上海 (Shanghai)

Friday, September 12, 2003

I just had to change my laptop over to local time to make sure the date showed up correctly…

We made it to Shanghai without too much hassle, only one minor flight delay. We’ve hooked up with a wonderful little hotel called the ‘Ling Long Bin Guan’ 玲珑宾馆 on Yan An Xi Lu 939. Alice knew the place and turned us on to it. It’s both wonderful and cheap, and also conveniently located.

Our room, in early morning disarray…

The Courtyard outside our room...

The Thermos in our Bathroom...

Allow me to transcribe the beautiful sayings on our thermos:

" Planted in spring, herbs eventually bear fragrant whiffs of joy. "

" Adding a flesh petal of the herbs, making a cozy soup and salad, enjoying your homemade seasoning, life is so nice with the herbs. "

" These delightful herbs grow steadily throughout the whole summer. These delicate petals give you pleasant aroma shower. "

All of which are wonderful, homey sentiments, I'm sure, but I wonder what herbs they're talking about exactly, and I'm not at all sure I want an aroma shower.

Being in Shanghai is a bit overwhelming. The sounds, smells, crowds, car horns and trying to keep up with the language are all a bit confusing. But I wake up in awe of being here, and excited to start the day. Yesterday we got up, our first day here, at 5am and started out. We walked around the district, had some breakfast and found a bank to change money at. We also got cards to charge our phones so we have our mobiles activated.

The food is taking a bit of getting used to for me, particularly all the little bones in everything. The Chinese habit of putting something with bone or shell in your mouth whole, and spitting out just the clean shell, is something that I have yet to master. I imagine that the proper way to eat a hard boiled egg is to put the whole thing in your mouth and spit out just the shell in two neat pieces. Until I master prawn shells I think I’ll stick with peeling the eggs by hand…

We saw a few signs yesterday of places for rent. Of course we don’t know what neighborhoods the places are in or really how all that works, but the rent prices certainly seemed affordable. I think we’ll start looking once we get back from our trip and we’re actually serious about settling down.

Today we’re going to look around, get a map and try to figure our way around the city. It should be fun…

Sunday, 14. September 2003

Slept through most of yesterday. Managed to hook up with our friend Ji Hyeung and had lunch with her. Her apartment is surprisingly close to our hotel...

Today we did some laundry, got on the internet and went to visit a printing factory. It was wonderful to me how easy it was to not drink with the guy we met with. I'm writing boring stuff right now. Obviously uninspired...

I'm tired. I'm so tired and wiped out. Combination of the pollution, language and food. I don't think it's so much the time change. That normally doesn't bother me. But being here and being inundated by all the signs, radio, TV and people talking. ALL of which I am trying to understand. When I travelled in Thailand I didn't know the language at all, so all the foreign-ness was totally foreign, and therefore I didn't engage with it on the same level. When I understand things, and I know I should understand more than I do, I push myself to pay attention. Eventually I shut down. I've been sleeping alot.

Monday September 15, 2003

Last day in Shanghai for a while.

We've figured out that we need to go to Guangzhou to get a Vietnamese visa. I think that we can get the rest of the visa's we need on the road, so we shouldn't have to make any further "out of the way" plans. Guangzhou isn't really that out of the way, just both of us are hoping that we don't have to wait the 7-10 days there that our book says because we don't really like the city that much... if we do I guess we'll learn our way around the city a bit better. We plan to take the train from Shanghai to Guangzhou, then from Guangzhou to Nanning and then into Hanoi.  In Hanoi we should be able to get Cambodian visa's, then we'll head south through Vietnam and cross into Cambodia...

I've got ideas about how we'll go from there, but something about putting all this in writing feels almost obligatory, so I'm just going to stop 'predicting' and write about what I know because we've done it.

Shanghai has been a great, restful place this trip. We've done next to nothing, and loved every minute of it. Chinese TV is pretty funny stuff... :-P

I probably won't be able to write much more for a while as we'll be out of town. I was fortunate to find an internet cafe where we can bring our laptops online, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post this... hopefully future postings will have more interesting pictures other than "I slept and here's where".

LOL

:-)

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