Last night in Shanghai

Round two of the ranting...

SO!! Where was I?

YEH! So we stayed at this place called Lakeside Hotel or soemthing and it was off some main road. We were situated near a construction site that looked like they gave up repairing because we never saw any workmen around. After that night (we were all pretty narky by then). We were all pretty adament about finding a new place to stay that would at least have a few basic necessities (ie. fridge, internet, FLUSHING TOILET).
Other than that, I had a GREAT time walking around the whole of Shanghai for five hours. lol. I had an awesome time just exploring the whole CBD area. Well actually, we started off at 1pm to look for an internet cafe to find soemhwere else to book a room because we didn't really like where we were staying. We walked around for absolute ages, and because of the language barrier we couldn't really figure out exactly where the internet cafe was. The phrase book pointed out that it was called 'wangba' so I went around saying wangba. But I don't think I said it properly because no one understood and were able to help - so we opted to pull out the phrase book and point out exactly where we wanted to go. After much pointing (and walking past the internet cafe around 6 times) we realised that it was just around the corner from where we were. When we finally made it in, they wouldn't let us use a computer. We didn't have a proper Chinese ID card and they couldn't scan our passports so they didn't allow us to use the internet. We were pissed!! We were wondering around the city for well over two hours to look for an internet cafe adn there was none. You'd think a budding developing country who boasts great usage of internet and mobile phones would have internet cafes by the dozen - but alas that is not true (either that or the locals didn't know where they were).
As we were wondering away from the internet cafe that denied us access, we trudged back the way we came when it started to rain. The air became hot and sticky, but the rain was much appreciated. I thoroughly enjoyed my walk in the rain! It's one of my favourite things to do, but since it doesn't rain a lot back home I had to savour these opportunities. So I had an awesome time walking back whilst it rained - though I'm not too sure if I can say the same thing for Yong and Sally. (We left Tina back at the hotel since she passed out from motion sickness - the taxi driver drove a little too erractically for her liking).
After trudging round the rain (which was a pretty heavy downpour) we entered one of the shopping centres and everyone just looked at us coz we were soaking wet and leaving wet footprints all over their nice pristine floor. That was funny. We wondered around for a fair bit more, took a train (for 3 yuan!) back to the Peoples Place (Shanghai station) and proceeded to their main building to buy our overnight train tickets from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
OMG. What can I say about trying to book tickets at the station when there was such a big language barrier?
To put it nicely, it was one of the worse experiences whilst in China. Ever. It beat the time we were in Xian and no one would let us in the taxi coz they couldn't read alphanumerics. There was so much pushing and shoving and the concept of a single file seemed as foreign as we were. We lined up at the English speaking one, but no one was helping, so I went to the booth next to us and she just pointed there again and said wait. So we continued waiting in the hopes that someone who knows english could come help us organise our tickets. After what seemed like an eternity, I gave up and lined up somewhere else. When I made it to the front of the line, I was competing against 4 other poeples for the lady's attention. Of course I didn't get served coz I wasn't waving money around. I was pretty pissed off by this stage - especially with a lady pressing me against the window and pushing in waving money around and trying to get the ladys attention. I guess that was when I blew my fuse coz I stuck my hands out both ways to prevent her from taking anyones money and said 'english, english. I want to book tickets in english!!' and that was when she finally noticed me and told me it was at booth one. So I got out of line and we moved off to booth one. We lined up there and there wasn't a lot of pushing or shoving. Except by the locals who pushed in to get served.
When we were about third in line, the girl at the booth said soemthing in Chinese, got up, and left. And the three of us were standing there like 'wat the hell?' That's when we noticed that everyone had gone over to where we were originally standing half an hour ago to get served. So it turns out the girl was announcing that she was no longer serving and to move to the other booth. That made our blood boil. We gave up waiting in line for train tickets and headed back out to the main road. We were pretty shitty. But due to my optimism (and funny jokes) the mood was lightened and we continued wondering around aimlessly in the city with our moist clothing. So, after a while, we were all pretty tired and it was almost time for dinner that we decided to find our way back to our hotel to get Tina and go for dinner.
We paid this taxi driver 50yuans to get us from the city to our hotel, but she dropped us off on the other side of the bridge coz the road was closed and she couldn't get through. When we got out and said our thanks, we realised that there was a way to the other side of the taxi and she had ripped us off hardcore coz the ride shouldn't have cost more than 10yuans. But on the bright side, through that short trip, Mr Yong learnt a few extra words in both Mandarin and Cantonese. So I guess there was some good about paying 50yuans for a 10 minute ride. A further 35 minute walk finally saw us back to our hotel where we had a shower, cooled down a bit and went for dinner.
Before going dinner though, Tina and I decided to go to this convenience store I passed on the way home, (which was actually pretty scarey coz there was not a lot of street lights) we quickly got there adn bought a few items coz we thought we might not be going dinner coz Yong and Sally were in a pretty shitty mood (which was understandable). As we were heading back to our hotel, it began to rain again - but this time it was a heavy torrential downpour. It just kept on raining. We passed by this hotel we were staying near and the porters and bell boys were just staring at us coz we were absolutely soaked through and strolling in the rain (I had heaps of fun!!). We went dinner after all.
We ended up wondering back to the city strip and then couldn't decide between Pizza Hut and some Japanese place that was next door. So I went with Yong for Japanese and Tina and Sally opted for Pizza Hut. Where we ate was the equivalent to a Maccas or Hungry Jacks in terms that the food came out as soon as we ordered and there were meal deals. It was pretty good though the food we had. We thought that there must've been a mix up with the menu coz the menu said teriyaki pork, but the meat looked like chicken. We assumed that there was a mix up with the translation and that it really was chicken. But hwen the food came out, it turned out to be pork after all! So Mr Yong was stuck with teriyaki pork and I had a mixed dish of soemhting or other. Was pretty nice though and only cost us 50yuan for both our meals! It was bargain basement cheap! After we finished our meals we went up to Pizza Hut where Tina and Sally were STILL waiting for their pizza.
When everyone had finally finished eating, we went out to go to the other internet cafe we passed, but by that time, it was already closed. So we trudged back to our hotel where it began to drizzle. Which wasn't such a good hting because I was on my last pair of shoes (I only bought three pairs of shoes and the other two were already soaked through).
Anyways, in the morning Yong and Sally went off in search for another place and we ended up at the Magnificent Hotel. Which is actually a really nice place and the poeple were actually friendly and helpful - albeit a little slow. After we dropped our stuff off, we asked the concierge to recommend a place that did yum cha and he showed us to this other hotel. We wondered around for almost an hour til we found it coz the dude goes 'it's three blocks down'. And I don't know how big a block is to him but it was waaaaay more than three blocks!! He probably meant three suburbs. Anyways, we got to this rather posh place, and because we were so exhausted, we decided to just stay there and eat. It was soo0o0o0oo... nice up there!! Definately worth the 880 yuan meal we had. It opted for the a la carte menu and had all these tiny dishes brought out to us, and by the time the food came out, I had chugged down one and a half bottles of water and a glass of watermelon juice. I was parched!~
The meal we had there was exceptional and I thought it was well worth the money spent.
After that, we wondered a bit more around Shanghai and couldn't figure out how to cross the river, so we took a 'scenic route' which was this underground ride/train thing that took you across but with special lights and stuffs. The ride broke down halfway through though so we were stuck in there for around 5-10 minutes before it started moving again. When we finally made it across, we checked out some of the local plaza which were all so huge. We considered going to the revolving restaurant too, but decided it would be a bit too much to eat two expensive meals in a row. At this stage I had a horrible nose bleed~ It went on for over 10 minutes too!
Anyways, after our shopping we were pretty knackered and headed back to our hotel for an early night.
Woke up today at 945am ish and decided that we should take advantage of their free buffet brekky before going back and sleeping again. So we went down at roughly 10am and started chowing down on a typical Western brekky of bacon and eggs on toast. There was also Asian stuffs like the salted eggs wiht congee amongst the baked beans and fried rice.
Tina and I headed back up to our hotel room after that and settled back into bed to watch The Sandlot Kid 2. Sally swung by after a bit to borrow some detegent to wash their clothes too. Oh yeh, I forgot to mention that Tina decided to wash all our clothes in our bathtub seeing as to we ran out of clean clothes to wear. She charged me 10 yuan per item, but somehow I ended up helping a little bit by wringing out water from a few of my clothes. Back to the story - We decided to head back to th is market place we passed by last night to check out their bargains nad Tina nad I had an awesome time wondering around the different stalls and bartering. They were trying to rip us off so much!! The sellers were raising the price up to almost triple at times what they'd normally sell for, but Tina nad I had figured out awesome sound effects to make it sound like they were ripping us off and it always seemed to work. They'd call us abck and we'd start bartering down to a price that we felt was reasonable and also a good bargain for us. I bought a few tops, and knick knacks for poeple back home too~!
After that we went to this mall called Raffles City and checked out all the shops. We didn't really buy anything, but it was fun walking around. We found this massage place and paid 200 yuan a piece for an hour massage called hot stones where they rub stones on your back. It. Was. So. Relaxing. Except for when Sally called Tina and ruined the whole ambience for abit :S
We met up with Yong and Sally after that and headed out to where the locals shopped and had dinner while we were there as well. We chose this place that had a hotpot, and didn't realise they sold mainly seafood til we sat down and made ourselves comfortable.
It was so funny because they didn't have an english menu we could read from, or pictures on the menu to choose our food, so Tina and Yong went walking around wiht one of the waiters to point out at poeples meals what we would like to eat as well. Yong told me Tina even shoved her hand near some dudes food to point out that she would also like that on her meal as well. lol. so funny.
We got everything we ordered for, except the fish that Tina and Yong picked out from the tank. We waited for ages, but decided that they probably accidentally served our fish to another table so after a long time of sign language, they finally understood that we didn't want the fish anymore and just wanted to pay for what we've already eaten. By that stage it was 930 pm and unfortunately all the shops had closed down. There was one more shop opened so we wondered in there for a bit and a i bought a tshirt and this short suit thing. It was pretty cute too.
We headed back to the hotel and so this is where I am now.

It's time for me to sign off and sneak out of the room because the hotels internet place closes at 10pm and it is now almost 1am..
So til next time for anyone who actually reads this...
love you long time~~
Thao
.x0x.