We chatted small talk for a bit, until he got to one of his points. He was going to come to
I immediately started making plans to clock in some extra hours of sleep before he arrived. Whenever Grant visits it’s like that…
You are pushed to your limits of sleep depravation and physical exhaustion.
I believe that there are 2 kinds of people in the world.
There are people like Grant and then there are people, like me.
Grant always wants to push himself and others around him through any form of self imposed limitations… mentally, physically and every other ‘ally’.
I, on the other hand, can think of nothing better than sitting on a beach, having a foot massage, a cold drink in the one hand and a tube of sun tan lotion in the other. I always encourage people to do as little as humanly possible.
Come to think of it, it’s strange that we are such good friends…
I think maybe Grant likes to think that one day he can break through to me and I will wholeheartedly embrace pain, tribulation, famine, nakedness and sword…
And maybe I think the same way… except instead of pain and endurance and stuff, he will learn the art of sleeping in late, never leaving the house and ordering in.
I’m not giving in, but he eventually will.
Anyway, back to the point of this story, I knew that there was something else secretly hidden behind his ‘little visit’. I’ve been tricked too many times before.
I could hear it in the tone of his voice.
He asked how I felt about a boy’s weekend in
I immediately thought that maybe we would have to catch a siffy 2 day train to get there, or jump on a boat, cause, where’s the adventure in just simply flying there, right?
Apparently I was wrong. We were going to fly there… and we were going to be staying at the Hilton…
I think I’m finally starting to wear him down…
Awesome, sounded good.
Fast forward to flight day.
I had to book off a sick at school to go on this trip. I will not inform you as to how I did this.
Just believe me when I say that I am not proud of what I did.
We headed out nice and early… half past 5 to be exact. Just thought I’d point that out.
Jacs gave me a black and white film to use with our analog camera while I was there. She was bummed about not being able to go, but, I reassured her that I would take her away as soon as we were able.
We get on the plane, no worries and the flight was about 2 and a half hours.
The airport was empty and so was the plane.Grant tried to get an exit seat because of his height, but the lady was not interested in his story.
The plane was basically a cargo plane with lots of seats… no TV, no entertainment… nada.
When we landed behind the bamboo curtain, the captain told us that some officials were going to be boarding to check for any swine flu cases. When they arrived they went beyond any of our expectations… these guys came on in full on condom suits. They were armed with really massive temperature guns as well.
They checked everyone and we thought that that was the end of it, until we noticed that they were hovering near someone near the exit doors… and they hovered for about 30 – 40 minutes.
Everyone on the plane thought it was rather humorous at first, but then they started to get the eat or be eaten look in their eyes and things suddenly got serious… everyone started pulling out the diaper sized face masks out of their bags, and some people started sneaking away from their seats and headed for the back of the plane. No matter where you are in the world, it is always reassuring to know that, when push comes to shove, we are all the same.
We were one of the only white people on the plane so we knew that we couldn’t move without it being noticed.
So we waited and waited and then, the guys in the condoms cordoned off a section of the plane for quarantine purposes… we were about 3-4 rows shy of the
quarantine zone.
We put the epic into epidemic.
Leaving the plane, looking into the faces of those who had to stay behind I felt like we had just won the lottery.
We shacked up at the Hilton, which wasn’t as nice as I had always imagined, but, it had a massive flat screen TV and we also had aircon. I was set.
That night we decided to have a look around the town.
Let me list the good stuff first, and then I’ll move on to the bad.
1. The buildings are incredible. In
2. Old shanghai was cool.
3. Um, that's about it really.
Now the bad stuff…
1. The buildings may be nice, but you can’t see them properly because there is just so much frikkin pollution. We did not see the sky the whole time we were there, and you could stare right at the sun without a problem.
2.The prices for everything were just mental. Honest, I have never seen absurd prices like that before. I heard
3. Stinky tofu… it was worse here then in
4. We went out to try and find a bar where we could have a quiet drink, and every single frikkin bar had tons of prozzie girls wanting you to come in and buy them drinks. It was pretty damn sad.
Anyway, I make it sound worse than it actually is… I just moan a lot, as Jacqui keeps telling me.
One of my life dreams was unexpectedly fulfilled on the second night we were there.
We got back from the fair at about 5 o’clock and decided to have a kip until 9. We heard that things only get going at about 1 or 2 in the morning. So, on that information, we took a taxi and headed out to a place called Old
When we did get there, it looked awesome and that we had hit the jackpot, until, about 3 minutes after we got out of the taxi, we found that the whole place had shut down for the night.
A little deterred but not wholly disheartened, we took out our ‘trusty’ map out and spotted a place that wasn’t too far from where we were. So, we decided to walk it.
And walk it we did.
We were now in the real back alley’s of
After about 30 minutes, we found this ferry that would take you to the other side of the main river. We were not too keen for that, so, we decided to ask a rickshaw driver to take us to the spot we pointed to on the map.
His rickshaw was a 125 motorbike with a rickshaw fitted over the back seat. We squeezed into the space and made the bike pull a fierce wheelie.
Things were not looking good.
The bike driver assured us that all would be alright, and put his 45 kg body in the driver’s seat.
We decided to go for it, but crapped ourselves after every bump that we would smear our faces on the sidewalk.
We pointed to this place on the map and he nodded his head in agreement.
When he stopped, we looked outside and found ourselves in exactly the same place that the taxi dropped us off in old
After cursing our luck and a wasted 2 hours, we decided that we should now try a taxi as they appear to be more reliable... we were wrong yet again.
The taxi took us to a new spot, but instead of the big city night life we were led to expect, we ended up at a place that kinda looked like an airport... a deserted airport. A big dirty deserted airport.
We didn't even bother getting out of the car this time; we both looked at each other and knew where we were heading next...
The Hilton. What a frikking waste of an evening.
We got back to the hotel and decided that the best plan of action would be to go have a cigar on the roof and then go to bed.
We went to the top floor, and guess what? They don't seem to build roofs anymore. The top floor looked like a Santon doctor's waiting room. We sat down on a couch, looked out over the city, put our cigars away and sighed a deep sigh of defeat.
The city had won.
After mulling over the night for 20 minutes or so, we suddenly heard from down a flight of stairs what sounded like a live band.
Grant wanted to have a look, but I didn't feel discovering that I had walked into some shmuck's penthouse suite while he was entertaining his guests.... So Grant went, and a few minutes later, he called me and told me to come down.
I walked down the stairs, thinking grant was schmoozing the penthouse owner when it was actually a jazz lounge with the live band in the front. The lights were dim, there were about 5 other people chatting softly amongst themselves over a few cognacs.. and there was our reward for a truly horrible evening.
We went and sat a few meters away from the band, the nat king cole lookalike crooner on the double bass gave me a courteous nod while he played, Grant and I sat down, lit our cigars and followed our silky 20s styled full length dressed 'nightingale' down into what seemed like a dream.
What a night...
We spoke to them afterwards, and you wouldn't believe it, well, we didn't. They were from
The guy on the double bass was Lionel, the chick who sang was Lynette or something like that, and the dude on the piano I can't recall at all.
Grant started off speaking to Lionel, but when he tried to go and speak with the chick who was singing, Lionel kept blocking him from getting too close... Grant was gutted. He painfully repeated this following phrase intermittently for the rest of the trip...
"Lionel was a little too protective of his songbird."
We finally went to bed, a sense of fulfillment replacing defeat. We had won.
What a night.
The next day we hit Old Shanghai, again, and this time fortune favored the brave.
It was like going back in time, I imagine.
I have posted some photos below... they were all taken with an analog camera with black and white film. It was cool... except for all the other westerners... and starbucks, and McDonalds just around the corner...
That afternoon, we headed for the airport. We took a taxi to the maglev, which is a bullet train. We clocked in at 301 km/h. That was like cruise control really... the top speed during peak time is about 400 - 450km/h.
It felt, as Grant put it, like low flying. Awesome experience.
And then, we came home.
The end.
Sorry if it ended a little abruptly, but, you know, sometimes the truth hurts. Them's the facts. We came home.
