Worst Kept Secrets

It’s been a looooooong day. Yesterday, we woke up, puttered around the apartment, and got on a train to Shanghai. Shanghai - a sprawling mass of excitement, culture, and constant activity, featuring both extreme beauty and extreme ugliness, the best and worst of China packed into one throbbing metropolitan headrush.

We arrived in Shanghai, ate at Burger King, stopped by Starbucks, watched movies in the hotel room, ventured out for curry, bought beer at a convenience store, and watched more movies in the hotel room. Oops. It actually felt really liberating, and it was strategic - Shanghai, for all its allure, is damned expensive, and we’re trying to be financially responsible. This meant that while in Shanghai the best thing for us to do was park ourselves in the hotel room and be worthless.

So we woke up at seven fifteen, took line 2 from Nanjing Xi Lu to Longyang Lu, and jumped on the maglev. The maglev, incidentally, is still awesome. Every time I take it, it’s like taking a seven and a half vacation to the future. We made it to the airport and checked in. Then we changed over some money to pesos, confusing the poor girl at the currency exchange counter and encountering a dose of Chinese beaurocracy that put a wrench in our plans for having all the cash we’d need for the trip in hand. Maybe there’s something I’m just not getting going on, but every time I’ve gone to a bank in China, it’s required at least five employees to help me, and a lot of frantic gesturing, yelling, desperate shuffling of paper, and more red stamps than most of you have probably ever seen in your life. I’m in a good China period right now, but like any relationship, sometimes enough is enough and you need to get some space. At the currency exchange counter, I realized that I was quite happy to be getting away from China for a little bit.

I slept through most of the plane ride, and woke up in time to take off my sweater and shake off the grogginess before we landed in Manila. I was extremely nervous about this part of the trip - last time, we found ourselves stranded in a deserted airport at midnight, unable to find a taxi or a way to get money. It ended in The Worst Hotel in the World, after we’d been extremely thoroughly fleeced by every person we encountered. We were fine last time, and it wound up being about the best vacation ever, but I still wasn’t in a hurry to relive it. This time, we walked off the plane, breezed through immigration, grabbed our bag, finished changing our money without any fuss, and met the hotel’s driver, who was waiting for us outside. EASY.

So we checked in at Duck Inn, which Chris described as the Manila version of Blue Sky (which makes sense to other Nanjingers), and he was completely right. Beer, pool tables, white guys. Emphasis on GUYS. I’ve seen all kinds of foreigners around, but I swear it feels like I’m the only foreign female in Manila. I’m sure that’s not true, but I still feel like I REALLY stick out. Chris also commented that Manila didn’t seem to be the sort of place you bring your girlfriend while we were watching dumbstruck as a completely idiotic drunken lout enjoyed the attentions of not one, not two, but THREE GROs (Guest Relations Officer - on our last visit, a travel agent explained that these were the people who “do the sexy dance”) who were giggling, massaging, and dry humping the guy. We ate lunch at what was supposed to be a nice, quiet, outdoor area, but in which I was DEFINITELY the only female in the place who wasn’t being paid to show interest in her male companion.

I have no idea what to think about Manila. It left a really bad taste in my mouth last year, and now I’ve only got extremely cursory experience with it, so you really can’t use my opinion on it for anything.But here’s my opinion anyway. It’s a lot like what would happen if New Orleans, Miami, and Tortuga circa 1650 had a baby and fed it a lot of beer and mangos, then set it in the middle of an eternal summer afternoon block party. Which sounds great, right? It is CHILL here - everybody’s outside drinking beer or cokes, playing cards, blasting music from storefronts and car stereos, and smiling a lot. Everything’s incredibly friendly and relaxed. On the other hand, oh my god the prostitutes! Or GROs or whatever you want to call them. Our hotel actually has a sign hung outside it that says, “no unescorted young ladies allowed,” which under normal circumstances would really piss me off, but which here is a blessed relief. Our hotel’s house rules sheet also says that “firearms must be deposited with reception. They will be returned at checkout.” Hookers and guns oh my!

I don’t feel unsafe or anything, though, and I’m not freaked out - last time I was scared for my life. It’s just an extremely different city from anything I’ve ever been used to. It’s as different from China as China is from the US, at least, and that’s an intense thing to deal with in one night. However, I think this is probably an incredibly fun city if you can stick around long enough to figure out how to maneuver inside it. We went for a walk around the hotel neighborhood, and as soon as we walked outside we heard a really loud church bell ringing over and over again, and suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a parade (I think it had something to do with Sinulog or Ati-Atihan?). People were waving Virgin Mary/Assorted Saints icons and figurines around while they processed into a church, and there were troupes of kids dressed up in full-on island getup performing a dance. It just looked like so much more FUN than the Catholicism I know. Nobody looked bored or uncomfortable or guilty - the kids were just running and jumping and yelling and screaming to the drums, and it was AWESOME to watch.

Anyway, to wrap this up since I need to get to the airport by seven tomorrow morning, I’m fine to be leaving Manila tomorrow, but I’d like to be able to want to stay here. At least in my experience, it’s a mixed bag, much like the combo business we saw earlier today - “Dental Clinic / Pool Hall.”

Yet again, if you’d told me three years ago that I’d wake up in Shanghai and go to bed in Manila one day, I probably would have been really angry with you for mocking me and the travel lust I thought I’d sacrificed to inertia. So Bohol tomorrow! I won’t have internet for the next three or four days, but I should be back on Thursday or Friday.

We left for Shanghai on Monday morning, and at first glance the Nanjing train station did not look promising for easy travel. The place was PACKED. It’s a holiday week for a lot of people due to National Day, and the boards showed all the trains as sold out. This isn’t the end of the world - you can always get a standing room only ticket - but it’s not a whole lot of fun. We had to do that on our way back from the U.S. this summer, and being stuck next to the bathrooms on a crowded train will really make you wonder exactly what these people are eating that produces such a frothy, richly complex aroma. However, this went smoothly enough - Chris pulled out a miracle by wrangling a couple of seats for us on the next train (we think we got special foreigner reserve tickets or something), and we had plenty of time to grab McDonald’s next door and catch our train without running or getting stressed. The CRH train really might be the difference between my experiences traveling in China and those of people who’ve been here longer and traveled more. It’s a slick, fast, clean, two hour train ride in comfy seats with lots of leg room.

Anyway, we got to Shanghai, and followed our usual Shanghai train station routine - I parked with the luggage on a bench while Chris went to get our return tickets, which he did with no hassle while I absentmindedly went through my standard list of worried fantasies about what I would do if Chris disappeared and left me stranded by a trashcan and some homeless guys (. Then it was off to our hotel. We stayed at the Nanjing A*Live Design Hotel. The hotel was Chris’s find, and it was a perfectly nice place to stay - great location, a nice room with a pretty view, and a Starbucks on the ground floor. Our bathroom came stocked with the usuals (soap, shampoo, paper slippers, toothbrush and toothpaste, a razor, and sanitary wipes labelled Her and Him). There was also an array of sex toys, which surprised me a little. I mean, I think it’s fantastic that a hotel would think to provide free condoms - China’s great when it comes to birth control, and I think that the U.S. could take a lot of lessons from that. But in addition to the condoms, there was a cock ring and several packets of a “traditional Chinese medicinal preparation” designed to “keep your passion hot.” Now, as I said, China’s all over making birth control easily and freely available, but when it comes to STDS…. “the contents will prevent the spread of infectious diseases, with no side effects!” Aiiieee…

We didn’t have much of a plan, so we decided to take a walk from the hotel to the Bund. The street near our hotel was a really nice, leafy area with sculpture parks, coffee shops and cafes, and strollable sidewalks. Along the way, Chris got attacked by a woman trying to shine his shoes. It started with Chris’s polite Chinese equivalent of “no thanks,” but the woman kept following and trying to grab his shoes. It ended with her actually smearing white shoe polish all over him and us fleeing. We also saw people crouched on the ground with blankets spread out selling jewelry. I was mildly interested in the first one we passed, but then I noticed that everyone’s spread was almost identical. Beads, dangly earrings, Bhudda heads, antique-looking mortar and pestle sets, etc. I don’t quite understand how that works as business.

The scenery changed drastically once we hit People’s Square and started down the pedestrian shopping street Nanjing Dong Lu. Honestly, Times Square or Picadilly Circus have NOTHING on this place. It was a holiday week, so the crowds were in full force. Every three feet or so, someone would offer us a watch, DVDs, or handbags, and there were a few people just standing in one place screaming “HASHISH!” (so much for China’s infamous zero tolerance drug policy?). There were people EVERYWHERE. You could barely turn around without nearly knocking someone over. Other than the expensive brand named stores (I realize Shanghai’s an enormous city, but is it really big enough to justify an Omega watch store on every block?) and the counterfit watches and handbags on the street, vendors were out in force selling HUGE balloons, light up devil horns, glow sticks, and just about every toy you might expect to see in the discount bins in Wal-Mart. I kept seeing people walking around with huge inflated mallets, and wondered if they were supposed to be some kind of harmless stress relief. I found myself desperately hoping to see someone go absolutely beserk with his/her Minnie Mouse encrusted balloon cudgel.

We made it all the way to the river, by which point the crushing crowd had taken a toll on us. We weren’t forming coherent sentences, we were exhausted, and there was nothing to do but throw ourselves back into the throngs of slowly ambling people and ride the current back to the hotel.

We recharged and planned our next move. The Lonely Planet Shanghai 2004 Edition had this to say about the French Concession: “The French Concession was once home to the bulk of Shanghai’s adventurers, revolutionaries, gangsters, prostitutes, and writers”, so that was pretty much a no-brainer. The plan was to get to the area, choose a splendid restaurant, and drink ourselves silly on Maoming Road, which Lonely Planet told us was a “nightlife magnet.” Problem #1: the “find a restaurant by walking around” never works. That’s exactly how you wind up with about twenty options, and you finally get so hungry and overwhelmed that you slink into Papa John’s instead. Problem #2: In China, 2004 might as well be last century. The Maoming Road described in the guidebook doesn’t exist anymore.

[Nanjing has a Papa John's, and a Starbucks, and a Subway, which were three things we got super excited about in Shanghai, but none of them are in our neighborhood, and so the only classic example of American laziness, convenience, and corporate packaging we regularly get into is McDonald's. I guess if we visited Nanjing and stayed in Xinjiekou, we'd have a similarly exciting experience of familiar and easily accessible chains.]

We had a shamefully good time glutting ourselves on pizza and garlic butter (although it grieves me to report that the garlic butter sauce suffered in translation), and then charged off down Maoming Lu looking for the insanity. We went up and down the street, looking for the tell tale signs of staggering youths, vomit in the streets, weaving taxi cabs whose patrons’ drunken hollering was audible as far as the sidewalk, etc. Instead, we found a Disney English Training Center, the Teddy Bears Collectors Shop, and a row of tailors with names like The Executive and Candor. I’m about as interested in men’s fashion as I am in women’s fashion (the idea of shopping as a recreational activity normally makes me feel a little nauseous), but these were good-looking suits. If you need some swanky men’s business apparel, I’m telling you: Maoming Lu’s got you covered.

Anyway, we were about to give up when we finally found a tiny little section of a block that included a couple of bars and two or three restaurants, and decided we were tired of walking anyway. So we got a table at Blue Frog, right next to the huge open door/windows, and watched the empty sidewalk and drank bloody marys and tom collinses. It was actually a really pleasant, quiet, friendly place to drink. It wasn’t crowded, the music was decent and not too loud, and it made a really nice counterpoint to the craziness of the Bund.

We also saw a guy pulling an enormous wagon full of the biggest teddy bears I’ve ever seen in my life down the mostly deserted street, peering forlornly into Blue Frog seeking customers. It was just such a pitiful sight - I probably would have bought one if I wouldn’t have had to lug it around train stations.

After we paid our alarmingly high bar tab, we walked back to the hotel. That’s where we noticed a sign for a pub in the basement of our building called Windows Underground. We were on the verge of calling it a night, but figured we should at least stop in and have a beer. We headed down the stairs into a laser lit cave furiously thrumming with industrial trance, a sardonically smiling bar tender, and cheap beer. I don’t really know how to describe the atmosphere - Chris said that he felt like he “should either be snorting blow or sucking blood.” Between the blackness and the strobe lights and the lasers flying around with the truly satanic tunes blaring, the place simply had to be a front for some kind of unimaginable crime. However, the clientele looked innocent enough - a group of young, trashed girls, an American shooting pool, little clusters of friends playing dice games and laughing in corners. One beer turned into several, because we kept getting cracked up at how freaking hardcore the ambiance was. Then we crashed out.