Shanghai

And so we arrived in Shanghai, killed by the most tormenting train ride ever! we got off our train and found ourselves on a subway metro line! with limited instructions on how to find our accommodation that we booked online we stumbled around in the area we were going to be living for the next week for at least 15 minutes before we found the place, the name eludes me right now but it was meh meh. It’s sign was TINY and that’s why we didn’t find it immediately despite walking past it twice. NOTE TO HOSTEL OWNERS: make your sign big. real big.

Annyway, we were staying in the dorms cos well that’s all they had and we needed a place and besides! dorms are good for making quick friends right? yeah well it didn’t pan out. We were in the dorms but everyone was lame! heh anyway. Once arriving we found ice cream and jumped on a random bus that was pointed out to us by the hostel lady. We wanted a guide book, a book to ALL of Asia! (we found out one existed at our Beijing hostel) so we went to a biiiig bookstore in the middle of some colonial-like looking district. The bus ride there was adventurous enough! we gave the bus driver too much money and he shouted at me for not taking all the change he had saved for me from the other bus patrons. Nice Chinese people indeeed. Long story short here, we found the book store and bought the book that would become our life saving Bible many a time in the future. South East Asia on a Shoestring. Perfect for us cos we’d be touching almost all the countries in the book! Next, was food.

Anywho, after food we went to People’s Square~! and we took loads of pretty pictures! we found a movie cinema too! we wanted to watch a movie later that night. We didn’t.

NEXT! was Shanghai 2010 World Expo!
I’ve decided it was so awesome it gets it’s own post!

So AFTER the Shanghai 2010 World Expo! the day after, we actually did go back to People’s Square we we found like.. these little adventure rides, just imagine the Wipeout from Dreamworld. We went on that, THEN we saw that movie that we wanted to see. PRINCE OF PERSIA. It was alright actually. ^^ later that night however (or another night?), we met up with a friend of Ange’s, a guy called Paul! and he’s an pretty cool guy in my book. We met him at the Pearl Tower and got some good old Japanese food before going to his place for some beers and then eventually heading out into the night, for a night of Shanghai clubbingness.

So the Shanghai clubbing experience you ask? well, for starters I’m not much of a clubber, that’s more Ange’s scene.. but one thing we both didn’t expect to see was some sort of freaky, kinky bondage show! we just got there and there was some black dude in all that leather gear and a ball in his mouth being pranced around by a blonde chick. Not really knowing what was up, we got some drinks and met some of Pauls friends. I don’t remember any of their names. But! cool thing about the drinks was that they were coupon based! you basically, bought a set of coupons for 10 drinks and just use them all night. It’s the best system ever! you pay once, and then just use the coupons! speeds up the entire drink getting process. Annnyways, after about like.. a long time and after dancing, moving, shaking and talking we eventually decided to head off into the night and take a cab home. Ange was nice enough to leave a little surprise in the back before he dropped us off too!

The next day, we had to move out of where we were staying (for the second time) cos we wanted a more… private room shall we say? (it was our anniversary!) ^^ annnywho.. we booked into a hotel airport (how dodgy) that was waaaay out in the middle of no where, but we didn’t know that when we booked it. Since we booked it in the morning and turned up later that day, we had some trouble with the staff and our room. BASICALLY, they didn’t have our information and were confused how we claiming to have a room that night. Annnyway, after talking to the manager with shitty English for a while we manged to get into our room and it was AWESOME. The best room we had stayed in to that point. We didn’t get much done that day but we came out during the night! found out the our train line.. METRO LINE 2, was retarded and stopped running at like 6pm so we had to take a taxi to another station reeaaaally far away. We went from there to Pearl Tower again and went looking for food. Oh boy did we find it! we found.. PIZZA HUT.

But the classiest Pizza Hut in existence, and my friends I tell you now, it was on this date that I discovered.. CHEESE FILLED CRUST on pizzas. I had never tried them, thought it was some evil gimmick but it was amazingly tasty! after dinner we needed to book our train tickets to Hong Kong! well, we went to the place but the queue was amazingly long and our train line stopped soon so we had to abandon ship and head home. Next morning we raced to the train tickets and found that there was only 4 tickets left.. and they were only for first class! so we booked them at astounding prices and spent the rest of the day doooing.. well not much, we went to the Bunt and I was ambushed by some crazy guy that crappily told me all about how I was born in the year of the snake and my mother was born in the year of the blah blah. He bugged me for ages and I kept getting him to talk more.. he told me about the lottery and how he has lots and lots of birds. A very queer fellow indeed. Eventually we escaped when I said we had to catch our train, which was sorta true.

Getting onto our train was a trifle. Firstly, we went to the wrong place.. even though the signs indicated we were supposed to go through there.. then cos we were first class we had to go else where.. and then we had to go through immigration like 10 minutes before our train departed. It was hectic, but when we found our seats.. or rather, should I say ROOM! it was glorious.

Ahhh and that was that. We were on our way to Hong Kong! away from Shanghai with all it’s glory and spazzyness. Oh and we went to the Peoples Square park one day and played chess and saw two Chinese guys fight.