Promise

I am never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER going to fly with a hangover again.

Shanghaiied

Today is my second last day in Shanghai. Tomorrow I fly out to Beijing. I'm feeling vaguely confident now that I know what to look for, and I've learnt a couple more words. His Hotness Prince Daryl of Birmingham says the Leo Hostel, just off Tiananmen Square, is the bomb.

Shanghai has been good to me, despite some difficulties. Considering how disorganised I am, I should be huddled in a corner, rocking myself to sleep. That's not to say it's been all plain sailing. One of the most frustrating thing for me has been not being able to come to grips with the bus system, which has resulted in me walking everywhere in between the train and metro stations. Shanghai is fucking huge, and the distances between streets have made exploring this place a daily battle. Just imagine the area of Sydney bounded by Paddington and Glebe, stretched to fill the entire Sydney metropolitan area. You can drive for more than an hour before you get out of downtown Shanghai.

In practical terms, this meant that last night, when I was trying to find a decent place to drink and meet people, I almost gave up on several occasions. I would walk for half an hour, pull out my incredibly large and obtrusive map, walk for another 20 minutes, get lost, find the place I was looking for, and then realise it sucked. And on top of that, there were frequent stretches along the way infested with beggars, street sellers and hustlers all trying to get money out of me. It was only the overriding desire for some decent human company that kept me going.

I spent 3 hours wandering the area known as the French Concession, where most of the bars and clubs are. There are a shitload of them. The problem is , on a Thursday night, they're either empty or tacky or depressing or hip hop. I know, I was probably judging them unfairly, but everytime I thought I'd give a crappy looking bar a go, I was proven right.

Right at the end of my night, when hope was almost extinguished, I was walking towards the California Bar, on the fringes of Fuxing Park. If it was as bad as I expected, I was going to go home.

I saw the mother and her three year old daughter sitting on the curb, and I saw the Yuan signs in their eyes as I approached in my swanky western clothes. My heart sunk, for the five hundredth time, as I prepared to ignore them. The little girl ran towards me and said "Hello, hello, money, money!" very excitedly, smiling. Up to this point, I had followed quite rigidly the advice given by Inge, a German friend I made at the Captain Hostel on my second day. She warned me against giving money to beggars, and to be especially wary of children and old people, because they had guilt on their side. I had coldly refused countless old people shaking their cups at me, stared past those with stumps for limbs, and shook my head vigorously at pretty girls selling all manner of handmade things. But for some reason, this little girl, and her poor mother, made me pull out my wallet and give her a handful of coins. She and her mother said thankyou many times. I was about to walk away but instead I turned and pulled out my camera. The mother nodded and held her daughter close for the photo.

On the way home in the taxi, for the first time in a year, I cried silently. The cold, hard, angry shell I'd built against this city finally cracked. I cried for the poverty stricken, freezing away their hope on the streets, for those living in tiny decrepit apartments, jostling in the tide of traffic on their flimsy bicycles, breathing in the shitty smog-filled air, just working and working so hard to try and make a life for their families and themselves.

I cried for me, because I couldn't talk to these people, and because up until that point I hadn't really wanted to. I wanted to have a holiday, goddam it. I wanted to party. I didn't want to embrace the whole culture, just the nice, clean, westernised bits.

Super Sexy Shanghai Singer Sex You Up? Good time?

I've got a bit of a hangover this morning, but damn do I have a smile on my face. Reason number one: the sun is shining! This is the first time I've seen the sun since I arrived here 4 days ago. It makes Shanghai seem a little friendlier. Secondly, I had a brilliant night which more than compensates for the headache and furry mouth.

At about 10 last night, I was just about ready to sleep, after a long and exciting day walking through some interesting areas of Shanghai. I was struggling with my first journal entry, and my Famous Chinese Tsingtao beer, which tastes a bit like boiled dog piss. Luckily however, Bryan my bunkmate walked in and invited me up to the bar to have a quick beer with a couple of English blokes. The bar was nice, and Andrew and Daryl proved to be scintillating company. Andrew's a very likeable Dental Technician from Nottingham, and Daryl is damn tasty labourer type, with this unbelievable Birmingham accent that makes me grin stupidly. So we finished a round while Andrew regaled us with tales of his time in Dali, in Yunnan Province, where the police turn a blind eye to a flourishing drug culture, wild ganja grows in the streets, and everyone is so relaxed. 2000m above sea level, Andrew found himself in a pecualiar situation while partying with the locals. He was dancing with a man and a woman, and the man starts forcefully taking Andrew's hands and putting them all over the woman's body. Andrew gets the distinct impression she's a prostitute and the man is her pimp. So he asks the man directly if the girl's a hooker, to which he replies " This is my wife. I think you should leave now."

We moved around the corner to a pub that Andrew had previously been to and enjoyed. However, it being Monday night, the Fest Brewery was almost empty. Still we had a great chat, and I learned that Andrew was heading off to Mongolia and Russia, while Daryl was flying to Cairns and working his way down the East Coast. We shared a couple of litre glasses (I kid you not) of very tasty dark beer, which rinsed away that awful Tsingtao shit.

We tired of the Fest, eventually, and headed out into the street and went looking for another pub. It was about five degrees; I'm getting trained for Europe already. Along the way, we were accosted by a tall, slightly effeminate guy from Hong Kong called George. He said hello, and unfortunately thanks to previous experience I was immediately on my guard. There's quite a few people in Shanghai who are friendly purely to get something out of you. (That being said, I've met 10 times as many who are friendly and helpful because they want to be.) George invited us to a bar and it already sounded like that famous Shanghai scam where a nice person takes you to a bar/restaurant, orders expensive food/drink, and then leaves you with the bill. I mentioned this to Andrew and he says everything will be fine as long as we pay for what we want before we get it. He also said that the police are 100% on the side of foreigners in China, so if George tried anything nasty he would be punished severely by the law. So I relaxed a little and listened to George chatter away about a variety of topics, including what fruits corresponded to what naughty bits of the human anatomy. It seemed like he was trying to hit on Andrew and/or Daryl (I couldn't really blame him) but the boys just took it in their stride. I relaxed some more.

We walked for ages and we were all getting a little edgy. And then suddenly we arrived at a place with Massage written in big English letters out the front. Daryl, Bryan and I reeled at that, and almost turned to go, but then we realised the massage place was on the 6th floor, while George assured us the bar was on the 3rd floor. So we agreed to go up, and while Andrew seemed super-keen, the rest of us kept protesting that all we wanted was a beer. He reminded us that as long as we don't take anything we don't pay for, we'd be fine. In fact, he was convinced that we could actually use this situation to our advantage, and get treated like royalty without "putting out" so to speak. I was skeptical, but it occured to me that this was my First Big Adventure, so godammit, I was going to be adventurous.

We went up and it was immediately obvious this was a hooker bar. There were several scantily clad ladies lounging around and giggling as we entered the opulent glass-filled foyer. George ushered us into our private room, which, he kept repeating, was free, and I wondered why we needed a private room.

It turned out that this was a Karaoke bar, and it seemed George was hoping we'd get drunk and rowdy enough that we'd order a couple of ladies at premium rates. Little did he know that I would need quite a lot of persuading. Since we were now cluey to George's game, we were able to relax some more, and after fiddling for ages with the giant screen Karaoke machine, we managed to put on an English song. Despite Bryan claiming that he hated Karaoke, he dived in with gusto and sung a few before George asked to join in. He belted out some Mandarin classics, with original film clips that rivalled those awful Karaoke-specific film clips we all know and love. Especially entertaining was the way he ended the last line of every verse with a high-pitched yelp. It was obvious he was enjoying himself. I jumped in and did a couple of duets with Bryan and Daryl, finishing off with a rousing version of Love Shack, that perennial favourite, that I'm sure brought a tear to my comrades' eyes. Then George put on some Beijing Opera (yes, Beijing Opera Karaoke) and proceeded to wow us with his deft switching between the male and female parts.

I feel like Shanghai has finally welcomed me with open arms.

Starting with the poking

Ok, so I've finally decided I'm ready to start my journal. Actually I've left it too long. So many things have happened already that I don't know where to start. But that was my excuse at the end of the first day, so I've just got to start. The internet at Captain Hostel, where I'm staying, is so freaking expensive: 20 Yuan, or about A$3 an hour. Lonely Planet claims there are places where you can get an hour for 3 Yuan (of Internet access, you dirty bugger). I've yet to find any of these places, as they frequently change location or shutdown completely.

My first International Airport was Kuala Lumpur. It was 6am, and we couldn't leave the airport, so I just wandered around for a bit and found a small jungle enclosed in glass in the centre of the Airport. I asked the nice Malaysian girl at the Information desk if we could get into the garden, and she laughed. "Only for looking," she said. So I had to be content with the striking but emotionally bereft interior of apparently the best airport in the world, according to a group of people who probably never use airports, because they all have their own private jets. I really didn't get what was so great about it; two of the internet terminals lacked a usable mouse, and the information screens were hard to read. The superfast train that arrived in the airport itself was pretty cool though.

The idea that I was in another country was about as tangible as the idea that there is probably life on other planets. Arriving at Shanghai Pudong Airport was surreal. It was surrounded by farmland and at 2 pm in the afternoon there was a thick, soupy mist that made the whole thing look unreal. I was struck by some of the airport buildings, which where all white and shaped like lips, almost sensual. Walking towards Immigration, I stared at the strange shapes floating outside the massive windows and felt detached from my body. I had a sense of foreboding based on my simplistic view that Chinese officials would be cold and cruel. But really, they were just impatient, and even the large LED screen warning of Avian Bird Flu could not crush my relief at finally making it through Immigration after waiting anxiously in line for half an hour.

On the bus from Shanghai Airport into the city my heart filled with joy. I really was in another country. The bus driver beeped and swerved and although I felt mildly concerned my mind was frantically processing the unbelievable landscape that was rushing past my field of view. There were painfully delicate trees with their trunks painted white (to keep them warm in winter, apparently) and there were piles of refuse and debris from demolished buildings, and there were cars and bikes and people everywhere, and there were huge billboards proclaiming all sorts of proclamations. But the most amazing thing was the colour of this new world. Millions of subtle pastel shades, floating in the mist. It was all a bit new for a boy whose world up until then had been painted brashly with brilliant blue and gold.