Well the philisophy behind is quite simple; Schools out, let's hit the road! We finished our exams last wednesday and flew to Shanghai on thursday. The sunday afwards we took the train back to Guangzhou which was a 21 hour ride. After that I took the bus to Hong Kong where Patrick awaited me. I will remain under his supervision untill next sunday (if everything goes according to plan) and meet up with Jamie to begin the trip around China.
So ok, back to last wednesday. We all finished our exans and had a dinner party at Jaime's place that evening. The people that weren't going to Shanghai were supposed to go to a karaoke bar afterwards where there was a fourth-years graduation party. This means they sort of hired the bar and if one would pay a 100 dollars (10 euros) one could drink as much as one would want to. And ofcourse the Shanghai crew eventually was convinced to join the crew and headed of for the bar anyway, completely ignoring the fact that we had to get up at 7 am the next morning. We ended up leaving the bar at around 4.30 am and yes, we overslept. I was the first to wake up to my roommates alarm at 8.40 am. That really scared the shit out of me, and I immediatly tried to call Olli who didn't pick up the phone...weird.... After that I called and he took up the phone sounding really tired. At first I thought he was making fun of me but soon found out that I just woken him up. Fortunately I could reach Olli after that call and he and Liam (Carl's brother that was staying at Olli's place). I guess this is what you get when the basic rules of nature are ignored. I couldn't even remember putting out my alarm clocks (yes more than one!). Well anyway, we knew we could still make it since the plane would leave at 11.30 am anyway.
So we all rushed to the border (the plane would leave from Zhuhai), and luckily we could get through quite easily. Eventually we reached the airport at around 10.45 am.
Basically just in time, however the plane was an hour late. Ah well, eventually we got on, and although according to Liam we would all die, we arrived Shanghai after a mere two hours. On the airport (where Carl was still drunk and jumped on the luggage band) we took a bus to people's square and from there on a taxi to our hostel. During the bus ride it already occured to us how huge Shanghai is. The busride took an hour and it was all through urban area. And imagen this was still only on one side of the river that splits the city in two...Our hostel was great by the way. We paid 7 euros a night for it and we had a four bedroom dorm for it with our own bathroom. The best part of the room were the sheets, which were the best sheets I have felt in 6 months!
That day we didnt do much special. The weather was quite bad and we decided to first explore our neighbourhood (and discovered they were selling kebabs and meatsticks!) and then went to the bund which is probably the biggest attraction of Shanghai. It's probably because of the weather but we didn't find it that special. The buildings weren't lit up and the there were hardly any people, so it was kinda boring. After that we tried to find some bars or clubs but managed to find only one and it was too expensive for us, so we left that one. After that we just bought some drinks and went to a park to hang out there, was quite nice.
The next day we woke up around two in the afternoon and decided to go do some touristy stuff. First we took a cab to the old city of Shanghai. It was a big tourist bubble, but for a reason. It was basically a traditional small chinese town with the houses you would probably first think of when you think of China. All the buildings looked real traditional. They still looked 'new' because they were probably just restaurated.
I bought Mao's red book here and we ended up buying real tourists shirts for 3 euro each and walked around with those shirts the next day; real gweilo style!
After the old city we went to the city exhibition hall of urban planning where we some a maquette of the whole city, which is absolutely huge. This was really cool to see. There were also exhibitions about future plans for Shanghai (They'll be hosting the world expo in 2010 so much changes are scheduled for that year, including the opening of a brand new airport that is able to receive no new giant planes from airbus, the A380), which all looked impressive as did the exposition about old, pre-wartime, Shanghai where I just read a book about (empire of the sun, read it, it's good). Seeing all these plans is kind of what Shanghai stands for; adding the latest things to their city for the sake of having the newest and biggest whats currently available. A perfect example is the Maglev train that runs somewhere in Shanghai. It was the first ever Maglev train in the world and what I heard is that it's so expensive (8 euro's for a 12 minute trip) that basically nobody uses it. Still, China is proud...
Another thing that struck me is that Shanghai is probably the most capitalistic of a city I have ever seen in my life. Certainly when you think about China being the biggest communist country in the world currently... quite ironic. Whereever you look you will see mc. donalds, 7 elevens and other pure western stores and franchises. They love it...
That night we went to find some more nightclubs and we found some. The first one wasn't that great so we were off to find 'babyface,' appearently the 'hottest' place in Shanghai. We eventually found it but we couldn't get in because I was wearing sandals instead of shoes (my shoes are in a box on their way back to the Netherlands). Eventually did Olli and me end in the same club as we were the day before and had some beers in the park before ariving back at the hostel around 7 am.
That day we all got up at 2 pm again and went across the river to the business centre of the city. Some landmarks that are there are the pearl tower and the Jin Mao tower, the biggest tower in China and the fifth biggest building in the world. However, a new building is currently build just next to it and this one will be bigger than this one. How tall, I'm not sure, but it wouldn't suprise me if they want to top the one in Taipei on Taiwan. We wanted to go to the observation deck but found out it is too expensive. We went in anyway and went up to the hotel lobby, which was at the 53rd of the 93 story building. I can say the view was still amazing and we could see well over Shanghai (and witness that the city just never ends).
After this we head over to the pearl tower to see how much it costs to get up there and found out it's basically just a big tourist attraction with no further function. It's expensive to get up there so we again didn't do that. We eventually decided to sit at the river side and have a beer. After that we crossed the river through some weird tunnel (imported from France, this says it all) and walked around Shanghai before getting back to the hostel.
That night we wandered around our hostel area and basically did the same at previous evenings/nights, drink in the park. This time we were talked to by a park cleaner who knew surprising a lot about Europe and different countries. His english wasn't that good but he seemed very happy to meet some gweilo's and seemed quite clever. We therefore suspect that this guy was actually was the mayor of Shanghai in disguise.
That evening we went to bed at around 2 because we had an early wake up. The next morning we had the train back to Guangzhou at 9.50 am and we took a cab to the south station. We had seats and I was kinda not looking forward to it, because I can never really sleep on seats and from previous experience (read my Vietnam part) I expected it to be a big mess.
The train wasn't that bad. We had a lot of fun, but my fear partly came through; I didn't sleep at all. This is by far the longest I ever been in a train (followed by the 17 hours in Vietnam), and we were just fooling around with the Chinese that were there. They were very interested in us because most of the foreigners take the sleeper cabin when embarking on a trip like this. I don't really blame them for that, but we did have a lot of fun. We for instance met the brother of Jackie Chan (we eventually turned out to be the real Jackie anyway!) and met the Chinese reincarnation of Einstein. I'm not going to explain the jokes, but they just needed an honourable mention on this page. During the trip Liam also got engaged to a crazy chinese girl, so everyone was happy.
Arriving in Guangzhou I was dead tired and couldn't wait to get on the bus to Hong Kong. I got on the bus at 9 am and I just fell a sleep straight away. We arrived at the Shenzen/Hong Kong border at around 11 where I had to go through customs and change to another that would bring me downtown. I had to get off at Kowloon but because I slept through my stop I ended up on central. There I contacted Patrick and got on the MTR back to Kowloon. Patrick was so nice to bring me to his appartment and gave me the key so I could be mobile. I wasn't that mobile, because after checking my email I basically fell a sleep straight away... and since I'm getting a bit tired right now (1.30 am local time) I'm going to finish here and get on with the Hong Kong story another day. Btw for more Shanghai pictures check the photo album section of this page. I uploaden all the pictures from the last party in Macau there as well.
Good Night!
No comments:
Post a Comment