Today was a long boring day getting back to Shanghai. I am now back in the same hotel as 9 days ago.
My train wasnt until 2pm, the earliest I could get, I guess a lot of people travel into Shanghai for Saturday night.
This meant I spent the morning waiting to go to the train, I couldnt get up to my usual activity style of getting lost, getting on random busses, walking 20 miles out of town etc. as there would be a chance I would miss my train.
I took a taxi to the train station which was an adventure, the guy drove like a maniac one handed whilst screaming on the phone. Interestingly all taxis are manual, so a lot of the time he was going no handed whilst changing gears.
A few times I was sure we were going to hit a scooter or cyclist, but we never did. His aggressive driving got me to the station a long time before my train, and what a crap station it is!
Apparently theres a flash new station already built which will start operation with the metro, much like everything else. As much as I thought Hangzhou was excellent, and worthy of its #1 tourist city status, if you plan to come, wait a year until everythings finished.
These are all glass, like expensive things people would have in their cabinets. Except they are outdoors in the open and anyone can smash them if they so choose. Yet no one does.
I cant imagine they would last 10 minutes in a drunken western city.
Just another random ominous looking building punching a hole through the smog layer, which was particularly bad today.
On the train ride between the two cities, it went from bad smog, to almost none, to bad smog again.
Chinas NBN. I bet no one complains about it here, super fast filtered censored internet.
This sign makes me want to break the law.
The train station has almost no food. Well theres a KFC but I stand by my statement! The best I could do was a slice of sponge cake and watermelon juice.
Meanwhile, this guy decided sitting on the floor like thousands of other people wasnt for him. Hes found the most comfortable cherry picker spot to take a sleep.
This evening I headed out early just around the local area enjoying the busy part of Shanghai on a Saturday night. There was a ridiculous amount of people, and a ridiculous amount of men missing teeth asking if I want sex massage.
They really need to get better sales people.
Other interesting things I saw, one of the malls has a very popular restaurant on the 9th floor, so popular in fact the 8th floor is just stadium seating for waiting to get into the restaurant, complete with the distorted loudspeaker system.
I also saw a kitten attached to a chair by a string beat the crap out of a small terrified dog that was unfortunate enough to be going past.
In the nearby back streets I saw 5 people try and get on one scooter and fail, which resulted in a guy falling off the back with his bubble tea and phone. He succesfully managed to neither spill his tea or drop his phone.
I saw a lot of beggars, theres one guy who does similar to the muslim prayer on his knees but at 100x the speed. But the amusing one was earlier in the evening I saw a guy begging for money with his 'sick' mother laying on a sort of trolley cart thing wrapped up in blankets with an IV drip hanging off a pole. Later I saw them again, only she was off the make shift bed no longer attached to the fake IV drip, sitting on a bench nearby eating an ice cream.
Anyway, I made it back to my hotel in time to catch the formula 1 qualifying via illegal internet stream. Tonights stream was the USA coverage. Somewhat surprisingly, the American commentators were great, very knowledgable. But the better part was I got to see American TV ads. These included -
1. An ad for a legal service promising to get you a life changing settlement, no matter what kind of accident you were in, even if it was your fault! With the cost of raising a family these days, can you afford not to sue?
2. A guy who was running up a mountain, then hang gliding, then kick boxing, with a hilarious voice over about how in control he is of his life. Thats why he uses viagra, like 40 million other American men.
3. Some women sitting around asking each other idiotic questions about tyres, or that should be tires. Each boasting about how little they know about tires ('what, you mean those black rubber things on the wheels? hahahah!'). But dont worry, help is at hand tire man arrived on the scene to direct them to an informative website, to keep their families safe. The moms all then boarded their SUV's to go home and read the website.
4. A republican party ad about how gun ownership is increasingly being threatened in America, is your family safe?
5. A recruiting ad for the Marines, secure your future now.
6. Get a loan even if you are broke! We are extending this special offer for the next 10 minutes only, call now! Special rate for the unemployed!
7. Then the scariest ad of all, Nascar!
The best way to advertise the new volkswagen polo GTI, put girls in suits and make them leap off a skateboard ramp thing whilst screaming. Good timing on my shutter release.
Run girl run!
My dinner was advertised as a unique Chinese style curry. It was just like what my grandmother would make out of a recipe in the Womens Weekly from the 1960's. Not bad though!
The place was crowded so I was sat at a table with a girl already eating. She was very talkative, and spoke good English. She claims to have learnt all her English from watching movies.
She told me that she likes to talk to westerners to practive, but if she approaches them to do so, they always assume she is a massage girl, so she was very pleased when I sat next to her, because I would have no reason to think she was trying to scam me.
We then practiced mandarin for a while, she understood me find but told me that in Shanghai and Hangzhou (she doesnt know about Nanjing), its common for older shop keepers to deliberately answer people trying to speak Mandarin in Wu. They do this to confuse white people.
She also told me that like the French, Chinese people will pretend to not know English when they can speak it well.
So there you go. She didnt suggest we go to a teahouse or anything, in fact she left before I was finished, I still have my wallet and internal organs.
I cant help but think this guy would sell more shoes if he paired them up. Unless its meant to be the odd shoe store?
This is a fashion parade, for perfume bottles. Model after model came out showing everyone a different perfume bottle. Its also being filmed and there seemed to be a truck nearby with a satellite dish suggesting it was being telecast live.
My healthy snacks, apples, bananas, fruit salad, dark chocolate popcorn. 3 out of 4 aint bad.