DVD, Cannabis, Girls.....

Woke up full of beans today, met the rest of the group and headed off to a 'traditional' area of Shanghai, they call it the tourist market and although it is based on an area which was a traditional market area they do now call it tourist market for a reason (hey maybe the simple labelling of things in China does have a benefit to it). After fighting through the crowds we made it to a kind of city garden, it dated back over 500 years and was basically a giant garden, we would call it a Japanese garden but being in China I obviously can't.

I am starting to get to know the group now, and on the whole they look OK, last night I did spot the potential pains in the arse. One is called Sally and she has taken it onboard to be the mothering one, I can't stand her. So condescending.

There is also a septic who I am not getting a good vibe from, she hasn't even said hello, but then again nether have I.

I have also discovered that Chinese beer is shite, the one I was drinking was 3.1%, that is not beer, it's water. I had some Chinese beer called Tsingtao in the US and it was fine. But so far I am very disappointed.

Anyway back to the actual day, after the Market we had some spare time, the guide gave us various options. I decided on the wonder around and do eff all option. Didn't buy anything, it was all tat.

We met up around an hour later and had some lunch, the meal was actually quite good but I am starting to get fed up with Chinese food already (well you try and have a chinese takeway for lunch and dinner for 5 days in a row). We then had a walk down to the Bund, it's the traditional area on the river front where all the colonial banks are located. The buildings were nice but needed a bit of a clean. From there we caught the boat across the river in order to go to the top of the Jin Mao tower, the fifth largest tower in the world. The views were really good and from the helpful displays I found out I was 9350km from London. It also has a hotel on 53-87 floors with a atrium from top to bottom and you had a birds eye view of it.

From there we headed back across the river and caught a cab back to the hotel. The guide gave us an option of going to a Chinese acrobat show but I wasn't really interested so I headed out for some drinks by myself at an Irish pub called O’Malley’s, a couple of the group offered to meet me later and I agreed but held out little hope.

I decided to have a nightime walk on the Bund but got hassled so much I only lasted about 10 mins, the amount of complete crap they try and sell you here is unbelievable, someone even offered me some roller skate type things. I decided to walk to O’Malley’s and went along the main shopping street, yet again the echoes of 'DVD's, 'Cannabis' and 'Girls' came over to me from half the population in Shanghai. I made it about 2km but then decided to take the metro the rest of the way, easy to use, clean, air-conditioned and not to busy, just like London should be.

I found O’Malley’s and had a few decent beers, I didn't have the confidence to go up to random people yet so I just sat around reading some of the pages on Shanghai that I had ripped out the Lonely Planet, after these had finished I started reading the local paper, I was starting to get merry so decided to talk to some locals. I ended up chatting to a German and French guy. They were car designers who had been in Shanghai for about 5 years. After a general chit chat and a few more beers one of them offered to drive around to the bar street for a few drinks. I agreed and although he was well over the limit, off we set. The bar we chose first was full off Westerners and although I thought it was OK he said that we should leave after one drink, I asked why and he said because it was full of lady boys, after a closer inspection (although not that close !!) I realised that about half the girls were lady boys, a hasty retreat was made and we went to a bar a few doors down it was better but a bit empty.

French guy suggested another place so we hopped in the car again and headed of to another bar, this was much better and had a good mix of westerners and Chinese, that’s basically where we settled in until 4am. It was good fun although I was fairly wasted when I left (something Kate later realised when I skyped her when I got back to the hotel).

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