3-19-09

 

We leave the train station in Shanghai and the first cab driver we talk to says, “Chinese money 100 ($14)” before even getting a clear idea of where we want to go. We laughed and walked away from the train station to find a reasonable driver who would use the meter. While traveling through the city we were both happy to see it had a unique feel to it, unlike a lot of the cities we’ve visited. The streets are narrower, the architecture is more varied, and it has character. The pollution is bad.

 

The driver drops us off about 4 blocks from where we want to go and laughs at me when I repeatedly ask him for my change (50 cents), gets in his car and takes off. We walk down a street called Duolu that has little antique stores, street musicians, cafes, and old men playing board games. We didn’t realize that it was a special district and immediately started saying, “Wow, Shanghai is pretty cool.”

 

The hostel (really a hotel) that we found is really nice inside; it has loads of charm. We quickly realize that we misunderstood their confusing pricing system and the manager is visibly upset about it. He offers to let us use his internet free of charge and sits down to try and explain the misunderstanding. While I was looking at the rooms they offered, Rachel found that Jacob, a couchsurfer that we hosted in Seoul, had responded, and was offering to let us stay in his apartment. The timing couldn’t have been better, and we were really blown away when we saw how nice their place was.

 

We had a great time going to the hunt down a rental mountain bike for Jacob to use in a race down in Guilin. He didn’t have any luck finding one, but we got to see the French Concession area of Shanghai in the process. After that we had an opportunity to eat with Diana (I accidently called her Deanna thinking they were the same name – Rachel found this very disappointing). They had to catch their train that night, which left us with a great apartment all to ourselves. It was unfortunate that they couldn’t stay, but it was so generous of them to let us enjoy their place. Thanks guys.

 

3-20-09

 

We woke up, got out in the city slowly, had a great Cantonese meal at a busy restaurant, and headed toward the Shanghai museum. We lucked out again and had a super clear day in Shanghai which Is a nice city. The park around the museum had children chasing white pigeons across green green grass and flowers coming into bloom. We had a short conversation with two bubbly girls and were in for a huge surprise when we found out there was no entrance fee for the museum. Wow.

 

The museum was interesting and tastefully done. My aunt would have loved the pottery. After that we went to the disappointing Shanghai Art Museum which charged us entrance to see a measly two floors of art, one of which was decent. The other three floors were roped off, under construction, or not showing anything. We went to the front desk, bitched a little, and left, bitching.

 

We started walking toward a train ticket office in our Lonely Planet map, stopped at a low quality noodle chain, and then found out that the ticket office no longer existed. We needed to do some more planning, which requires the internet, so we headed home. A friend of ours from Korea, Sae-Hee was in town, but we called to tell her we didn’t have energy for night life. Rachel was getting sick and I don’t stay up late anymore.

 

3-21-09

 

We wanted to see one of the gardens in Shanghai and it was next to “Old Town” which turned out to be more like an amusement park. Hordes of tourists, locals, hagglers, and watch sellers moved in between store fronts and restaurants. We saw the garden, which was nice enough, got a feel for the area and took off on a gritty walk through a construction zone on the west side of the river. We found a travel agency that helps foreigners called CITS, which came recommended, but the girl there didn’t speak English, and their prices sucked so we left.

 

The bund is a touristy viewing area that came off as disappointing because I expected more character. The book made it sound like there would be café’s, bars, and old architecture, but all it was, was a long walkway elevated a bit above street level so you could see both sides of the river. We were getting pestered more than usual, so we left through some more construction in search of another train ticket office. We found it, it was open, and luckily, empty. That allowed us to buy three tickets without people scratching, yelling, and pushing on us while we attempted to communicate with the tellers.

Afterwards we drank some beers in a plaza area, tried to contact Sae-Hee, without luck, and went on the subway to the other side of the river to visit the Chinese Cultural Sex Museum. Turns out, the Lonely Planet forgot to remove the review of that museum from the Shanghai section of the book when it added the museum to its new location in Tongli. So they mention it twice, in two different places, along with the reason why it moved, and we wasted two hours looking for something that didn’t exist.

 

With everything seen, we went home and prepared for an early train to Suzhou.