About 10 of us - including myself, Jamie Charman, Cheynee Stiller, Jed Adcock, Aaron Cornelius, Daniel Merrett and some of the staff - went and visited the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

I just couldn't believe the size of it - the site spans over five kilometres and around half a million people visit it every day!

The theme of the Expo was 'Better City, Better Life' and every country was represented with its own pavilion which promoted the key message of working together as well as information about their different cultures.

Our first stop was the Australian pavilion which had plenty of recognisable features as you walked in from didgeridoos to famous monuments such as the Opera House. They also put on a virtual presentation which was obviously designed more for the Chinese people and not for travelling Aussies.

Fortunately we had VIP access to the Australian, Brazilian and USA pavilions while Charmo managed to sweet talk his way into getting us entry into a few others.

This meant we didn't spend too much time waiting in the queues which were ridiculous. A lot of the local Chinese people waited in line for up to five hours just to visit one of the more popular exhibits, of which Australia was definitely one.

We ate lunch in the Turkish exhibit which only had one option on the menu and it was basically kebab meat in tomato sauce.

Part of our group also included 20-month old Millie French who is the daughter of AFLQ Corporate Relations Manager Penny French.

Millie has blonde hair and blue eyes and almost became her own mobile pavilion as her Dad Ben pushed her around in the pram. A lot of the Asian people were fixated with her and just followed her around and tried to take photos with her.

Millie's cuteness and Jamie Charman's height (we told locals he was the Australian 'Yao Ming') made us pretty popular with the crowds of people over there.

After the Expo, myself and Jarrod Harkness went up the famous Oriental Pearl TV building in the Pudong district to look out over Shanghai. There was a glass observation deck which provided a great view.

Last night a few of us went down to an area near the hotel and got to experience the local cuisine.

We found it really hard to get a table considering it was Friday night, but we eventually walked into one and they found space for us in a separate room out the back.

It would have to be one of the worst dinners I've ever had. The meat looked as though it had been sitting out the front for a couple of days and it was a real struggle to get it down. It was very dodgy and I'm just happy that I'm still alive today to tell the story.

Check out other Shanghai Diaries so far
- Shanghai Diary: Jesse O'Brien
- Shanghai Diary: Bart McCulloch