11 days of mayhem - day 1

Ok, so it was an absolutely massive 11 days with the boys. I've got stories to tell and pictures to upload...so I'd best get started.

The guys arrived on Sunday morning the 5th of April at 11:30am. I took the Shanghai Maglev (that's the train that does 430km per hour out to the Pudong International Airport, one of the fastest trains in the world) out to get them and got there in plenty of time (it does 38km in 7 minutes). The guys arrived pretty much on schedule...sans baggage. Turns out they had to rush to get their connecting flight in Hong Kong, and while they got on the flight, their bags did not. Luckily we only had to wait an hour or so for the bags to come on the next flight, so we adjourned to the airport food lounge to grab some lunch and catch up on things. Their first meal in Shanghai? KFC.

After picking up their bags (and having a deja-vu experience when they came out of the arrivals area for a second time), we grabbed the Maglev back to downtown Pudong. While waiting in line to get a taxi back to my apartment, the guys were amused to be given some pamphlets advertising "Lots of lovely young girls of an average age of 18-20 are available here to relieve your fatigue and loneliness in the alien country". The reason I know exactly what it says is because they left it here for me when they left. Thanks guys.

Anyway, we got back to the apartment and got the guys unpacked and settled in. We made a quick trip to the local supermarket to buy some essentials (beer) and show them the madness that is a Shanghai supermarket on a Sunday afternoon. Then we hopped into another taxi to head down to Hengshan Rd over on the Puxi side of town.

We started off at a bar named Cotton's - a place I'd been past before but had never actually been into. It's a pretty nice place, much better in the warmer weather as there's a reasonably sized outdoor area that's good to sit down with a beer. After having a well deserved beverage, we met a couple of other Aussies there who invited us along to an Aussie drinks night on the following Friday (more about that later). We stayed for a couple of beers and then made our way to the next place - The Beaver.

It was only about 5:30 at this stage, and obviously a bit early in the day, because there was only one other guy at The Beaver and he was smashing some fish & chips. I guess Sunday isn't the biggest day to go out around that area (definitely nothing like the Sunday sessions back in Melbourne). Anyway, we had a couple of beers there (they had VB but we decided to steer clear of those) and played with the cat that was wandering up and down the bar, and then moved on. To an Irish pub just around the corner. I wanted them to experience as many places as possible, you understand.

Had a few more beers at the Irish pub and then decided it was time to get some food. Went just up the road to an Arabian place that I'd been to before (still no Chinese food for the guys) and had an excellent meal of rice and kebab-shaped meats. Plus a lot more beer. We waited in vain for the belly dancer to come on, but were told that she wasn't on that night for some reason. Disappointed, we left and went just over the road to SBS 191.

I've mentioned this place before in previous posts - it seems quite popular with the locals and I haven't really seen very many other Westerners in there the couple of times I've gone. Anyway, we settled in near the dance floor and started ordering jugs of beer. The boys were pretty thirsty from what I can remember, because those jugs disappeared rapidly. At this point, although the band was doing their thing (cheesy covers of Western songs), the dance floor was completely empty. With almost no egging-on from the guys, I got up on the dance floor...and started dancing by myself. Remarkably, this seemed to be the catalyst the crowd needed. Within a few minutes, I had been joined by a dozen others, and from that time on the floor remained pretty-much full. Just doing my part :)

About this time Cookie decided that he wanted to start drinking vodka and lime instead of beer. It was here that he ran into some problems - it took him a long time to get across to the bar staff what it was that he wanted. I think he had to send a couple of drinks back before they finally got the right thing. However, when he then asked for exactly the same drink, he got something completely different. It was frustrating, but we managed.

By this stage I was well and truly hammered, and had noticed that there were a couple of guys dancing over by a table just near the dancefloor. I decided that they were far better dancers than anyone actually on the floor, and eager to put on a show for my guests, I went over to them and challenged them to a dance-off.

Yes, you read that correctly. I think I may have been pulling out some Starsky & Hutch quotes at this time, I don't really remember. I do remember going over to the dancefloor just in front of them, cutting some sick moves, pointing to them and pointing to the floor in front of me. And some raucous laughter. Not sure where that came from. Anyway, whatever I ended up saying, it worked, because within a few seconds the guys were out on the floor and we were all pulling out our best stuff to one-up each other. Shotty swears to me that I started doing 'The Robot' at one point - I have no real excuse for this *hangs head in shame*. We had a lot of fun and even got the lead singer of the band out to dance with us for a little while.

We stayed at SBS until about 2am when it closed, and then hopped in a taxi to go to Judy's Too on Tongren Rd. I'm sure I've mentioned this place before - full of local girls (that are not exactly what they seem) hunting for prey, and some very drunken individuals such as ourselves that are there to dance and keep drinking as much as possible. This is the stage where things get really hazy. Somehow, the three of us managed to get separated. I seem to recall giving Cookie the key to the apartment so that he could go home...but didn't give him the address. I had shown him the Sheraton Hotel landmark earlier in the day, and he knew I lived in Pudong, and somehow managed to get the taxi driver to take him to the right place so that he could walk back to my apartment. Super impressive effort on his first day in the country. Shotty got home separately soon after Cookie...he actually had a piece of paper with my address, but it had been ripped in half, so it was a miracle that he got home too. I got back a bit later (after smashing some vanilla french toast at the all-night diner - don't ask) and was relived to find the boys had made it safely home.

So there you go - first night out in a foreign country where they couldn't speak the language at all, and we get separated. Extremely average hosting duties by yours truly! After that debacle, I gave both the boys a piece of paper with my address in both English and Chinese so that they'd always be able to find their way home.

And at the end of that massive post, it's the end of day 1 of their trip. I'm hoping the rest of the trip won't warrant such large posts! More tomorrow.