Tuesday, June 28, 2005
I'm back! (Picture heavy post)
Well anyway, more on Shanghai. To quote a certain award-winning writer who goes by the surname Lee, Shanghai was... "well I can't say good. Not bad? Not at war?" Well it's surprising how they're not at war, seeing how utterly rude, inconsiderate, uncouth, impolite, and so very... Chinese the people there were. Traffic is a killer. All. The. Bloody. Time. Not a minute goes by without half a dozen people honking their horns. Cab rides are somewhat similar to a rollercoaster ride, smell of vomit included. The roads are filthy, and spit-stained. Street vendors keep yelling at you in a mishmash of Cheenglish that usually goes like, "Hallo! Hi! Lookee lookee! Watchee? Baggie?" And the haze. Don't even get me started. So why, you ask, did I even bother to visit such a place?
Well, if it wasn't to laugh at the Chinese, it must've been the shopping, because it was awesome! And the food! So amazingly cheap! I'm surprised I haven't already qualified for a compulsory purchase of 2 seats on the plane ride back, given how cheap the food was. To give you an idea of how much food there costs, a meal at a reasonably posh Chinese restaurant cost us about SG$80 for 7 people. And we were absolutely stuffed after each meal. And the Ma2 La2 Huo3 Guo1 and Xiao3 Long2 Bao1, simply too good to resist eating more than once during our trip. Shopping was, in my opinion at least, second only to Bangkok. The Swatch lookalikes cost $4 apiece, and were really, really erm, real looking! One really needs thick skin to bargain though. And usually the best bargains are to be had when you don't really want the item. For example, we were given a quote of $33 for a pashmina shawl. We managed to get it down to $4, but only because we didn't really want it! But we ended up buying like, 7 just for the sake of buying it, since it was so cheap anyway.
To be fair to the place though, there were some pretty impressive sights. The Bund was a pretty impressive array of architecture, if somewhat lacking in entertainment and organisation. Xin1 Tian1 Di4 (New World) was like something straight from Europe. Totally un-China, it was like Holland Village, but five times better. JinMao Tower, while providing an uninspiring view, is rather much an architectural masterpiece. And Pudong Airport, while mind-numbingly boring on the inside, is huge. But enough words already, on to the photos!
When we just arrived, our van-taxi ride to the hotel. A costly S$50, but cheap, considering it was 50km away.
This is at XinTianDi, in front of the main shopping building there. I forgot to mention, we ran into YikLey at the XiangYang market on our first day! We knew he was in Shanghai and had joked about searching the red light district for him, who'd have known we'd actually run into him, what more at a decent place. Only got to spend a day with him, but he brought us around and to his friend's bar, where he rather generously treated us to TWO bottles of Chivas.
At the bar. He also introduced us to his friend, Carol, the first good-looking Shanghainese we would meet, and also the last one we would see for a while...
We also visited the supposedly world-famous Shanghai Museum, and well, you can't always be serious at a museum...
and my favourite piece of work:
Foggy view from the 88th floor of China's tallest building, JinMao Tower. The needle with the 3 balls is some TV tower, which is supposedly taller than the building we were in, by virtue of its very long needle. Confusing, it is. Emerged from said tower $10 poorer and uninspired, decided not to visit needle with balls.
The tower however also had the Shanghai Grand Hyatt, which occupied the 54th to 87th floor of the building. From the 88th floor there's a viewing window where you can look all the way down the the hotel lobby. Pretty, yes?
Shanghai's most famous church. As can be seen, we were late.
One of the highlights of our trip, the food!
The XiaoLongBao is damn cheap, and better than any I've had in Singapore.
Something we really, really should have back here. The restaurant also sold a raw beef sashimi-like dish, which we Cheenadequate (Chinese-inadequate, geddit? geddit? OK fine. Not as funny as I thought.) people ordered by mistake. However, it turned out to be so good, we ended up ordering another 2 plates that day and the next time we went to the restaurant.
And of course, who can forget the beer...
Cheaper than Coke here, and a really decent beer, too.
One thing that the Chinese really must have is a sense of humour. Their English is, to put it tactfully, laughable.
Check out the fake Crocodile!
And my favourite shop.
The Shanghainese are supposedly the best looking people in China, but for the first 5 days of our trip, perhaps the best looking person we'd met was..
OK well, there was YikLey's friend and that girl at the counter at Starbucks, but she comes a close third!
Coincidence? No?
But well all trips come to an end, and frankly I was pretty glad to just get back into my own warm bed, and away from the dreadfully dusty air.
But then we read in the papers that China has yet to make sexual harassment a punishable crime, so...
And perv of the day (and week, probably), Ryan Goh:
Well, that's about all I've got on Shanghai. But first, a final salute to China.
10:33 AM
