Bit Like Bladerunner

Shanghai was a real shock in comparison to everywhere else.  We got off the plane and easily got a bus into the city centre and towards the train station where we had to get on the metro to our hostel via two different lines. After an hour or so we were thrown off the bus, told to fend for ourselves as the driver laughed manically while driving away.

"hotel, you want hotel?"...it was raining, belting it down in fact, it was night-time, all the skyscrapers had neon all over them, there were lazers coming off a few of them it was just like Bladerunner, without Daryll Hanna trying to kill me with her thighs...hmm but what a way to go....actually i might be able to get that in bangkok

Shanghai Nights

No, anyway this type of menace was far more relentless, the "do you want a hotel" people are constant and never-ending, they ask you at least 6 times because it is possible that after 3 seconds you could change your mind.  We managed to get the metro after tons of faff and running past people with huge backpacks on and arrived at caolang lu after about 5 hours travelling.  The metro was a real fight for life, the platforms are lined with bits of leg after they have been caught in the doors of the carraiges as the trains pulled off.  You basically have to have no morals or quarms about doing things like punching an old woman in the tits so you get through the carraige door before her because these trains just go no matter.  I have to say that the old women are animals, they will bite your neck and grab you plums amd scratch your face.  God forbid but If there is ever a war with these people they will send the geriatrics in first and we'd have no chance.

We then spent 45 minutes in the pouring rain after caoyang lu station looking for our hostel which was down several dark alleys and over roads where people are trying to insert their vehicle up your anus at high speed.

The lights go to red, this does not mean the traffic stops, this means if the traffic feels like stopping it will, which it usually doesn't and then the seperate lanes for bikes and motorbikes have some seperate higway code which has never been published which means they just go when ever, right across your path, tons of them, while you roll off the bonnet off yet another car and get headbutted by an old woman on a bike.

Was really not in the best of moods when i got to the hostel.

That mode improved over the next few days as the atmosphere of the place got to me.  Everyone was so friendly, the resident american lush was great company and if you couldn't be bothered talking he would do it for you, on every subject known to man.  He of course had "been to chinese jail for stabbing a man in the neck with chopsticks", had walked on the moon and invented the printing press.  He had also not been beat on the pool table for 16 days.....i beat him...yes i beat a guy at pool who was so inebriated he kept ordering the same drink over and over until he had 6 lined up at the bar untouched yet still couldn't find them and ordered another.

He and his mate then went across the road to a chinese restaurant where his mate was sick on the table.  This was not james bond.  He was however constantly amusing and friendly.

We travelled around shanghai on the metro and went to the bund, the big classic buildings from when Europe had a toe-hold in shanghai, lots of classic architecture opposite the most modern, impressive skyline i have ever seen.  Skyscrapers everywhere along with the tv tower which we got a lift up.  After the tv tower (the 3rd largest building in the world).  We decided to get the underwater tunnel for tourists or something under the river to the bund side.  So we went down some steps, paid and were led to what looked like a cable car on tracks which led us through a tunnel with lots of lazers and ligts in a show with an eerie soundtrack and the most nonsensical talking i have ever heards.  We set off, blue concentric circle lights coming towards us bit like charley and the chocolate factory.  In a grave tone the announcer stated "vibrating fossil".  I looked around for vibrating fossil but could only see the same lights as before, but no, i was wrong because it had obviously changed to the much more descriptive "angry magma".  WTF? angry magma, fossils? Seemed like a lot of flashing lights to me but no, in a booming voice "ice-skating donkey" or some other such gibberish.  I think someone on high-grade drugs had just grabbed the microphone.

The big attraction in shanghai is not the tower or the bund however it is in fact ruth's breasts.  Wherever we walked for 3 days both women and men stared at them without a care.  We would meet their gaze and normally this stops people from looking and they look away but not here.  They just carry on staring as we shake our heads and stare back. It was not cool, ruth is now wearing a huge duffel coat in 30 degree heat.

Back at the hostel i was asked if i played football and did i want a game.  I replied i did.  I was told we were playing another hostel team, in a couple of days, again in the humidity and heat i thought this was a bit insane so decided to play it safe and get blind drunk and roll in at 3 in the morning.  The morning of the game i decided to get some trainers so staggered stinking of alcohol in to the first shop where through the aid of sign language managed to but a pair of trainers that were at least one size too small.  We turned up at the game and it turned out we were playing some 60 year old men, who were sitting on the bench, chain-smoking.  How we laughed, we weren't laughing however a few hours later as they kicked our ass 12-6 with most of our team trying not to be sick on the sidelines as the china national team circa 1970 flipped the ball over our heads, stuck the ball through our legs and shot from 50 yards basically taking the pis* out of us for an hour of agony.

They then got on their bags, smoking fags and headed off.  The shame.

We have now headed to Chengdu, sichuan province where we have been for a few days.  We were headed to Lhasa, this has turned out to be overly expensive so we are headed to lijiang in Yunnan tomorrow and then onto Tibet via a place called Zhongdian, still tibet, just a different flavour.  No everest though, no, potala palace....bit gutted but coupldn't justify the price.