Lost in Shanghai

Thursday night I got lost in Shanghai. With no phone or laptop.

It all started innocently enough - after work, a group of about 50 employees got together for an annual dinner at a restaurant right near the river (main part of town). We started off with a toast, and everyone else drank wine - I can't drink wine, so had a glass of beer. After that, all of the other employees that I'd just met came up to me and toasted me. Each time, they drank about a mouthful of wine - I drank an entire glass of beer. Before I knew it, I'd consumed 8 500ml bottles of beer in around 2.5 hours, and was fairly smashed. By about 10pm we'd had enough, so I got into a taxi with a couple of the other employees and we drove back to the office.

Once we got back to the office, I got out to answer the call of nature. I wandered back over to where I had left the taxi - and it was gone. No fellow employees, no taxi, no nothing. I reached into my pocket to call one of the guys I'd been out with, and suddenly realised that my phone wasn't there. And neither was my laptop. They were both still in the back seat of the taxi where I had left them.

I did a quick stock-take, and found that I still had my wallet, which was a bonus. However, I had no contact details for anyone in China with me - they were all in my phone. Luckily, I did have a piece of paper with my address written on it. I started to giggle uncontrollably at this point - sure I had no real idea where I was or how to get home, but I found it amazingly funny for some reason.

I wandered around for about half an hour before I finally found a Sheraton hotel, where I went inside and asked the concierge to get me a taxi to take me home. At least, I think I did. My request probably sounded like it was phrased in Klingon, the way I was traveling at that stage. At any rate, the taxi driver got me home fairly quickly (it was only a few km) and I wandered inside and went to bed.

The next morning I woke up and managed to find my way back to the office. I ran into one of the guys from the night before, who seemed rather relieved to see me. It turned out that the other guys I was with had gotten out of the taxi before I had, and I was supposed to be going home with the driver when I stepped out. They rang my phone to try to find me, and the driver answered it and gave them my phone and laptop. They then looked around the office area for about an hour before calling the police and going to my apartment complex to see if I'd gotten home ok. They got the security guys to pull up some footage of my building, and saw me drunkenly stumble in a bit before midnight. After that they looked at footage from the elevator camera but couldn't see me enter it...which means that I must have been so drunk that I couldn't work the elevator so walked up 12 flights of stairs instead. Loser!

Friday was a fairly unproductive day as a result of my Thursday night activities. Note to self - in the future, don't leave phone or laptop behind anywhere. Ever.