Friday 24th July 2009 Shanghai

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Friday 24th July 2009 Shanghai

First job of the day was the essential and rather annoying necessity to purchase your train ticket from the station in advance. We jumped the metro and found the station and joined the other 2,000 people in the queues for the tickets. As always the train we wanted was full up even if it was in 4 days time, it was an overnight one which is always handy, instead we had to get a 10 hour one leaving at 7am. Had to do though. Today was Shanghai shopping day so the first call was the fake goods market in the Science and Technology subway station. I had very different expectations of China before we came, I thought you’d easily be able to pick anything you wanted on the streets and there would be markets everywhere, A bit like a city full of Henry Street at Christmas time. Not like that at all, Thailand is the place for that. Here they allow very little to be sold on the streets, they don’t tolerate any counterfeit stalls anywhere, and most of the things they end up selling everywhere is just plain rubbish. This place was alright but if Brian hadn’t told us about it there is no way we would have found anything. We picked up a couple of t-shirts for ok prices, about 5 Euro for a quicksilver and 8 for an Abercrombie polo, they start trying to sell them at about 25-30, its gas and they literally grab your wrist so you can’t go anywhere and you engage in the bartering game.

We got back on the underground after some lunch and went to Pudong, the new purpose planned commercial centre, its where all the main skyscrapers in the city are and apparently the biggest shopping center in Asia according to Brian. We went there anyhow and found a few things, Mary was looking for some work clothes as the real world is appearing on the horizon, we ended up buying stuff in Next and Benetton, sure we should have just gone to Grafton Street, great sales on, now we just have to decide what we can throw out so our new stuff will fit into our bags.

It was after 6 when we got home and rang Brian to find out where we would be feasting tonight. He came round about 8 and we got a taxi through some very posh areas and shopping streets to Hot Pot King. Hot pots are a Chinese institution, don’t think we would have managed it without Brian or even attempted it but it was a fabulous meal and an experience in itself. You have a big pot of boiling broth sitting on a hotplate in the middle of your table and you order all sorts of raw vegetables, thinly raw meats and prawns. You throw the veg in to cook away and you pick up the meat slices in your chopsticks and dip it into the boiling soup for about 10 seconds, and voila you have a very tasty piece of cooked beef or lamb or whatever, it beautiful. The Chinese sit there all evening just cooking and eating away, it’s their favorite pastime sure.

All the nice food was then washed down in a bar called Murals I think, not quiet sure as its 100 Yuan in all you can drink made me a little forgetful. This was a great place; you could get any drink you wanted almost for free, shots, cocktails, bottles of imported beer. It was a decent place too, very popular with the expats, the Asians were well outnumbered in the place. We got our moneys worth out of the 100 Yuan and Brian continued in his task as tour guide extraordinaire and brought us to some mad nightclub called the Shelter, which is actually located in a bomb shelter which the Chinese built when they were a bit scared of the Russians coming for an unwelcome visit. You walk down a long enough and dark and slippery tunnel which opens out into a fairly substantial cavern with smaller little rooms branching off. Good night there, lots of westerners again, and met a few of Brian’s mates including a huge German guy called Sebastian and some Hong Kong mates of his. Fairly sauced by the time we called it a night at 4am, so sauced infact that we though it would be the best idea ever if we were to look up the number for McDonalds 24 hour delivery service on the internet and order to our room. They even spoke perfect English on the phone and knew the hotel address from the phone number and had delivered us a Big Mac Meal and chicken nuggets within about 25 minutes. How excellent is that, so went to sleep happy that night. Shanghai really is a fun city if you have somebody to bring you around and negotiate through all the Chinese difficulties with.

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