoke chundering out of the engine console inside the vehicle, a desperate need to urinate for the second half of the trip and a Soup Nazi of a driver who couldn’t even be bribed to stop. To make matters worse, we joyously spied the night lights of the Oriental Pearl Tower in the disorientating haze of bladder pain and thought the horror was over, only to discover it was a miniature of the Pearl Tower located about 200 kilometres northwest of the city and we still had a four-hour crawl left to go. more ›