Shanghai Nights

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Our overnight train journey into Shanghai was much better than we had anticipated and the 20 hours passed quickly as we slept, read, chatted to locals and saw some nice scenery on the way - It's still so suprising and pleasing that even trying to use a basic bit of Chinese language really helps open up the locals to you, we had a little study session and learnt to count to ten plus a few other key phrases which we had fun trying out. One guy spoke really good English so we chatted to him for a while, about the differences between the British and Chinese Governments, people, countries and other topics - he thought Scott looked like David Beckham (for the third time this trip - the Chinese must have bad eye sight lol) and that I was an 18 year old student - we liked him a lot. Even though we had top bunks on the train which don't give you a lot of room, we were comfortable and aside from the guys below us talking/snoring late into the night it was an easy journey. We booked our onward train tickets to Beijing when we arrived at Shanghai station which was fairly easy as you could use an English machine but more expensive than expected, then we took the metro from the train station to our hostel, located close to Nanjing Road (Mingtown Hiker) and checked into our room which was nice enough, before quickly freshening up and heading back out to make the most of our time in this city.

We walked in the sunshine through the popular pedestrian shopping street of Nanjing Road, avoiding the many hawkers trying to sell us watches, bags, roller skates and other items, before coming to People's Sqaure and wandering around there for a while trying to find somewhere to eat. We were starving at this point as we hadn't eaten since our pot noodles on the sleeper train the night before, so against our better judgement we made a poor choice and ate at a local curry place which wasn't great - Scott had chicken something or other but we are not too sure what meat I had - best to forget that meal. We promised ourselves that night we would have a good dinner and started walking towards People's Park which was very nice before heading back to the hostel. On the way back we passed a couple of Chinese 'students' who said hello to us, and when we said hello back they started to rattle off all the English they knew, before casually dropping in they were going to a tea ceremony and would we like to join them. This is one of the oldest scams in the book and we declined and walked away - they are not students at all but con artists who, once you have naively agreed to go to a tea ceremony with them, take you to a tea house and extort money from you before you are able to leave - over £200 a go we heard.

That evening we wanted to check out a bar called Cloud 9 which was on the 87th floor of a 5* hotel by The Bund and offered great views over the city at night (plus a happy hour on cocktails until 7pm), so got as dressed up as we could with the backpacker clothes we had and got the metro over. We couldn't find the building at first but after some hand gestures and miming to the security guards at the station we managed to locate it and headed up in the lift (you actually have to take 3 seperate lifts to reach this floor), where we met two English guys who were in Shanghai for business and also wanted to have a drink and see the views. We left the lift and found a table where we tried to hurridly communicate to the waiter that we wanted to order drinks before the end of happy hour (it was 6.55pm by this point and our budget wouldn't really cover the drinks at full price!) but it was taking a while and we were thinking of leaving, when the English guys called us over and asked us to join them, saying they (re-their company) would pick up the tab - result! We spent the next hour quaffing down cocktails at £9 each (more than a night's accomodation!) and chatting to them before they paid the bill and we all left - they were going to a fancy restaurant on the floor below but sadly we didn't get an invite there but the coversations had were good and the drinks appreciated, so we headed down in the lift and jumped back on the metro over to the French Concession area.

Once we got out the metro we didn't really know where to go as there were no obvious looking restaurants like we had thought, so walked through a shopping centre were pointed in the direction of an area which was supposed to have some eating options in it. What a lovely little area it turned out to be! A cobbled courtyard lined with lanterns and trees and loads of restaurants - Chinese, Thai, French, German, British - you name it and it was there, so we settled on a Thai restaurant and treated oursleves to one of the best meals of the trip so far. For anyone who knows us, you will know how we love our Thai food, and we thoroughly enjoyed a red chicken curry, beef massaman, rice and some spicy prawns with greens (thought we should up our veg count as we are struggling to make our 'five-a-day' quota per week let alone day) but just had some water to go with as we are on a budget! It was delicious and the setting was great so worth the £20 - much more than we would normally spend on dinner but we felt we deserved it. We then left to get the metro home which is where the fun started...

We thought the last train was around 11.45pm, and as it was 10.30pm we would make it with no problems, but the metro station we were at was a small one and on this particular line the last train was just before 10.30pm so we had missed it - cue a few choice words and then us trying for 20 minutes to hail down a taxi to take us the 15 minute or so ride back to where we were staying. There were plenty of taxi's, but finding one who could understand English was like trying to find a size 8 in a Primark sale - impossible!. Even though we were asking to be taken to one of the busiest metro stations in Shanghai (and we would walk from there as we couldn't remember the exact name of the street our hostel was on) no one could understand us and kept shaking their heads and driving off. It was probably the way we were pronouncing the station, but imagine being at Covent Garden and trying to take a taxi to Kings Cross and no taxi driver understanding that?! That is what it was like and after a frustrating 20 minutes of this we went back to the Thai and asked a waitress who spoke a bit of English to tell a taxi where we wanted to go in Chinese, thankfully we seemed to get one after that and so got in. It was only after about 20 minutes of driving we realised the driver didn't know where he was going and soon after he stopped on a busy road in the middle of nowhere indicating this was our stop and to get out - which it clearly wasn't. We argued with him that this wasn't where we wanted to go but he didn't understand us and we ushered him to continue driving but he shook his head in protest, so we refused to pay and just got out. Luckily we had spotted the street name - Nanjing Road West - and we had to get to Nanjing Road East, so we started walking thinking it wouldn't be that far...well 4km later we were still walking in the dark through a city we didn't know, plus it was cold, so we weren't too happy but soon after we arrived back to our hostel - exhausted.

The next morning although we had slept well due to being so tired, we both had stiff backs from the bed which was as hard as concrete and as lumpy as my mum's mash potatoes (just kidding) so we spent the morning chilling in the hostel before deciding to head to the Shanghai Museum and explore a little bit more of People's Park. As it was sunny we decided to walk up Nanjing pedestrian street to the museum as it had looked nice when we walked down it at 11.45pm the previous evening. We reached the Shanghai Museum which resides in the centre of Peoples Park and were looking forward to learning about and viewing the eleven permanant exhibits which include; Chinese art, bronze, ceramics, caligraphy and jade from both the Ming and Qing Dynasties aswell as traditional costumes, crafts and paintings from minorities. Just before entering the museum we had fun observing a couple of older guys playing with toy kite's - These were not however your run of the mill diamond shapes, but more huge jellyfish/octopus type designs which were attached to some really thick wire and when airbourne easily floated higher than the nearest skyscraper, we both thought they must surely have some sort of aviation pass for them as they went so high.

After entering the museum (which was fairly big) we asked at the information desk what was the best way to view the exhibits and were advised to start at the top and work our way down to the bottom as the items were chronologically organised in that way, so we set off up to the 4th (top floor). After viewing a couple of open exhibits we entered the main foyer of the top floor and all of a sudden a bunch of screaming, teenage girls started heading in our direction. Wondering what was going on, we stopped to see where they were running too - but it didn't take long to realise it was US that they were running at! The first girl asked if she could have a photo taken with Scott and when he said yes, you would have thought Justin Bieber had just arrived to perform a concert, they were jumping up and down in excitement and within about 10 seconds we were surrounded by a group of about 40 girls, all taking it turns to have a photo taken on their camera, iphone, etc. At some points girls were cutting the queue to have a photo taken it was truly bizarre and for a short 5 minutes realised that this must be what celebrities feel like 24/7. We then continued down to the lower level exhibits posing everynow and then for another photo with one of the girls who were following us before lastly visiting the rare jade exhbit and exiting the museum to have an ice cream in Peoples Park.

We had now almost been away a month without having a proper night out and for anyone who knows us (especially Scott) this is rather too long, so we made it our mission to hunt out the livliest area in Shanghai for that night (hence the title of this blog). Well let's just say it got a little bit more messy than either of us had expected/wanted. It started out tamely enough, having a bite to eat and a few beers over a couple of games of pool before we came up with the bright idea of doing a bit of pre-gaming (drinking) before heading to the bars and clubs to keep the costs down. Half a bottle of vodka later we were on our way to Hengshen Road (Bar Street). We started off in a locals pub watching a live singer, who was actually brillant, especially when she rapped a Missy Elliot and Nikki Minaj song before leaving in search of a club. We were invited to enter 'Laughing Club' for the grand sum of 50RMB/£5 between us which (un)fortunately as we were foreigners included an open bar which we took full advantage of. More vodka/G&T's later we were watching a pale Chinese man in a blond wig and all the 'get-up' on stage rapping to a Jay-Z track it was hillarious but the club had a good vibe and mixture of foreigners and locals. After about 1am the rest of the night became a bit of a blur but we remember walking to another bar, finding a club called Shelter (which was an underground club in an old bomb shelter) and watching the army carry out various drills on a a side street which was both interesting and scary, before manaing to get a taxi back, via The Prophet, and getting into bed at gone 3am not looking forward to our early start the next day on the bullet train to Beijing.

We both felt pretty awful when our alarm's went off at 8am, vowing not to drink again for a while as we are both clearly out of practice and getting too old but we struggled out of bed, loaded our heavy backpacks on and made our way to Hongqiao Shanghai Station via a 45 minute/2 rush hour subway journey's for our 5 hour journey to the capital of the Peoples Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the World, Beijing...



S&V's Travel Info & Tips:

General Info: Approx 10 RMB/Yuan to £1. Shanghai is a huge, modern, metropolis. It is very clean and at times doesn't feel like a typical Chinese city. Although it is not blessed with hundreds of attractions, it is a great place to spend a few days and we probably wished we had stayed a day or so more to explore some of the other towns nearby.

Transportation: From Guilin, it took 20 hours on a sleeper train and cost 330 RMB p/p for a top bunk, hard sleeper. The metro in Shanghai is clean, efficient and very cheap costing 3-4RMB per journey. Taxi's although very cheap are hesitant to pick up foreign travellers and speak zero English so have your destination written in Chinese.

Food: Food at the hostel was good and reasonably priced at 25-30RMB per dish. The usual western fast food chains are everywhere. The French Concessions neighbourhood has many great dining choices aswell as a few nice looking bakeries.

Accomodation: We stayed at Mingtown Hiker which is near the Bund and Nanjing Road. Despite the hard beds and somes slight confusion upon check-in, we would reccomend this place for the great social scene and location - We paid 140RMB per night for a private double/shared bathroom. 5-10minute walk to a main metro station.

Other observations:

x) Watch out for scams involving English speaking Chinese students who try to take you to a tea house/ceremony.

xx) Touts on the Nanjing Road pedistrian steet are persistant trying to sell you the usual suits/watches/bags and the bizzare clip-on skates/useless accessories/toys.

xxx) If you are going onto Bejing book your train ticket as soon as you arrive. The new D express train cut's the journey time down from 14 hours to 5 hours and the price variation was not huge - although we were generally surprised at the cost of this leg of our journey.

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