Shangers & Mash (or Hom less in Shanghai)
Before I reached Shanghai, I had great aspirations. I was going to meet Mat and we were going to have a weekend on ze town. Due to circumstances in his control, he wiped me (joke). Anyway, this left me with the dilemma of being mentally and enthusiastically prepared for a 'big' weekend but if I couldn't find the people to reciprocate then it would be a disaster. I was even contemplating cutting my time short as I'd heard mixed reports.
Fortunately, I can now report that it was a success. I checked into the groovy Captain's hotel/hostel were backpackers and business people mingle in amongst a sea shanty theme (they love themes). It has a bar which faces onto the business side of the river's skyline. It's all neon and flashing lights. All the skyscrapers are hovering around being the tallest in the world. That seems to be aim. One hotel has the highest everything in the world - bar, nightclub and pool. I made it to the bar on the 87th floor.
Navigation in Shanghai, well China, is like nothing else. Street names change on the same street for no apparent reason and all the taxi drivers are illiterate (better find a computer soon that has a spell check before I paste this one) as they've come from the villages to make their fortunes.
The guide books have everything written in Pinyin (a way of writing Chinese by using the Roman alphabet). Nobody seems to use or understand this. The Shanghai tourism board (who I will be writing too) released a series of glossy pamphlets with things to do, entirely in English. On my first night out, I was carrying around their guide to Shanghai bars. It listed over 70 with arrows pointing to a map of the city. This was about as useful to a Shanghai Taxi driver as a seatbelt. What this did accomplish was being dropped off at random locations that were no where near where we wanted to be. This entailed quite a bit of street walking (see section on streets changing names). Oh, and not only do the names change but the numbers will sometimes overlap, whereby one building will have 2 sets of numbers and 2 street names. Welcome to China...
Fortunately, I can now report that it was a success. I checked into the groovy Captain's hotel/hostel were backpackers and business people mingle in amongst a sea shanty theme (they love themes). It has a bar which faces onto the business side of the river's skyline. It's all neon and flashing lights. All the skyscrapers are hovering around being the tallest in the world. That seems to be aim. One hotel has the highest everything in the world - bar, nightclub and pool. I made it to the bar on the 87th floor.
Navigation in Shanghai, well China, is like nothing else. Street names change on the same street for no apparent reason and all the taxi drivers are illiterate (better find a computer soon that has a spell check before I paste this one) as they've come from the villages to make their fortunes.
The guide books have everything written in Pinyin (a way of writing Chinese by using the Roman alphabet). Nobody seems to use or understand this. The Shanghai tourism board (who I will be writing too) released a series of glossy pamphlets with things to do, entirely in English. On my first night out, I was carrying around their guide to Shanghai bars. It listed over 70 with arrows pointing to a map of the city. This was about as useful to a Shanghai Taxi driver as a seatbelt. What this did accomplish was being dropped off at random locations that were no where near where we wanted to be. This entailed quite a bit of street walking (see section on streets changing names). Oh, and not only do the names change but the numbers will sometimes overlap, whereby one building will have 2 sets of numbers and 2 street names. Welcome to China...
posted by Lisa Gibbs at 5:29 AM
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