I am typing this from Terminal 2 in Shanghai Pudong airport where I will catch a flight to Singapore in 30 minutes. This is the first time I depart from the new Terminal 2, so far all of my flights over the past week were out of Terminal 1.
I am not particularly fond of Terminal 1, it feels cold, the shops are crappy and there is nothing to do. Terminal 2 is a lot better. It’s brighter than Terminal 1 and it feels warmer, probably because of the carpets on the floor. The new terminal looks very similar to Hong Kong airport actually, even the signs for the gates seem to be the same. There are actually some decent shops, although there is no comparison with the shopping experience at Hong Kong airport.

At Terminal 1 I normally go to one of the lounges, either the KLM one (thanks to my frequent flyer card) or to the China Mobile one (that gave me a VIP card years ago already, thanks to my higher-than-average mobile phone bills). But at Terminal 2 I didn’t know where these lounges are located and I was not in the mood to find them, so I decided to just walk around a bit to check out the place. I ended up at Burger King (take the escalator up at gate D75), not for food, but just for a coffee. It turned out they have a great deal on coffee, for just RMB 8 (EUR 0.80) you get a large one! I am quite sure this is the cheapest coffee on the whole airport, and quite drinkable as well. Just as a comparison I went into the coffee bar next to gate D77 to check their prices. This shop charges RMB 48 for a regular coffee (150 ml), six times as much and for a much smaller cup!

And the best thing is that when you sit at Burger King you have a full free wifi connection. Just go to the “spia-guest” network, it is unprotected but not very fast (but being in China you are probably used to that). This made my day! I walked around a bit on the airport with my laptop, and it seems this network is available all over the place.

If you’re not into coffee or shopping there seem to be a lot of other things to do as well. I noticed signs showing the direction to among others a cinema, meeting rooms, an internet cafe, a hairdresser and even a gym. I do not have time to check them out (my flight is boarding in a few minutes), but next time that I fly from here I will certainly pay them a visit (and likely blog about it).