Hot and dirty, but not in the good way

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We arrived in Shanghai after our debacle in Yichang close to exhausted. Our only desire was to make it to our hostel and relax. Unfortunately, we didn't "really" know where the hostel was. We didn't have a full address or the name or address in Chinese. We took a bus from the airport to the city center (I have become fairly nonchalant in my bus taking since my arrival in Beijing. I got on this bus reasoning, "It's the airport bus and I'm sure it's going into the city.")

Once in the city it took a considerble effort to get a cab. (The effort was considerable partially because it was about 88 degrees at night with 157% humidity and we were carrying our backpacks). Then we realized that, of course, our very nice cab driver only spoke Chinese. Even when he put his English speaking friend on the phone we didn't have much to offer because we didn't know the exact address. Finally we settled on him driving us in the right direction for a while, offering a large tip, and walking the rest of the way.

day time shanghai
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Our hostel was rather large, brand new, and exceedingly odd. I felt like I was sleeping at a large funhouse. It was obvious that the very nice staff had no idea what they were doing, but they gave us a room to ourselves for $8 a night and they had excellent air conditioning.

Our only real adventure in my 3 days in Shanghai was to call up the Australians for one more final assault on our livers before they headed home. We ended up in a German beer hall (with very authentic German beer) which later in the evening played a pretty rocking live version of Sweet Home Alabama. Megan was pretty certain she was the only person in the large, crowded bar that had ever been to Alabama. You'll also be happy to know that the bar was right beside the PwC building. Given that it had been about 3 weeks since I'd seen a PwC building, I was starting to get a little anxious.

it's better at night
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There is nothing quite like drinking with a bunch of politicians. I think they met (and shook hands with) just about everyone in the bar. At one point our group included a German businessman, a table of Chinese, a Tawainese businessman, a few Americans from Detroit, some other Austrailians, and whoever else might wander by. Everytime one of our Australian friends went to the bathroom they brought back a new friend. I sure will miss those guys.

The rest of my time in Shanghai was spent trying to recover from Austrailian fun and trying not to melt. In case anyone was wondering, Shanghai does not buck the trend of polluted Chinese cities. It was also the hottest place I've been yet. So hot in fact that my last day (Megan went home the day before) I almost didn't leave the hostel. I'm sure it is a lovely city when it isn't the dead of summer, but I started sweating just thinking about walking outside.

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Also, Shanghai is known for its shopping. Some people would love that, but I'm not one of them. If one more person on the street yelled "Shoes, Bags, DvDs" at me I was going to hit them on the head with my size 11 flip flop.

I did finally start to come to terms with the "Overcharge the Foreigner" game as I realized that if I don't speak the language or know the game then I deserve to pay a surcharge. Of course, if I can play the game, the merchants seem to actually respect me for calling them out. My last day a street vendor tried to overcharge me for a piece of watermelon (on a stick of course) and then tried to give me the wrong change. When I called him out both times he laughed heartily and gave me the you-are-very-smart pantomime. It was quite funny. Of course another merchant tried to not give my friend back his change and my friend had to steal the guy's calculator and threaten to leave with it in order to get his change back. That ranked as funniest transaction with a street vendor that I have witnessed on the trip.

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On the 10th I said goodbye to a lovely trip to China and boarded a plane to Tokyo. My last interaction with a Chinese person was the older woman on the plane beside me who couldn't figure out what the butter was and decided to eat it with a spoon. I had a hard time keeping a straight face.