Day 11
TIme: 12.05pm
Place: On the express train to Shanghai, waiting to depart from Suzhou.
There isn't much to report as yet today, mainly because I woke up quite late. Was damn tired from all the walking and traveling done yesterday. Wee Long woke up earlier in the morning, even if he had slept later than me yesterday. He had wanted to go to Au Chan to buy his office-bag; as well as change money. The latter, he did for me, because we were, by now, completely depleted of cash.
If I think about it properly, it was an amazing feat of prudence that we had managed to last this long with money still in our pockets, considering that; firstly, hostels didn't accept Visa, as initially expected, and that I had actually brought only half the amount of cash I had originally intended to bring.
But we're cheapskate and proud of it.
Breakfast was two Oreo biscuits for me, but I think that just means that I can look forward to a good lunch. Even if I am sure that lunch would only come after checking in at the Ming Town People's Square Youth Hostel.
I think since I have a bit of time before we arrive at Shanghai, I can afford to relate a strange story that occurred while we were stoning at the Suzhou Railway station.
Firstly, the uncivilised barbarians sitting opposite us, after finishing their food (some sort of hard boiled egg), just got up and threw the plastic bag containing their egg shells on the floor. The shiny tiled floor that was spotless and litter free. Okay, to their credit, I should say 'partially civilised barbarians' because they bothered to throw it at a part where not many people would walk on.
Wee Long and I just looked at each other for awhile, and all Wee Long could say after that was 'I have nothing to say'.
But that, amazingly, is not the end of the story. Most people who walked by looked down, saw that it was thrash, and walked away. However, one old man, limping by, looked down, walked on, stopped, turned back, picked it up, and walked on. We tried to follow the old man with our eyes to see whether he was a poor man who thought there was a possibility of using the egg shells, or whether he was the 1 in 1 billion who would have picked up the trash and threw it away into a proper bin. However, we lost him soon in the crowd.
I'd like to think that he's the former, because had he been the 1 in a billion, I really would regret not asking him for his autograph and taking a photo with him.
Looks like we still have time, so I shall relate another, albeit shorter, story. For the first time during this trip, I sat in the front seat of the cab, mainly because Wee Long was (and still is) carrying my backpack for me since I'm carrying Eugene's gigantic suitcase. But the point is, that I can actually empathise with the taxi drivers who sound their horn like there's no tomorrow; because there are so many people pulling stunts on the road. In Singapore you can avoid sounding the horn because the infrastructure is good enough, and the drivers careful enough, and the traffic situation civilised enough. But here, sounding the horn is necessary when you encounter people pulling stunts on the road, such as slowing down or not moving for no reason, cutting into lanes etc.
Okay, that's quite enough for now; I shall return after check in, or later tonight after shopping (or whatever we plan to do).
*
Time: 5.45pm
Place: Ming Town Hostel Room at People's Square.
Yesterday has finally caught up with Wee Long. He is now fast asleep, catching up with lost sleep incurred because he woke up early this morning. I'm quite tired too, but I can go without sleeping for a bit.
By the time we reached the hostel, it was already 2pm. And for the first time, we found the hostel with no difficulty at all - mainly because we had the card and we could show it to the taxi driver. So even though he didn't know the name of the road that this hostel is on, he was able to use the landmarks given in the hostel's card to bring us straight to the doorstep of the hostel.
Anyway, since it was already 2pm, we decided to walk out to eat. Our plan was to eat, then visit the museum, and finally go to the Central Area where some of the tallest buildings in the world sit. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, yesterday finally caught up with Wee Long, and we decided to omit the last item on our itinerary. Or perhaps postpone, more like.
Lunch was at a small restaurant that looked quite busy, so we were attracted to it. However, it turned out that most of the people who were eating were actually working there; since it was already 2.15pm and past the lunch peak-period. Fortunately, the food wasn't bad, though after some time, I did get a bit jelak . Wee Long, in a continued effort to save money - I have given up persuading him to try to be a little less prudent with his money, to no avail - took the cheapest dish. For the cheapest dish, I think it looked quite good - there was seafood in it. Less than S$2.50. Mine was a little more than S$3.50, so ultimately came up to S$6.
After lunch we went down to the museum. Three main reasons: first, we hadn't visited a museum as yet in China; secondly, the museum was very near our hostel; and thirdly (and most importantly) the museum was free.
The museum has artifacts from ancient China; so I am quite sure that it being free was probably the single most important reason why we were actually there. It was divided into a few sections; much reminding me of materials characterisation. The bottom floor is dedicated to stone and bronze artifacts, the upper level is dedicated to ceramic artifacts. Further up, there is a cloth and wooden artifacts place (polymers, my friends).
I just like this photo because it looks like many many little Chinese men walking... And the picture above is strangely shaped coins.
Outside the Museum - and on the way back to the hostel - stands Raffles City (Shanghai Edition). It's no accident that it's named so; it was built by CapitaLand Malls, Singapore's own land developer.
So we had to enter.
Prices were about the same price as Singapore, very far from the cheap prices of Beijing and Suzhou (remember my Yonex shuttlecocks?). Maybe slightly cheaper. But there were some distinctly familiar Singaporean companies selling their products there, such as Breadtalk and Charles and Keith.
We spent about 15min in Raffles City (Shanghai Edition) before walking back to the hostel another way. The map is quite useful and we managed to get home in no time. Even if Wee Long was visibly stressed about being lost. And I was partially disappointed that I wasn't lost.
As of now, only one of our room-mates has checked in. She's an Indonesian Singaporean lady, about in her 50s, who's in Shanghai for a while. I'm not sure what she's doing here, and I'm afraid to ask, but she's quite nice.
It also brings up an interesting point. So far we have met a Malaysian Singaporean and an Indonesian Singaporean. So I just wonder how many types of Singaporeans do we have? And then, what am I? Singaporean Singaporean?
We have finally met our room-mates. Aside from the Indonesian Singaporean we had met earlier there is another Indonesian Malaysian and a Japanese not-couple. Not as interesting as our first roommates, but at least now I get an opportunity to speak Malay a bit. And the Japanese girl thought I was African. She clearly hasn't seen many Indians in her life. Or Africans, for that matter.
Scarily, she's not the first in this country who makes that mistake.
And I have discovered that Kim Jong Il was in Beijing at the same time as us. Amazing shit, considering I had no idea, from Chinese News sources. Nobody said anything. But hey, if I had known I'd have told him to come down to Singapore and have a look.
Anyway, let's just get back to the story.
We rested in the hostel room - Wee Long sleeping and I playing chess on my iPad - till about 8pm, when it was time for dinner. I wasn't particularly hungry, surprisingly, but I think that had a lot to do with the filling lunch we had had.
We had dinner a few restaurants down from where we had had lunch earlier. We chose that place mainly because the signboard outside the eatery said "delicious". You'd be surprise how far that goes in attracting customers, especially if its the only restaurant on the street which claims to have delicious food.
We were not disappointed. The food was quite nice, and more importantly, quite cheap.
After dinner, we went to do further free nighttime sightseeing - at the CBD. Shanghai is home to some modern architecture including the Shanghai World Financial Center, Pearl Tower, and the Jin Tao Tower. The SWFU is the 3rd tallest building in the world, and it achieves this without using the usual tactic of a really tall lightning spire ala the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. As with most of these skyscrapers, once you get too close, you can't get a good shot. But its quite intimidating to stand so close to such a huge building.
We took the subway back (just as we had taken it to the CBD), and within 10min we were back to People's Square metro station and walking back to the hostel. Strangely, it wasn't as cold as expected. Very strange weather.
Anyway, we had decided that we will sleep in tomorrow morning. So tired. Goodnight.
Day 12
Time: 7.25
Place: In the lobby of the People's Square hostel, waiting for the monkey to arrive.
Eugene should be arriving very soon - he had said that he would be here by 7pm. But, as you can see above, it's 7.25 and he's not here yet. Poor thing, he's coming all the way from Suzhou. Anyway, because of the above mentioned reason, I doubt I'll be able to finish this account in this one sitting.
We woke up late today, as promised. It's still not enough to fully recover from our previous exertions, though; but considering that today is our last full day in Shanghai, I think we really had to - oh he's here. Will be back later...
Time: 12.30am
Place: On Eugene's bed.
I'm here only because I'm disturbing him and because he was reading yesterday's account on this iPad. I will be going back to my bed soon enough, because we ought to be sleeping - tomorrow we have a morning flight and we have to wake up early to take the Maglev train to the airport. We just checked it out, but to our disappointment, it doesn't run as fast as it can in the morning before 8.45am, so we don't get to experience its full speed of 430km/h. Anyway, that's tomorrow's story, but I'm mentioning it here because I doubt I'll have time tomorrow on the super fast train.
Anyway I must make a correction here to an earlier account. A few corrections, actually.
Firstly, the Japanese non-couple were not friends - it was pure coincidence that the two Japanese people were sleeping one on top of the other. Secondly, I had falsely accused the Japanese girl of calling me African, but as it turned out, we hadn't met the Japanese girl as yet. The girl whom I thought was the Japanese girl was in fact the Chinese friend of the Malaysian Indonesian lady whose bed Eugene now occupies.
No wonder the 'Japanese' girl looked so Chinese. And no wonder she hasn't seen an Indian man before.
OK Eugene is chasing me out of his bed - let me move to my own.
Ah back on my own bed.
So now that we have cleared the Japanese girl of any false accusations, we can go back to our story of today.
Today was meant to be a shopping day. But guys don't shop very well; as we found out today. To whet our appetite for shopping, therefore, we decided to fulfill the request of one of Eugene's friends - Shu Hui. If you remember her, she's the same girl we met in Berlin a whole year before. She was hoping we could help her buy a bag for less than 50RMB. She had even sent us a photo showing her preference for the type of bag.
So, using the picture, we located the bag she wanted. However, the shop owner quoted a price nearing to 680RMB and asked if we want to negotiate. At once we knew that this was definitely not the bag - there was no way you'd bargain down from 680 to 50RMB. So we tried to walk out, without even bothering to bargain. The shop keeper probably thought that was a premature walk out (the final move in a bargain) and asked us to quote what price we wanted. I was quite embarrassed to say 50¥ but Wee Long went ahead and quoted the price. I probably should stop here, saying that the shopkeeper got quite amused and went ahead to tell his shopkeeper friends about us.
We didn't buy much more from the shopping centre, except for a pair of jeans for each of us. Eugene, later told us that we paid too much, and I was down for awhile because of that. Post purchase dissonance. But ultimately I think I should be happy knowing that I got it a decent price compared to Singapore standards. It also serves as a lesson to not go shopping unless I have an experienced shopper by my side; one who knows the value of stuff.
Almost forgot - I saw an interesting sight: an Italian man was bargaining with the Chinese saleslady. In Italian. And the Chinese saleslady was speaking what seemed to be fluent Italian. Interesting.
After the shopping centre, we had run out of money (we already had to withdraw money today), so we decided to put the rest of shopping on hold till evening, after Eugene had arrived. The rationale was that perhaps Eugene knew better the art of shopping and bargaining.
It transpired, ultimately, that there is no night market in Shanghai like there is in Bangkok. So our master plan to shop at night was a master plan not well thought through. But we weren't to know that just yet, so we decided to take the subway down to the Shanghai Expo.
After lunch at Subway, we took the subway to the eastern side of the Expo, because there seemed to be an interesting shaped bridge shown on the map. The bridge looked much more impressive on the map than in real life. And what's more, we couldn't cross the bridge.
To make matters worse, instead of walking westward towards the Expo we ended up walking eastward towards the river bank. And by the time I realised it, we were already too far away to think about turning back. So we decided to walk to the river front.
Our direction was right, but there was no river front - it was completely boarded up. I tried to walk towards the shore at some gap in the boards but a security guard/policeman stopped me. I theorised that perhaps that's where China is hiding their nuclear bombs. This theory falls flat for many reasons, the first being that they don't actually hide their nuclear bombs. And that it turns out that, unless I'm much mistaken, the riverside area was being developed by developers to make some touristy place that will be ready in a few years, perhaps.
Just when I was thinking this is the 'Nanjing Changjiang River Bridge Episode' once again (where we didn't cross a bridge, and didn't see the river) the boards part and reveal a worth-the-wait view of the Shanghai skyline.
As you already know, he came a little more than half an hour late, and soon after that we were out again. It was there that he told us that we wouldn't be shopping anymore today at those bargain shops. So instead we go to the more legit shopping area; to the Giordano outlet store.
Shopping there is a lot less stressful, even if the prices may (or may not) be higher than shopping at those little shops. The sight of a fixed price on a price tag was more than welcome. We spent what little money we had left there, and bought some socks. But I think perhaps I need another shopping vacation, perhaps to Indonesia or Malaysia, before my exchange to the US. After finally concluding our shopping experience, we had dinner at the McDonald's there.
Shopping, however, was not the most interesting thing that happened tonight. Recall, I said 'legit' shopping area. 'Legit' here is used generously. True, the shopping is probably more legit. But the first thing we encountered when we walked into the region, was a pimp trying to sell his wares. In total, about 4 different pimps approached us.
Eugene had earlier told us that prostitution is seriously clamped down in China. That probably explained why the pimps had to be down here, while the girls hide up in their hotel rooms. Apparently before prostitution was illegalised, the girls would be down here strutting their stuff.
The nature of the pimps, however, was surprisingly diverse. The first one looked like a normal horny man; the second like an Ah Beng; the third like a decently dressed businessman; and the fourth I forget. I think he looked like a normal horny man too.
Beijing doesn't have this vice - seems that the presence of the central government in their midst makes Beijing the example for other cities. So to set a good example to the rest of the cities, crime is seriously punished; and so these vices are not present. At least obviously.
So the rest of the night I mimicked the pimps, asking Eugene: "You want lady? We have beautiful lady. We have beautiful lady massage... " Yes. They're that direct. And yes, the thought of prostitutes still gives Eugene shivers (remember Berlin?)
Okay, it's already 1.30 and I need to wake up at 6.30 tomorrow. But at least we're going home. Tomorrow, the epilogue of this trip.
Anyway, we start from the bottom. What strikes me, is that this museum actually had bronze artifacts from ancient times. I was under the impression that these artifacts don't survive wars.
When the war-mongering civilisations of the West fought in wars, they would take these artifacts, precious proof that there was some semblance of culture in their civilisation, and melt them down to create weapons.
Perhaps the presence of bronze artifacts in this Chinese museum is evidence that they didn't fight that many wars? Or perhaps didn't see fit to melt down artifacts since they had an abundance of metal?
Ceramics too; China is famous for ceramics. Duh. Porcelain is named china, after all. But I can't really tell the difference between Chinese porcelain and the pottery of other ancient civilisations.
Interestingly, for most of the exhibition halls (bronze, stone, ceramics etc) we saw the exhibitions the opposite direction from what was intended i.e. we walked in from the exit and walked out from the entrance. So basically that meant that the articles we were viewing got progressively more ancient as we walked by. Even if the reverse effect was intended. More importantly, it meant the explanations on the articles would sometimes refer to an event or concept that would only be explained later.
Fortunately, this museum allows photography, or at least doesn't stop visitors from taking photos. So I don't have to spend too much effort describing the exhibits from memory, as you saw from above.
When the war-mongering civilisations of the West fought in wars, they would take these artifacts, precious proof that there was some semblance of culture in their civilisation, and melt them down to create weapons.
Perhaps the presence of bronze artifacts in this Chinese museum is evidence that they didn't fight that many wars? Or perhaps didn't see fit to melt down artifacts since they had an abundance of metal?
Ceramics too; China is famous for ceramics. Duh. Porcelain is named china, after all. But I can't really tell the difference between Chinese porcelain and the pottery of other ancient civilisations.
Interestingly, for most of the exhibition halls (bronze, stone, ceramics etc) we saw the exhibitions the opposite direction from what was intended i.e. we walked in from the exit and walked out from the entrance. So basically that meant that the articles we were viewing got progressively more ancient as we walked by. Even if the reverse effect was intended. More importantly, it meant the explanations on the articles would sometimes refer to an event or concept that would only be explained later.
Fortunately, this museum allows photography, or at least doesn't stop visitors from taking photos. So I don't have to spend too much effort describing the exhibits from memory, as you saw from above.
*
Outside the Museum - and on the way back to the hostel - stands Raffles City (Shanghai Edition). It's no accident that it's named so; it was built by CapitaLand Malls, Singapore's own land developer.
So we had to enter.
Prices were about the same price as Singapore, very far from the cheap prices of Beijing and Suzhou (remember my Yonex shuttlecocks?). Maybe slightly cheaper. But there were some distinctly familiar Singaporean companies selling their products there, such as Breadtalk and Charles and Keith.
As of now, only one of our room-mates has checked in. She's an Indonesian Singaporean lady, about in her 50s, who's in Shanghai for a while. I'm not sure what she's doing here, and I'm afraid to ask, but she's quite nice.
It also brings up an interesting point. So far we have met a Malaysian Singaporean and an Indonesian Singaporean. So I just wonder how many types of Singaporeans do we have? And then, what am I? Singaporean Singaporean?
*
Time: 12mn
Place: My bed at the hostel.
We have finally met our room-mates. Aside from the Indonesian Singaporean we had met earlier there is another Indonesian Malaysian and a Japanese not-couple. Not as interesting as our first roommates, but at least now I get an opportunity to speak Malay a bit. And the Japanese girl thought I was African. She clearly hasn't seen many Indians in her life. Or Africans, for that matter.
Scarily, she's not the first in this country who makes that mistake.
And I have discovered that Kim Jong Il was in Beijing at the same time as us. Amazing shit, considering I had no idea, from Chinese News sources. Nobody said anything. But hey, if I had known I'd have told him to come down to Singapore and have a look.
Anyway, let's just get back to the story.
We rested in the hostel room - Wee Long sleeping and I playing chess on my iPad - till about 8pm, when it was time for dinner. I wasn't particularly hungry, surprisingly, but I think that had a lot to do with the filling lunch we had had.
We had dinner a few restaurants down from where we had had lunch earlier. We chose that place mainly because the signboard outside the eatery said "delicious". You'd be surprise how far that goes in attracting customers, especially if its the only restaurant on the street which claims to have delicious food.
We were not disappointed. The food was quite nice, and more importantly, quite cheap.
After dinner, we went to do further free nighttime sightseeing - at the CBD. Shanghai is home to some modern architecture including the Shanghai World Financial Center, Pearl Tower, and the Jin Tao Tower. The SWFU is the 3rd tallest building in the world, and it achieves this without using the usual tactic of a really tall lightning spire ala the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. As with most of these skyscrapers, once you get too close, you can't get a good shot. But its quite intimidating to stand so close to such a huge building.
Anyway, we had decided that we will sleep in tomorrow morning. So tired. Goodnight.
Day 12
Time: 7.25
Place: In the lobby of the People's Square hostel, waiting for the monkey to arrive.
Eugene should be arriving very soon - he had said that he would be here by 7pm. But, as you can see above, it's 7.25 and he's not here yet. Poor thing, he's coming all the way from Suzhou. Anyway, because of the above mentioned reason, I doubt I'll be able to finish this account in this one sitting.
We woke up late today, as promised. It's still not enough to fully recover from our previous exertions, though; but considering that today is our last full day in Shanghai, I think we really had to - oh he's here. Will be back later...
Time: 12.30am
Place: On Eugene's bed.
I'm here only because I'm disturbing him and because he was reading yesterday's account on this iPad. I will be going back to my bed soon enough, because we ought to be sleeping - tomorrow we have a morning flight and we have to wake up early to take the Maglev train to the airport. We just checked it out, but to our disappointment, it doesn't run as fast as it can in the morning before 8.45am, so we don't get to experience its full speed of 430km/h. Anyway, that's tomorrow's story, but I'm mentioning it here because I doubt I'll have time tomorrow on the super fast train.
Anyway I must make a correction here to an earlier account. A few corrections, actually.
Firstly, the Japanese non-couple were not friends - it was pure coincidence that the two Japanese people were sleeping one on top of the other. Secondly, I had falsely accused the Japanese girl of calling me African, but as it turned out, we hadn't met the Japanese girl as yet. The girl whom I thought was the Japanese girl was in fact the Chinese friend of the Malaysian Indonesian lady whose bed Eugene now occupies.
No wonder the 'Japanese' girl looked so Chinese. And no wonder she hasn't seen an Indian man before.
OK Eugene is chasing me out of his bed - let me move to my own.
Ah back on my own bed.
So now that we have cleared the Japanese girl of any false accusations, we can go back to our story of today.
Today was meant to be a shopping day. But guys don't shop very well; as we found out today. To whet our appetite for shopping, therefore, we decided to fulfill the request of one of Eugene's friends - Shu Hui. If you remember her, she's the same girl we met in Berlin a whole year before. She was hoping we could help her buy a bag for less than 50RMB. She had even sent us a photo showing her preference for the type of bag.
So, using the picture, we located the bag she wanted. However, the shop owner quoted a price nearing to 680RMB and asked if we want to negotiate. At once we knew that this was definitely not the bag - there was no way you'd bargain down from 680 to 50RMB. So we tried to walk out, without even bothering to bargain. The shop keeper probably thought that was a premature walk out (the final move in a bargain) and asked us to quote what price we wanted. I was quite embarrassed to say 50¥ but Wee Long went ahead and quoted the price. I probably should stop here, saying that the shopkeeper got quite amused and went ahead to tell his shopkeeper friends about us.
We didn't buy much more from the shopping centre, except for a pair of jeans for each of us. Eugene, later told us that we paid too much, and I was down for awhile because of that. Post purchase dissonance. But ultimately I think I should be happy knowing that I got it a decent price compared to Singapore standards. It also serves as a lesson to not go shopping unless I have an experienced shopper by my side; one who knows the value of stuff.
Almost forgot - I saw an interesting sight: an Italian man was bargaining with the Chinese saleslady. In Italian. And the Chinese saleslady was speaking what seemed to be fluent Italian. Interesting.
After the shopping centre, we had run out of money (we already had to withdraw money today), so we decided to put the rest of shopping on hold till evening, after Eugene had arrived. The rationale was that perhaps Eugene knew better the art of shopping and bargaining.
It transpired, ultimately, that there is no night market in Shanghai like there is in Bangkok. So our master plan to shop at night was a master plan not well thought through. But we weren't to know that just yet, so we decided to take the subway down to the Shanghai Expo.
After lunch at Subway, we took the subway to the eastern side of the Expo, because there seemed to be an interesting shaped bridge shown on the map. The bridge looked much more impressive on the map than in real life. And what's more, we couldn't cross the bridge.
Our direction was right, but there was no river front - it was completely boarded up. I tried to walk towards the shore at some gap in the boards but a security guard/policeman stopped me. I theorised that perhaps that's where China is hiding their nuclear bombs. This theory falls flat for many reasons, the first being that they don't actually hide their nuclear bombs. And that it turns out that, unless I'm much mistaken, the riverside area was being developed by developers to make some touristy place that will be ready in a few years, perhaps.
Just when I was thinking this is the 'Nanjing Changjiang River Bridge Episode' once again (where we didn't cross a bridge, and didn't see the river) the boards part and reveal a worth-the-wait view of the Shanghai skyline.
By the way, that samurai-sword shaped building is in fact the SWFU from yesterday; side profile.
We were now at the famous Bund; the British influence was evident. We didn't walk too far along the Bund before turning back into Yan'an road to get to our hostel, because we had to meet Eugene back at the hostel.
Shopping, however, was not the most interesting thing that happened tonight. Recall, I said 'legit' shopping area. 'Legit' here is used generously. True, the shopping is probably more legit. But the first thing we encountered when we walked into the region, was a pimp trying to sell his wares. In total, about 4 different pimps approached us.
Eugene had earlier told us that prostitution is seriously clamped down in China. That probably explained why the pimps had to be down here, while the girls hide up in their hotel rooms. Apparently before prostitution was illegalised, the girls would be down here strutting their stuff.
The nature of the pimps, however, was surprisingly diverse. The first one looked like a normal horny man; the second like an Ah Beng; the third like a decently dressed businessman; and the fourth I forget. I think he looked like a normal horny man too.
Beijing doesn't have this vice - seems that the presence of the central government in their midst makes Beijing the example for other cities. So to set a good example to the rest of the cities, crime is seriously punished; and so these vices are not present. At least obviously.
So the rest of the night I mimicked the pimps, asking Eugene: "You want lady? We have beautiful lady. We have beautiful lady massage... " Yes. They're that direct. And yes, the thought of prostitutes still gives Eugene shivers (remember Berlin?)
Okay, it's already 1.30 and I need to wake up at 6.30 tomorrow. But at least we're going home. Tomorrow, the epilogue of this trip.
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