(Originally published September 25, 2007)(Pictured: The booming metropolis of Shanghai. I lost most of my pictures on this trip as I bought a memory card in China and well it worked like something MADE IN CHINA!)
So, what happens when you set Brent and Drunko (my broski) Moreau loose in the far off Orient aka Shanghai, China. Read on for further details……..
So for once in my life, I decided not to get trashed on a Friday night at my mother’s urging, as we had to leave our house at 5:30am to catch our 14-hour flight to China. I woke up at the criminal time of 4:30am, got ready and then had about 15 minutes to pack. Good idea, not really! I didn’t realize until I got to China, but I forgot to pack underwear, socks, a memory card for my camera, and probably other stuff I can’t recall right now. We arrived a bit early for our flight, and I as I was sitting in the terminal amongst the swarms of Chinese people around me, I heard the funniest thing ever. (Note: If you haven’t seen Russell Peter’s: Outsourced comedy special, skip this next part because it may not make sense to you). So as I was saying, if you have seen it, you may recall that Russell speaks of his visit to China and the fact that people there use the word “nigga” as a fill-in word, much like we English folk use words like “umm” and “ahh”. Well let’s just say this guy sitting beside me must have dropped the “n” bomb a la Chinese-style about 10 times over the course of five minutes. God I’m amused easily! The plane ride over was pretty uneventful, other than the guy sitting in front of us, who took off his shoes and smelled straight ignorant and the fact that for the second time in my last three flights my personal TV was messed up. Oh, and I was decidedly one of the taller people on the plane. No big deal.
So after the lengthy flight and a time change that is twelve hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, we arrived in Shanghai in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, September 9. Luckily, at the last minute before we left Canada, we had remembered to get the address of our hotel written down by one of my mom’s friends at the airport in Chinese. For some odd reason, most of the cab drivers, didn’t speak a word of English. Guess they don’t teach that in Asian Cab Driving School. After we made our way to the HengSheng Peninsula Hotel via our cab driver who ashamedly took my gratuity (he put his hands over his face and shook his head when I gave him a tip [which he still took I might add]), we checked in and then proceeded to eat all of the chocolate and drink all of the beer in our mini-fridge. Around this time, (and by this time, I mean 4pm) we both passed out as the time change thing caught up with us. Kiel and I then proceeded to keep waking up all night, before proceeding to give up at 5am and just accept the fact that sleep was going to be an issue on this trip.
So the Monday morning, we were up bright and early, and after watching a healthy amount of CNN World, HBO Asia and V Chinese (think MTV2 with about 75% Chinese pop and the other 25% of music consisting of the same 10 English videos), we made our way down to the hotel breakfast buffet where we were surrounded by a contingent of 16 year-old female German soccer players and their parents and coaches. There must’ve been 500 German people staying in our hotel! That morning we decided to check-out Nanjing Dong Lu, which is the premier shopping/tourist street in Shanghai. We quickly discovered that white people are an easy target for people pushing goods on the streets, whose English usually consists of, “watch, DVD, t-shirt, shoes, Rolex, Puma, Nike, Adidas, Reebok”. We checked out a big ass store, which was aptly called “Shanghai’s #1 Department Store”, and contained over 10 floors of ridiculously small clothes. That afternoon, (after wasting two hours trying to find a go-kart track on the other side of the city and just giving up when we realized we were fucked and couldn’t ask anyone for directions), we started what would be a trip-long ping-pong rivalry. Again, the time change was still killing us and we passed out in the middle of the afternoon, but this time managed to wake up for 9pm, just in time to hit the McDonald’s! On our way there, we discovered that at night the street salesmen also add “women” to the list of things they are selling. There is nothing more impressive than a watch/DVD/t-shirt/shoe salesman who doubles as a pimp. Giggity goo! That night we checked out the Bund, which is the famous river that runs through Shanghai and is directly across from the impressive skyline that many people associate with the city. Again though, we were out cold long before midnight, as we struggled handsomely with the time change.
Tuesday morning, we were again up early, feeling the effects of the worst jet-lag either of us had ever-endured. We decided to head over to the Pudong (the rich/business/ex-pat/tourist) district of the city on the other side of the river. To get there, we took the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, which is this over-the-top cheeseball ride under the river in this plastic ball. Comes complete with flashing Christmas lights, bad music, and all! After we got there, we hit up the Oriental Pearl Tower (Shanghai’s version of the CN Tower) and checked out the accompanying museum that contained a plethora of knowledge on the history of Shanghai. That afternoon, we also checked out the (again aptly named) Supermall, which featured over 10 floors of shopping, as well as the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped to pick up what had already become the staple of our Chinese diet: our good friends Mr. Budweiser, Tsing Tao, Heineken, and Sapporo. After some vast alcohol consumption, we decided to hit the hotel pool for some early evening swimming. In all my wisdom, I accidentally stepped in the wading pool in my running shoes, which wrote those off for the remainder of the trip as they now smelled like pool water. That night, I managed to last until the ultra-late hour of 6:30pm before passing out. All I can say is that this sleep thing was starting to get a bit ridiculous!
The next morning was more of the same (up early with a healthy dose of CNN/HBO/V Chinese). I decided to trek out on my own without my trusty sidekick Drunko, as too much of a Moreau is just not a good thing. I checked out the Nanjing Xi Lu area of the city, which included the Jing’an Temple, Paramount Theater, Shanghai Indoor Stadium, and like everywhere in China some shopping! In true tourist form, I decided to pick up some knock off purses, as well as some cheap designer socks and DVDs complete with Chinese subtitling. That night (after another intense ping pong match), we hit up some authentic Asian cuisine in the form of Pizza Hut. After we tried to find this bar we had heard about that had really cheap drinks. This just led to us walking in circles for a while before retiring to the hotel room and us setting a new late night record of 10:30pm! So sad, so sad indeed…
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