Shanghai by Night

Eating lumps of cow at the Brasil Steak House.
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We arrived at the Shanghai train station to a sweltering 35 degrees and 90% humidity.  We had the terrible instructions on how to get to the hostel written down but hadn't written down the actual address, so we ended up walking around the city in the heat with our packs on for about an hour looking for the internet to check the address.  Finally found it and realised we had been outside the hostel as soon as we got off the bus!  Then the hostel had lost our reservation so the four of us (Laura, James, Emma and Edde) were split into 2 windowless rooms.  It's hard with windowless rooms as you wake up in total darkness at 10am thinking it's still 2am.  After settling in, running errands and meeting fellow travellers., it was dinner time!  So we head off in a taxi down the highway to the Brasil Steak House, which had circus looking people serving us as much meat as we could eat!  James and Edde were in heaven!  We met some Sydney people there and met them for a drink afterwards at the Blue Frog, a cool bar owned by an Aussie.

The panda in the zoo.
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We spent the next few days looking around the city, with hawkers following us everywhere trying to sell us watches, handbags and sunglasses (and when the boys walked by themselves - girls).  It was so hot though, we mainly did stuff at night, there were some really cool bars in Shanghai.  We went to 3 on the Bund to David Laris' bar which was amazing and drank Shanghai's Dirtiest Martini (that's what it was called!) which was a James Bond martini, with the beautiful people of Shanghai.  The Bund was amazing, all old buildings lit up at night overlooking the river and all the new highrises, also lit up.

Shanghai's Dirtiest Martini

The People's Square.
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One day we decided we'd go see the panda at the zoo.  We got there at 4pm (the Lonely Planet said the zoo closed at 6pm) to find that the zoo closed at 5pm.  We ran through the rain to the panda enclosure to watch the cute fat thing rolling in his dinner - bamboo.  We then found there were no staff at all to kick us out so we stayed till 6:30pm looking around, though mostly it was a sad sight.  Some chimps had gone insane, one was clutching his blanket and banging his head on the wall.  The dogs were all in little cages and the German Shepard looked like he'd gone insane too.  We left to go to the Kiwi Bar which supposedly sells meat pies.  When we got there they had a sign saying 'We sell meat pies' but when we asked for one they laughed and said they didn't.  So we had dinner elsewhere.

Laura in Shanghai.
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Emma and Edde left for Hong Kong and we stayed to wait for James' UK visa to finish processing.  Met some cool Poms and went to a bar called C's with them.  It was underground and had lots of little rooms, cheap drinks and all the old songs from Surreal!

Shanghai was spent either drunk or hung over really as it really was a city of the night!