Paco´s Life: Madrid

Asian Tour II: Shanghai

9 August 2008 11:05 PM | In Asian Tour II | 2 Comments

It took me a while but I finally found some time to drop a few lines here. My blogger spirit exits, is there, but upon him there is a big cover of laziness preventing him from coming up. I guess this also has a lot to do with the fact that I spent 8 hours per day sitting in from of a computer; I don’t exactly feel like coming back to him in my spare time. Having to write everything in two languages does not help either. But I just finished my big summer trip and it would not be correct to skip it here. The plan happened to be Asia again, it is becoming a custom in the last year, August comes and I get my ass to the oriental continent. It was Singapore and Bangkok in 2006, the big ICEX Asian Tour (China – Taiwan – Japan) this summer and, after many plans considered, Philippine Islands and China revisited this year. My first idea was South America but one Olympic Games, a surprisingly cheap KLM flight ticket and the hosting of the great José – Beijing were enough reason to put my eyes in Asia again.

So, I designed my master plan which would start in Shanghai, take me to Manila, then to Beijing and finally back to Shanghai for my flight back to Europe. On the contrary to the recent Eastern Europe Tour, there was no cultural goal involved here. I had already seen Beijing before, Shanghai would be a short stop and there was nothing to see in Manila. This trip was about resting, learning scuba – diving, seeing the atmosphere of one Olympic Games and partying. So simple, so ordinary. So, after plenty of research about flights, hospitality club and various burocratic issues to get my Chinese visa (they were specially annoying because of the Olympics), I ended up in Shanghai Saturday 9^th of August. That was the destination of the very cheap KLM flight (just 450 euros!) and it was good cause I would get to know a bit more of Chine before the wild Philippine – Beijing experiences.

I had no contacts in Shanghai so I had to use HC again which proved to be as effective in Asia as it was in Europe. I was hosted in Shanghai by Angel, a very friendly Chinese girl that took me out for dinner and drinks the first night. That was a fucking long day; for starting, the night before the trip, and following another of my destructive traditions, I partied till very late and got to work with just a couple of hours of sleep and plenty of rum in my veins. At 12 pm on Friday I rushed to the airport and slept the hangover part of the endless trip to Shanghai via Amsterdam. I got there at 13 pm Chinese time, courtesy of the 6 hours time difference and, while Angela was done with her job, I headed for Sony shop. Why the fuck this is the first thing I do in my trip? Well, the messy Katerini night didn’t cost me only Giorgos friendship but also my current camera (another tradition in my trips). However, I happened to have another one I have had useless in my room for two years. I destroyed it in another drunken night in Stockholm and when I tried to fix it in Madrid I was said it would cost me more than 100 euros and would take a few weeks to repair it. So, instead of that, I bought another one that I managed to keep until the tragic Greek night. For this trip, I planned to fix this one rather than buying a new one, believing this efficient Chinese’s would be more reliable than their Spanish mates. And, for one time, I was right; getting my camera fixed in Shanghai Sony cost me only 50 hours and one hour. This is the funny story of this camera that I bought in Bangkok, destroyed in Stockholm, ignored in Madrid and fixed in Shanghai.

With the camera issue I didn’t see much of Shanghai that afternoon, just the typical Chinese market, full of annoying people trying to sell you watches, suits, ceramic or their mothers if you would ask for that. Nothing too interesting down there but the night was coming already and Angela took me to a very nice and typical restaurant, in which I had to admit I didn’t dare to eat the frog dish and went for more conventional spicy pork. After that, we went for a walk in the more interesting and touristic part of the city, the Bund, a nice area around the river with an impressive view over Shanghai skyscrapers. A bit of history about them at this point, Building a big building in China has its own mystery, it is not just about putting some materials together. These interesting people seem to look for a symbolism in everything they do. The pictures following display two of the most important buildings there: the Jin Mao tower and the international financial center of Shanghai (SWFC). The first one is built as very long bamboo tree that opens in its top, as a representation of China’s economical grew. The history of the second one is even more interesting; it was built by the Japanese, China´s historical opponent. In the beginning it was planned that the top of this building would represent a big Japan flag, but Chinese’s didn’t fancy this too much and they put a lot of pressure to avoid it. In the end, the skyscraper had the form of a typical Japanese knife so the symbolism is still there in a different way. The SWFC is Japanese knife stabbed right in the middle of China financial center. What a funny people these japs J

Jin Mao Tower

SWFC Shanghai

Shanghai from the Bund

Shanghai at Night

Shanghai at Night II

Shanghai’s night continued after that, in the most typical partying area of the city which is called the French concession, a bunch of occidental buildings result of the colonial times when our French friends were around. It was a fast and nocturnal experience of the place but I found it quite nice to hang around. Quite more cosmopolitan and less Chinese than Beijing, with more occidentals hanging around, places with live music, huge night-clubs and very good atmosphere in general. Shanghai, from my very superficial experience, looks like an easier place to live than Beijing, not given up Chinese traditions but maybe a bit more open. I had till 4am to test it so the day happened to be very long, around 26 hours awake. No big surprise that I need almost 14 hours of sleep to recover…

I woke up very late next day and not feeling like doing much, besides there was another night flight to take for getting to Manila. So my second day in Shanghai just consisted on a great Chinese one hour and a half full body massage. One of the bests I ever tried, specially the 30 minutes she focused in my feet. It is surprising how relaxed you can become after a feet massage J So relaxed that I missed the last bus to the airport and had to take a taxi. The driver probably thought I was late because he started to drive very crazily through the highway. Or maybe this is a normal thing to do for Chinese taxi drivers when they are ask by an occidental. Right now I remember about that time in my other Asian trip when JuanPe – Dubai and I had to get to Hong Kong from the airport of a Chinese city in the south which name I don’t remember. We had this picture taken from a computer screen in which someone had written “get us to the train to Hong Kong” in Chinese. That’s something I will talk about again, in general Chinese people don’t speak English at all and, when it comes to move around, that’s a real pain. You need to have the directions written in Chinese for the guy, other ways he will never know where the fuck you are going. It does matter how experience traveler you are, it will be tough to find your way. Anyway, it was very late that night and we didn’t really know when the last train was leaving. So, after arguing quite a big about the price with the driver, he started to drive as if he was participating in a F1 race. Beeping the horn to slow cars in front of him, driving in zigzag, ignoring lights… At some point I saw he was ignoring a signal saying “Station” and I told him. The guy got totally mad and spent the rest of the trip yellowing as us while still driving in that crazy way. In the end, that city happened to have two stations and only from one of them trains to Hong Kong were departing. Moreover, we got there just 5min before the last one. We would have never made it if that guy wouldn’t have driven like that. Was that a coincidence of the driver knew about the time of the last train to Hong Kong? I really believe the second, that driver was very honest and I behaved like an asshole.

So the tip I should have given to that one I gave it to this one who got very happy about it and was about to hug me. I headed to the checking counter and there was still time for another “incident” when this Filipino woman asked me to check in part of her luggage. She didn’t look too suspicious too me but I guess we had heard too many sad stories of occidentals staying in dark jails because of being caught carrying drugs so I passed. The woman spent the rest of the queue looking at me with anger but I didn’t care. I was on my way to Philippine Islands and my only worry then was not to suffer a typhoon…