Our first mission was to get new travellers cheques. I'm sure you're glad we're talking about that again. Well so were we. We rang American Express who gave a lesson in being dumb quickly. They had no idea where Shanghai was, what we needed or, indeed, where they were. They confirmed an address for an American Express office in Shanghai - it was a pharmacy. Superb.
We spent our day wandering the length of Nanjing road. From the alledged address of the American Express office all the way up to the Bund - the riverside stretch that is the Circular Quay of Shanghai. We passed all manner of shops but to be honest it was, as the books say, quite westernised. To quote Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction "They've got all the same shit over there that they've got here" - there were plentiful Versace and Gucci stores. The pleasure, as always when travelling, was in, as Mr Vega puts "the little details". The role of bicycles in transport, changes in personal space, the smell of unvented sewers, the adherence to public order, bigger & brigher buildings and how expensive cars seem to have the right to push through pedestrians unlike the average car - as Geroge Orwell said "some animals are more equal than others".
For dinner we went to a Lonely Planet reccomendation, the Jade Crystal, which really ought to be a Bond-girl name. It was good. And we were able to sample some of Shanghai's famous dumplings. At dinner we met Wade. Or Wayne. We're not sure. Wayned was from Brisbane. And you could hear him from accross the restaurant - "Yeah, I guess anyone I could git to speek English to would be good" he drawled to a French hipster he was sat next to. We, feeling chartible towards our countryman, invited him over to sit with us and 'speak Australian'. Wayned, a budding builder, had a great story - he had come to Shanghai for a week to visit his model girlfriend. She had been here for a month on a shoot. She dumped him, by phone, 4 days before he left. Wayned came over hoping to sweep her off her feet and win her back with his grandiose romantic gesture of crossing the world to see her. When he arrived she was out of town and would be til he left. But Wayned took it well - he recounted the list of bars he had visitied and how many girls at each he had 'almost' made it with. Wayned was healing well.
We left Wayned unto the night and retired back to our very comfy hotel to watch Champions League football at Kathryn's insistance. We note three things: Sergio Ramos is a thug; commenattaors are more biased to Real Madrid than their mothers; Heineken sponosors Champions League in China, not "Enjoy Responsibily". Now who's censored?
For dinner we went to a Lonely Planet reccomendation, the Jade Crystal, which really ought to be a Bond-girl name. It was good. And we were able to sample some of Shanghai's famous dumplings. At dinner we met Wade. Or Wayne. We're not sure. Wayned was from Brisbane. And you could hear him from accross the restaurant - "Yeah, I guess anyone I could git to speek English to would be good" he drawled to a French hipster he was sat next to. We, feeling chartible towards our countryman, invited him over to sit with us and 'speak Australian'. Wayned, a budding builder, had a great story - he had come to Shanghai for a week to visit his model girlfriend. She had been here for a month on a shoot. She dumped him, by phone, 4 days before he left. Wayned came over hoping to sweep her off her feet and win her back with his grandiose romantic gesture of crossing the world to see her. When he arrived she was out of town and would be til he left. But Wayned took it well - he recounted the list of bars he had visitied and how many girls at each he had 'almost' made it with. Wayned was healing well.
We left Wayned unto the night and retired back to our very comfy hotel to watch Champions League football at Kathryn's insistance. We note three things: Sergio Ramos is a thug; commenattaors are more biased to Real Madrid than their mothers; Heineken sponosors Champions League in China, not "Enjoy Responsibily". Now who's censored?