A few weeks ago I found out about a place named Big Bamboo, which is a bar over in Puxi which shows AFL matches via satellite. They're only delayed by about 2 hours, which means that they usually start here at about 8:30pm local time. I went over on a Friday night and watched Collingwood beat North Melbourne. Not the most exciting game to watch, but hey, it was AFL and I was just happy to see a game for the first time this year. I sat at the bar next to a couple of poms for most of the game and had a great time trying to explain all the rules to them. They admitted that it was a lot more enjoyable to watch when they actually understood what was going on.
Anyway, last Saturday night Essendon and Richmond were playing, so I thought I'd go over and check out the game. The Big Bamboo website said that the match started at 8:30, so I timed my run to get there at about 8:45...and found that the match wasn't up on any of the TVs.
Unperturbed, I figured I'd grab a tasty beverage and that maybe one of the other sporting events they were showing had gone over time and that they'd switch to the AFL in the next half an hour or so. I was mistaken. At this point, the single only other Aussie (Michael) in the entire bar had gotten hold of the manager to ask what was going on. I noticed his accent so introduced myself and tried to get the story. It turned out that the game wasn't actually being shown until 11:30pm - the website had shown the wrong time. Michael decided to go do something else for a few hours, and if I was a smarter man, I would have gone with him. Instead, I decided to tough it out and just keep on drinking.
Unfortunately that meant that I had to sit through the only other two sports being shown - soccer and rugby. I went with the lesser of two evils (rugby) and it actually turned out to be a pretty good game (Queensland versus Wellington or someone). Anyway, 11:30 finally came around, and the AFL came on. Michael and I spent the game cheering for the same side (he's a fellow Bombers supporter) and we were happy to see them come away with a win. The fact that it stayed quite close for the first three quarters was good, as it kept things interesting. During the game, we sampled the different Australian beers they had stocked - I tried a Crownie, a James Boags, a Coopers and a Pure Blonde. I skipped the VB, because noone in their right mind drinks VB if there is anything else to drink. How did they come to have Australian beer stocked in the fridge? More about that in a future post.
After the game finished a bit after 1, Michael went home but I was keen to kick on so wandered up Tongren Rd a little ways to see what was happening. I stopped in at The Spot, but it was completely empty so I walked a little further to an American bar named Mallone's. The band was still kicking along there and there seemed to be a decent crowd, so I stayed for a few more beers. Once that place closed at 3 I walked a little further along the road and stopped in at another bar...but I don't remember what it was called. I think I ended up staying there until 5am before finally coming to my senses and getting a taxi home.
On Sunday...I paid for it. Didn't wake up until midday and had one of the worst hangovers ever. Unfortunately, I'd agreed to go play pool with one of my co-workers and an engineer who's here from Australia for the next week or so. I walked over to his hotel at 3:30pm, head pounding and mouth dry. The guys spent the next couple of hours laughing at my sorry state (although I actually did do pretty well on the pool table) before we had a quick meal and they let me get back to the solace of my living room couch. Very happy when that day was over, let me tell you.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Proper basketball shoes - they make a difference
I've been on a bit of a fitness kick recently, and have been running 9-10km almost every day. Well, not the days when I'm hungover, as on those days it's all I can do to walk from the couch to the kitchen and back again. Thankfully hangover days have been pretty limited since Shotty and Cookie left :)
In addition to all the running, I've been playing heaps of basketball - usually 3 hours on Wednesday, then another 3 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, with all that exercise and the crap condition of some of the surfaces that I've been running/playing on, my extremely comfortable pair of New Balance shoes has fallen apart on me. After only a month of wear and tear, most of the sole came off the right shoe on Wednesday night.
I was extremely happy with those shoes even though they didn't last very long, so on Friday night I went over to the Raffles City shopping centre at People's Square in Puxi to get some new ones. I bought exactly the same pair as my last ones, but figured with all the basketball I'm playing, I'd better buy a more suitable pair of shoes to play in. I went into the flagship Nike store on the ground floor, and had a quick look around. They have a 'build-your-own' section there where you can design your own pair of shoes, which is pretty cool but pretty pricey too. My eye was caught by a pair of vintage Michael Jordan's, but those were more than $AUS400 (!), so I gave them a miss. I finally settled on a decent pair of Dirk Nowitzkis (he plays for the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA but I just bought them because I liked the look of them) for a little over $AUS100.
I took them out for a session on both Saturday and Sunday, and they held up very well! They're much more supportive around the ankle area for the quick turns that are made on a court, and are definitely a better fit for basketball than the running shoes were. Here's hoping that my New Balance's will last longer this time since I'll only be using them for running.
In addition to all the running, I've been playing heaps of basketball - usually 3 hours on Wednesday, then another 3 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, with all that exercise and the crap condition of some of the surfaces that I've been running/playing on, my extremely comfortable pair of New Balance shoes has fallen apart on me. After only a month of wear and tear, most of the sole came off the right shoe on Wednesday night.
I was extremely happy with those shoes even though they didn't last very long, so on Friday night I went over to the Raffles City shopping centre at People's Square in Puxi to get some new ones. I bought exactly the same pair as my last ones, but figured with all the basketball I'm playing, I'd better buy a more suitable pair of shoes to play in. I went into the flagship Nike store on the ground floor, and had a quick look around. They have a 'build-your-own' section there where you can design your own pair of shoes, which is pretty cool but pretty pricey too. My eye was caught by a pair of vintage Michael Jordan's, but those were more than $AUS400 (!), so I gave them a miss. I finally settled on a decent pair of Dirk Nowitzkis (he plays for the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA but I just bought them because I liked the look of them) for a little over $AUS100.
I took them out for a session on both Saturday and Sunday, and they held up very well! They're much more supportive around the ankle area for the quick turns that are made on a court, and are definitely a better fit for basketball than the running shoes were. Here's hoping that my New Balance's will last longer this time since I'll only be using them for running.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
11 days of mayhem - day 10
Tuesday the 14th of April, the second last day of Shotty and Cookie's visit. I went off to work during the day, and the guys spent the day wandering around some local shops and taking the opportunity to do some almost-last-minute shopping. Once I got home from work, we decided to go have a look at the 3rd tallest building in the world - the Shanghai World Financial Centre.
Located on Century Avenue (a pretty major street in Pudong), the SWFC building rises above all others in Shanghai...and looks like a giant bottle opener. Seriously. They even sell bottle openers inside the building that are shaped like the building. Amazingly expensive or I would have bought one. Still might if I go back again. Anyway, we made our way there and were truly impressed by the size of the place (makes we wonder how mind-boggling the Burj Dubai is up close since it's almost twice the size of the SWFC). We paid our fee (around $AUD20 or so) and went into a waiting area for the elevators. Once inside, we were treated to soft white pulsing lights and some ambient almost video-game-ish music - very cool. The ride up to the 94th floor or so was extremely smooth - it didn't even feel like we were moving other than the tell-tale ear-popping associated with the change in pressure.
We quickly moved from floor 94 up to the highest observation platform in the world on the 100th floor - 474 metres up from the ground. We were treated to an excellent view of both sides of the city (very happy it was a clear night!) and took a bunch of pictures, although a good number of those suffered from window glare. After spending a bit of time looking around we went back down to the 94th floor to have a look at some of the (overpriced) merchandise, but ultimately decided against buying anything and went back down to the ground.
At this point we decided that since we'd been to the highest observatory in the world, we should probably have a drink at the highest bar in the world - conveniently located in the same building. The highest bar in the world is named 100 Century Avenue, and is actually part of the Park Hyatt hotel which is located in the SWFC. We had to go through a different entrance to get there (via metal detectors) and up a different (much less funky) elevator. Eventually a couple of stops later, we were on the 93rd floor and drinking beer in the highest bar in the world.
We didn't stay there very long as there actually weren't very many people around. The guys discovered the Japanese style toilets (the building was designed by a Japanese architect) so used them a couple of times before we left and made our way to Windows Scoreboard for a few more beers before calling it a night.
Located on Century Avenue (a pretty major street in Pudong), the SWFC building rises above all others in Shanghai...and looks like a giant bottle opener. Seriously. They even sell bottle openers inside the building that are shaped like the building. Amazingly expensive or I would have bought one. Still might if I go back again. Anyway, we made our way there and were truly impressed by the size of the place (makes we wonder how mind-boggling the Burj Dubai is up close since it's almost twice the size of the SWFC). We paid our fee (around $AUD20 or so) and went into a waiting area for the elevators. Once inside, we were treated to soft white pulsing lights and some ambient almost video-game-ish music - very cool. The ride up to the 94th floor or so was extremely smooth - it didn't even feel like we were moving other than the tell-tale ear-popping associated with the change in pressure.
We quickly moved from floor 94 up to the highest observation platform in the world on the 100th floor - 474 metres up from the ground. We were treated to an excellent view of both sides of the city (very happy it was a clear night!) and took a bunch of pictures, although a good number of those suffered from window glare. After spending a bit of time looking around we went back down to the 94th floor to have a look at some of the (overpriced) merchandise, but ultimately decided against buying anything and went back down to the ground.
At this point we decided that since we'd been to the highest observatory in the world, we should probably have a drink at the highest bar in the world - conveniently located in the same building. The highest bar in the world is named 100 Century Avenue, and is actually part of the Park Hyatt hotel which is located in the SWFC. We had to go through a different entrance to get there (via metal detectors) and up a different (much less funky) elevator. Eventually a couple of stops later, we were on the 93rd floor and drinking beer in the highest bar in the world.
We didn't stay there very long as there actually weren't very many people around. The guys discovered the Japanese style toilets (the building was designed by a Japanese architect) so used them a couple of times before we left and made our way to Windows Scoreboard for a few more beers before calling it a night.
Friday, May 15, 2009
11 days of mayhem - day 9
Monday the 13th of April we got up at around 10 (slightly hungover from the surprising amount of beer we drank the night before) to find the best day of the trip (weather-wise) had arrived. It was around 27 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.
We checked out of the hotel (which I'll definitely be going back to since it was in such a convenient location) and left our bags there to pick up later. Our flight was at 7, so we figured we had most of the day to wander around the two remaining places we wanted to visit - the Temple Of Heaven and the Forbidden City. We started off at the Temple Of Heaven - a short taxi ride away and no problem at all to get to thanks to the handy cards that the hotel gave us which had the names of places in English and Chinese next to each other. After grabbing a quick pastry from a nearby bakery, we made our way into the temple area.
We ummed and aaahed about getting mp3 players to give us an audio tour, but ended up deciding to to walk and see what we could see. I was given a map and delegated as the guide to the area by the other two lads who really weren't up to the task. The first thing that we noticed is that the ToH area is very big - 2.73 sq km to be precise. The guide started out by telling us that the main temple, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest is the most famous temple in the world. Well, none of us had ever heard of it, but there's no surprise there. The complex was built between 1406 and 1420, but was extensively restored in 2006 in preparation for the Olympics, so the facilities were pretty good and the garden areas looked immaculate.
e made our way past some of the smaller areas first. The Imperial Vault of Heaven is a series of three buildings containing the tablets of the God of Heaven, which were used in worship ceremonies. It was surrounded by Echo Wall, a big circular wall where you can supposedly speak in a normal voice at one point and have someone hear you on the other side. There were far too many people yelling at the wall for us to try, so I'll just have to assume that it's a bit of a crock. We finally made it to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, which is admittedly quite impressive (link), and spent a bit of time wandering around taking photos and being, well, tourists. After a couple of hours in the temple grounds, we decided to leave and make our way to the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City was back over near Tiananmen Square, so we hopped into a taxi and were there in no time at all. Once again we decided to forego the audio guide and simply wandered around ourselves. This time we couldn't find anywhere to get a good map like at the ToH, so we just had to make do with reading the signs on each of the buildings that we went past. It was built around the same time as the ToH (1406), and had some extremely impressive buildings. I noticed quite a few large copper pots around the place, and towards the end of the visit found the reason for them - they used to be filled with water and used to fight any fires that broke out inside the complex. There were more than 300 of these pots, and although they are pretty big and could hold quite a bit of water, I wonder how effective they would have been if a really big fire had broken out.
We wandered along taking pictures of the different buildings (names like 'Hall of Supreme Harmony', 'Hall of Preserving Harmony', 'Hall of Central Harmony' - I'm sensing a theme), statues and stones. There is one stone inventively named 'The Large Stone', which is a huge stone ramp with a number of dragons carved on the front. It weighs around 200 tonnes and is the largest such carving in all of China. All in all, we were suitably impressed by everything the Forbidden City had to offer, and ended up finishing our visit in a couple of hours.
At this point we stopped to get some lunch, and then went back to the hotel to get our bags and made our way to the airport. We had figured that traffic would be a lot worse (being a weekday), but we still got out there in less than an hour, and in fact had arrived too early to check in. So we sat down in KFC and utilised the free wifi for a while before getting on our plane and getting back to Shanghai. We were fairly buggered when we got home (at 10:30pm or so) so we had only the second night on the entire trip where we didn't have a single beer. My liver was very happy.
We checked out of the hotel (which I'll definitely be going back to since it was in such a convenient location) and left our bags there to pick up later. Our flight was at 7, so we figured we had most of the day to wander around the two remaining places we wanted to visit - the Temple Of Heaven and the Forbidden City. We started off at the Temple Of Heaven - a short taxi ride away and no problem at all to get to thanks to the handy cards that the hotel gave us which had the names of places in English and Chinese next to each other. After grabbing a quick pastry from a nearby bakery, we made our way into the temple area.
We ummed and aaahed about getting mp3 players to give us an audio tour, but ended up deciding to to walk and see what we could see. I was given a map and delegated as the guide to the area by the other two lads who really weren't up to the task. The first thing that we noticed is that the ToH area is very big - 2.73 sq km to be precise. The guide started out by telling us that the main temple, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest is the most famous temple in the world. Well, none of us had ever heard of it, but there's no surprise there. The complex was built between 1406 and 1420, but was extensively restored in 2006 in preparation for the Olympics, so the facilities were pretty good and the garden areas looked immaculate.
e made our way past some of the smaller areas first. The Imperial Vault of Heaven is a series of three buildings containing the tablets of the God of Heaven, which were used in worship ceremonies. It was surrounded by Echo Wall, a big circular wall where you can supposedly speak in a normal voice at one point and have someone hear you on the other side. There were far too many people yelling at the wall for us to try, so I'll just have to assume that it's a bit of a crock. We finally made it to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, which is admittedly quite impressive (link), and spent a bit of time wandering around taking photos and being, well, tourists. After a couple of hours in the temple grounds, we decided to leave and make our way to the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City was back over near Tiananmen Square, so we hopped into a taxi and were there in no time at all. Once again we decided to forego the audio guide and simply wandered around ourselves. This time we couldn't find anywhere to get a good map like at the ToH, so we just had to make do with reading the signs on each of the buildings that we went past. It was built around the same time as the ToH (1406), and had some extremely impressive buildings. I noticed quite a few large copper pots around the place, and towards the end of the visit found the reason for them - they used to be filled with water and used to fight any fires that broke out inside the complex. There were more than 300 of these pots, and although they are pretty big and could hold quite a bit of water, I wonder how effective they would have been if a really big fire had broken out.
We wandered along taking pictures of the different buildings (names like 'Hall of Supreme Harmony', 'Hall of Preserving Harmony', 'Hall of Central Harmony' - I'm sensing a theme), statues and stones. There is one stone inventively named 'The Large Stone', which is a huge stone ramp with a number of dragons carved on the front. It weighs around 200 tonnes and is the largest such carving in all of China. All in all, we were suitably impressed by everything the Forbidden City had to offer, and ended up finishing our visit in a couple of hours.
At this point we stopped to get some lunch, and then went back to the hotel to get our bags and made our way to the airport. We had figured that traffic would be a lot worse (being a weekday), but we still got out there in less than an hour, and in fact had arrived too early to check in. So we sat down in KFC and utilised the free wifi for a while before getting on our plane and getting back to Shanghai. We were fairly buggered when we got home (at 10:30pm or so) so we had only the second night on the entire trip where we didn't have a single beer. My liver was very happy.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
11 days of mayhem - day 8
Sunday the 12th of April was the day we climbed the Great Wall of China. We got up at around 9ish and were quite happy that we had left Club Banana at a reasonable hour the night before. We skipped breakfast (silly move in hindsight) and made our way downstairs to find our driver Edward (the one that was recommended to me) waiting for us. He took us to his car (nice sedan with the all important air-conditioning) and we got underway.
I had intended on asking him to stop somewhere to get some breakfast, but there were no immediately obvious options. We asked Edward a few questions along the way, but he had some problems with our accents, so we ended up with some answers to questions we hadn't even asked, which was quite funny. The trip to the wall ended up taking about 90 minutes. Once we arrived, Edward organised some tickets for us and said he'd be waiting for us in the car park whenever we were done. After that, we were on our own.
There are a number of different sections to the Great Wall that can be visited - we went to the Mutiyani section, which has a cable-car which would take us up part of the way and we could then hike in either direction for as long as we wanted (or until we ran out of wall - some sections are closed off as they are too dangerous for the public). We bought ourselves some bananas for a snack, stopped off at a restaurant and had some noodles and beer to keep us going, and then got underway.
The cable-car trip up to the top was uneventful, though I wouldn't have liked to do it if I was afraid of heights. The cars have been in operation for a long time and supposedly have never had an accident, which was reassuring I guess. Anyway, after a pretty quick trip we were on the wall. It's pretty hard to describe how awe-inspiring the wall is when you're actually on it. It took centuries to build, has been around for a couple of thousand years, stretches for more than 8800km, more than 2 million Chinese died during its construction - and we were standing on it! As Shotty and Cookie put it when I asked them what they thought about it: "it's pretty great" (pun completely intended, I'm sure).
We had been shown by Edward that we could walk to the west for a kilometre or two before we would run into a section that was closed off, so we got underway. The condition of the wall was pretty good (had obviously been repaired/restored in parts) and there were plenty of other tourists to keep us company along the way. There were also a number of enterprising locals that were selling drinks and snacks on the wall itself, although they didn't really detract from the experience as you might expect. We took it reasonably easy, soaking everything in and stopping at each new section to take in the surroundings. The walk itself didn't seem too difficult until we got to an extremely steep part right near the end, when it became fairly hard work. Once at the top we were unable to continue any further, so we stopped for a bit of a rest and marvelled at the fact that we were actually climbed the Great Wall of China.
We made our way back and a slightly faster pace, and found ourselves back at the base of the wall within about 2 hours. At this point we noticed a toboggan slide that went down a different part of the wall, and figured we'd give it a try. We paid the fee and got into a different cable car to go up to the section where the slide began. Unfortunately, we found that a lot of other people had exactly the same idea as us, and it took quite a while to get to the front of the queue. Once we finally did, we hit another hurdle - we were told start shortly after the person in front of us had departed. This meant that if that person was slow, we would catch them in no time, and have no real chance to get any speed happening. As luck would have it, that's exactly what happened. A girl and her mother got on right in front of us, and took it vvveeeerrrrryyyy ssssllllooooowwww down the entire course. Shotty, Cookie and I had a bit of fun almost smashing into each other, and we did completely apply the brakes in a few instances so that we could get a bit of distance between us and the people in front of us, but it still wasn't anywhere near as fun as it could have been.
At this time we made our way back to Edward, who was waiting for us near the car park. He suggested that we stop to get some food on the way home, and we were hungry enough by this time to agree. A number of villages are near the Mutiyani section of the Great Wall, and one area that we went through was famous for its fish. Edward picked out a restaurant for us, and after sitting down we noticed that we were right next to a pool of fish swimming around lazily. He motioned for us to pick a couple, and a waiter with a net deftly captured our purchases as soon as we pointed them out. Less than 10 minutes later, the fish had arrived on our table (along with a number of other dishes) and it was absolutely delicious. We stuffed ourselves there for almost an hour before getting back in the car and falling asleep on the trip back to Shanghai.
The walk along the wall (and the kilometres of walking we did the day before) had taken its toll, because after getting back to the hotel around 4, we all decided it would be in our interests to have an afternoon nap. We snoozed for about two hours before getting up and deciding upon a place to get beer and food. We figured we should get some Peking Duck since we were in Peking after all, so made a quick trip down to the local internet cafe to try to find a place. The first few places that I found ended up being dead ends (phones just rang out) so we decided to go back to the hotel and ask them to recommend a place. They circled a street on the map where we could go, and within 10 minutes we were sitting down in a restaurant. We got our Peking Duck (I'm not a fan, personally) amongst some other tasty dishes, and settled down to a cold refreshing beer.
The cold refreshing beer ended up tasting pretty damn good, so we decided it would be in our best interests to go find some more. We visited a couple more bars during the evening and ended up consuming far more than we had originally expected. Still, we ended up getting home by 2 since we still had one day left of sightseeing in Beijing.
I had intended on asking him to stop somewhere to get some breakfast, but there were no immediately obvious options. We asked Edward a few questions along the way, but he had some problems with our accents, so we ended up with some answers to questions we hadn't even asked, which was quite funny. The trip to the wall ended up taking about 90 minutes. Once we arrived, Edward organised some tickets for us and said he'd be waiting for us in the car park whenever we were done. After that, we were on our own.
There are a number of different sections to the Great Wall that can be visited - we went to the Mutiyani section, which has a cable-car which would take us up part of the way and we could then hike in either direction for as long as we wanted (or until we ran out of wall - some sections are closed off as they are too dangerous for the public). We bought ourselves some bananas for a snack, stopped off at a restaurant and had some noodles and beer to keep us going, and then got underway.
The cable-car trip up to the top was uneventful, though I wouldn't have liked to do it if I was afraid of heights. The cars have been in operation for a long time and supposedly have never had an accident, which was reassuring I guess. Anyway, after a pretty quick trip we were on the wall. It's pretty hard to describe how awe-inspiring the wall is when you're actually on it. It took centuries to build, has been around for a couple of thousand years, stretches for more than 8800km, more than 2 million Chinese died during its construction - and we were standing on it! As Shotty and Cookie put it when I asked them what they thought about it: "it's pretty great" (pun completely intended, I'm sure).
We had been shown by Edward that we could walk to the west for a kilometre or two before we would run into a section that was closed off, so we got underway. The condition of the wall was pretty good (had obviously been repaired/restored in parts) and there were plenty of other tourists to keep us company along the way. There were also a number of enterprising locals that were selling drinks and snacks on the wall itself, although they didn't really detract from the experience as you might expect. We took it reasonably easy, soaking everything in and stopping at each new section to take in the surroundings. The walk itself didn't seem too difficult until we got to an extremely steep part right near the end, when it became fairly hard work. Once at the top we were unable to continue any further, so we stopped for a bit of a rest and marvelled at the fact that we were actually climbed the Great Wall of China.
We made our way back and a slightly faster pace, and found ourselves back at the base of the wall within about 2 hours. At this point we noticed a toboggan slide that went down a different part of the wall, and figured we'd give it a try. We paid the fee and got into a different cable car to go up to the section where the slide began. Unfortunately, we found that a lot of other people had exactly the same idea as us, and it took quite a while to get to the front of the queue. Once we finally did, we hit another hurdle - we were told start shortly after the person in front of us had departed. This meant that if that person was slow, we would catch them in no time, and have no real chance to get any speed happening. As luck would have it, that's exactly what happened. A girl and her mother got on right in front of us, and took it vvveeeerrrrryyyy ssssllllooooowwww down the entire course. Shotty, Cookie and I had a bit of fun almost smashing into each other, and we did completely apply the brakes in a few instances so that we could get a bit of distance between us and the people in front of us, but it still wasn't anywhere near as fun as it could have been.
At this time we made our way back to Edward, who was waiting for us near the car park. He suggested that we stop to get some food on the way home, and we were hungry enough by this time to agree. A number of villages are near the Mutiyani section of the Great Wall, and one area that we went through was famous for its fish. Edward picked out a restaurant for us, and after sitting down we noticed that we were right next to a pool of fish swimming around lazily. He motioned for us to pick a couple, and a waiter with a net deftly captured our purchases as soon as we pointed them out. Less than 10 minutes later, the fish had arrived on our table (along with a number of other dishes) and it was absolutely delicious. We stuffed ourselves there for almost an hour before getting back in the car and falling asleep on the trip back to Shanghai.
The walk along the wall (and the kilometres of walking we did the day before) had taken its toll, because after getting back to the hotel around 4, we all decided it would be in our interests to have an afternoon nap. We snoozed for about two hours before getting up and deciding upon a place to get beer and food. We figured we should get some Peking Duck since we were in Peking after all, so made a quick trip down to the local internet cafe to try to find a place. The first few places that I found ended up being dead ends (phones just rang out) so we decided to go back to the hotel and ask them to recommend a place. They circled a street on the map where we could go, and within 10 minutes we were sitting down in a restaurant. We got our Peking Duck (I'm not a fan, personally) amongst some other tasty dishes, and settled down to a cold refreshing beer.
The cold refreshing beer ended up tasting pretty damn good, so we decided it would be in our best interests to go find some more. We visited a couple more bars during the evening and ended up consuming far more than we had originally expected. Still, we ended up getting home by 2 since we still had one day left of sightseeing in Beijing.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Hot pot and beer usually spells a big night out
Friday night I had a fairly big night - I went out for dinner with 4 other co-workers after work. We tried to go to my favourite hot pot restaurant (Little Sheep), only to find that they were closed for renovations. Devastated! Luckily, we knew of another option that was only about 1km away, so we made our way there. It was a good thing we had some locals with us because unlike Little Sheep, this restaurant didn't have an English menu, so there is no way I would have been able to order anything.
Anyway, the food was good, but not up to the LS standard. We ended up drinking about 12 longneck bottles of beer between us and consumed an astonishing amount of food...for the grand total of $12 each :) I've said it before and I'll say it again - the value you get for Australian money over here is astonishing sometimes.
After the meal one of the other guys was keen to kick on, so we went over to Puxi to an English bar named the Bulldog to meet up with some of his friends (two Poms and a Yank). I've mentioned the Bulldog in a previous post when I went there and saw Manchester United vs Arsenal. Well, this time there was no soccer on, and it was much quieter as a result. We stayed there for a couple of pints and then moved on to another bar named 'The Shelter', which was a pretty funky underground bar in what seemed to be an actual bomb shelter.
It took a bit of finding - I seem to recall that the door kind of appeared out of nowhere, and was not well marked at all. After paying a $5 cover charge (a rarity in the bars that I've been to over here) we walked down an extremely steep set of stairs, then down a claustrophobic's nightmare hallway, and out into a bunker-type area. The bar stretched out on the left, and a number of people were dancing in-between some massive concrete pillars that seemed to be dotted around the place holding the roof up. It was bizarre, but kind of cool. Probably would have been better if there had been more people. That and the fact that the music was average (hip-hop crap) meant that we only stayed for about half an hour before migrating to Zapatas, another bar that was close by.
We went to Zapatas for the fabled '1am Popcorn Party' - at 1am on certain Friday nights, they unleash a sea of popcorn on the dancefloor. We got there about 10 minutes before 1, and took up our positions on the side of the (packed) dancefloor and waited....and waited...and waited...and it didn't happen! We had thought it was every Friday, but maybe it only happens on the first Friday of the month or something. Anyway, we stayed there for a few hours and moved on to our final place of the evening, but I can't remember what it was called (was pretty pissed by this stage if you hadn't already guessed). Had a few beers there before calling it a night just after 4am.
Remarkably, considering the amount I drank, I woke up feeling pretty good on the Saturday. In fact, I was even well enough to go out and play basketball for a couple of hours in the afternoon. In 32 degree heat. This was perhaps a little optimistic in hindsight, because I got home afterwards and absolutely crashed. I had been intending on going out again on the Saturday night, but ended up falling asleep in front of the TV at about 9pm.
Happily, this meant that I woke up as fresh as a daisy on Sunday. I guess there are some side benefits to having a quiet night in after all.
Anyway, the food was good, but not up to the LS standard. We ended up drinking about 12 longneck bottles of beer between us and consumed an astonishing amount of food...for the grand total of $12 each :) I've said it before and I'll say it again - the value you get for Australian money over here is astonishing sometimes.
After the meal one of the other guys was keen to kick on, so we went over to Puxi to an English bar named the Bulldog to meet up with some of his friends (two Poms and a Yank). I've mentioned the Bulldog in a previous post when I went there and saw Manchester United vs Arsenal. Well, this time there was no soccer on, and it was much quieter as a result. We stayed there for a couple of pints and then moved on to another bar named 'The Shelter', which was a pretty funky underground bar in what seemed to be an actual bomb shelter.
It took a bit of finding - I seem to recall that the door kind of appeared out of nowhere, and was not well marked at all. After paying a $5 cover charge (a rarity in the bars that I've been to over here) we walked down an extremely steep set of stairs, then down a claustrophobic's nightmare hallway, and out into a bunker-type area. The bar stretched out on the left, and a number of people were dancing in-between some massive concrete pillars that seemed to be dotted around the place holding the roof up. It was bizarre, but kind of cool. Probably would have been better if there had been more people. That and the fact that the music was average (hip-hop crap) meant that we only stayed for about half an hour before migrating to Zapatas, another bar that was close by.
We went to Zapatas for the fabled '1am Popcorn Party' - at 1am on certain Friday nights, they unleash a sea of popcorn on the dancefloor. We got there about 10 minutes before 1, and took up our positions on the side of the (packed) dancefloor and waited....and waited...and waited...and it didn't happen! We had thought it was every Friday, but maybe it only happens on the first Friday of the month or something. Anyway, we stayed there for a few hours and moved on to our final place of the evening, but I can't remember what it was called (was pretty pissed by this stage if you hadn't already guessed). Had a few beers there before calling it a night just after 4am.
Remarkably, considering the amount I drank, I woke up feeling pretty good on the Saturday. In fact, I was even well enough to go out and play basketball for a couple of hours in the afternoon. In 32 degree heat. This was perhaps a little optimistic in hindsight, because I got home afterwards and absolutely crashed. I had been intending on going out again on the Saturday night, but ended up falling asleep in front of the TV at about 9pm.
Happily, this meant that I woke up as fresh as a daisy on Sunday. I guess there are some side benefits to having a quiet night in after all.
Friday, May 8, 2009
11 days of mayhem - day 7
So we got up on the Saturday and dragged ourselves out of bed at around 8am. Three hours of sleep is definitely not recommended when you've got to make an early flight. We threw our clothes into a couple of bags, flagged down a taxi and got out to the Hongqiao airport in reasonable time. The 2 hour flight went past pretty quickly, and before we knew it, we were in Beijing.
Well, at the airport anyway. The airport in Beijing is a goodly distance out of the city itself, so we had a 30 minute taxi ride or so to marvel at...well, not much. It's one of the few places in China that I've been to where there weren't buildings lining the road for the entire trip. Seriously, I've been to places about 2 hours drive away from Shanghai, and the entire drive just felt like we were going through the suburbs at 100km per hour.
I had been responsible for choosing the hotel when I booked the flights online, so I had the address of our hotel in Chinese, so the taxi driver knew exactly where we were going...but we didn't. We took quite a few turns and went down a number of side-streets before we finally turned into a little alleyway which had a name that I recognised - it was the street that our hotel was on. We were a little taken aback at first, as this street was filled with kids running around, street vendors selling their wares - we weren't sure what I had gotten us into. However, after being dropped off at the hotel (and getting past some initial confusion about our names), we got our 3-bed room, and were quite happy with the facilities. We dropped of our bags, picked up a map from the helpful girls at the front desk, and went off in search of something we would recognise.
It didn't take long. The ShaTan Hotel that we stayed at was only a kilometre or so away from the Forbidden City. We walked around the moat that surrounded it, stopping to take pictures here and there, and had a quick discussion about whether we should go in or not. We decided to move on, as we still had two days left to come back and see that area. We wandered further down the road and found ourselves at Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square is massive. I didn't realise how big the place was until I laid eyes on it - it really is extremely large. It was originally built back in the 1600s, but only came to be it's current size back in the 1950s. We took a few pictures in front of the gate with the big poster of Chairman Mao, and then wandered around the square itself. In the middle of TS is the Monument to People's Heroes, which is a big pillar dedicated to all the people who died fighting in the revolutionary struggles of China during the 19th and 20th centuries. Unfortunately we were unable to get anywhere near it, as the steps leading up to the monument itself were guarded by a couple of soldiers. We walked past the monument and the multitudes of hawkers trying to sell us watches or cameras, and up Chairman Mao's mausoleum. This imposing structure is the final resting place of Chairman Mao, and would have been interesting to visit...but it was already closed for the day. The security arrangements were also quite strict - you needed to leave all cameras, bags, phones, wallets etc at the entrance, and you required official ID (e.g. passport, which we didn't have with us) in order to gain entrance.
After a quick bite to eat (not very many places to get food or drink around the entire TS area) we wandered past a few of the other major buildings (Great Hall of the People, National Museum of China) and decided we'd seen enough of the area. Our next stop was the Bird's Nest stadium and the Olympic area. We looked vainly for a taxi for about half an hour before giving up (terrible layout for tourists - massive 6 lane one-way roads surround the entire area, and there are fences blocking access to the roads, so even if you could manage to flag down a taxi, you'd have no way to actually get into it) and finding the nearest subway station. We had to take three different subway lines to get to the Bird's Nest stadium, but it ended up being extremely cheap (40c AUS to go to any station on any line) and didn't take too long. The stadium itself had it's own station (obviously built for the millions of people visiting during the Olympics), and only five minutes after getting off the train we were at our destination.
The Bird's Nest is an amazing piece of architecture - a stadium that has a unique appearance, it's the largest steel structure in the entire world and cost almost half a billion US dollars. And just like Tiananmen Square, I was amazed at how large it is. We were interested in going inside on a tour, but we all the gates were locked and we couldn't find anyone that could tell us if tours were even on offer or not. At any rate, we had no opportunity to go inside, so we simply took a bunch of pictures and moved on. We wandered down the rest of the Olympic Green (lots of open space as you would expect with so many stadiums and Olympic venues around) and had a look at the Water Cube before sitting down and relaxing for a bit. At this point I called Edward, a guy whose number I had gotten from someone I met in Shanghai. Edward is a Beijing local that hires himself and his nice car out for trips to the Great Wall. We arranged a time for him to pick us up the next day, and ater a few more photos and a quick cup of noodles for Cookie, we decided it was time to get back to the hotel.
After a quick shower and change at the hotel, we were ready to head out and get some dinner and have a few beverages. We didn't really have any plans on a place to eat, so we just went to the Workers Stadium, a large soccer stadium which supposedly also had a bunch of bars nearby. Upon arriving we found a half a dozen bars within a short distance...and an Outback Steakhouse restaurant. For those of you that haven't been overseas and had the pleasure, the Outback Steakhouse is a restaurant that claims to be 'Australian'. In the past, they've had dishes like 'Kookaburra Wings', and 'Roo burgers'...things that we obviously don't eat in Australia. Add that to the fact that they don't actually stock any Australian beer, and the place is a bit of a joke. However, we were hungry, and they do sell some decent burgers there, so we went in and chowed down on some grub. After a few quick beers, we decided we'd try out one or two of the nearby nightclubs to see what they were like.
The first thing that turned me off was the fact that each place had a cover charge - never like having to pay to get into a place. We went down into a place named VICS, got a funky ultra-violet stamp on our wrists, and entered...to the booming sounds of R&B music. For those of you that know me well, you'll know that I hate that particular genre of music, so I was not impressed, to say the least. The atmosphere seemed ok, although the place was pretty empty (it was about 9pm or so) and we ended up only staying for a couple of beers before leaving. We tried out one of the other bars (MIX), which was right next door and had an extremely similar decor and style of music. At this time I suggested we go looking for a club that I'd read about during my extremely brief investigation of places to go in Beijing - Club Banana. This proved to be more difficult than we had expected.
We got into a taxi and I showed him the address (in Chinese) that I had written down. He initially said 'ok', and started driving, but after a while he asked to see the address again and that's when the problems started. He drove us to a major road that he seemed to think was the place, and couldn't find any buildings which matched the number. He then stopped the taxi and rang someone on the phone (I couldn't get through to the club on my mobile to get directions) to try to find the place. When they didn't know where it was, he stopped at a nearby taxi rank and asked another driver for directions. When they didn't know, he gave up. We ended up going right back to where we started, and while it didn't cost us much (only $AUS6 in total), it was a pain in the backside. We were going to give up and walk around to try to find somewhere else, but I suggested trying one more taxi driver...and this guy actually knew where he was going.
We rocked up at the funky-looking Club Banana a bit after 10, and were quite pleased by what we saw. It's a massive multi-floor club, with a smallish dancefloor and bars on different levels. The music was much better than we'd been subjected to earlier (much dancier which suited the three of us just fine), and the place was extremely busy which added to the atmosphere. Shotty tried to take some pictures of the place at one point, but one of the DJs on the stage got out a laser pointer and pointed it right at us, and a staff member approached us pretty quickly to ask that we put our cameras away. It was a bit odd. Anyway, we picked out a good empty spot with convenient access to the bar and a bit of space for some dancing if the mood took us, and proceeded to while away the next few hours listening to some good tunes. We could have ended up staying there until the early hours of the morning, but considering we were going to be climbing the Great Wall the next day, we prudently decided at around 1am it might be best if we went back to the hotel and got a decent night's sleep.
Well, at the airport anyway. The airport in Beijing is a goodly distance out of the city itself, so we had a 30 minute taxi ride or so to marvel at...well, not much. It's one of the few places in China that I've been to where there weren't buildings lining the road for the entire trip. Seriously, I've been to places about 2 hours drive away from Shanghai, and the entire drive just felt like we were going through the suburbs at 100km per hour.
I had been responsible for choosing the hotel when I booked the flights online, so I had the address of our hotel in Chinese, so the taxi driver knew exactly where we were going...but we didn't. We took quite a few turns and went down a number of side-streets before we finally turned into a little alleyway which had a name that I recognised - it was the street that our hotel was on. We were a little taken aback at first, as this street was filled with kids running around, street vendors selling their wares - we weren't sure what I had gotten us into. However, after being dropped off at the hotel (and getting past some initial confusion about our names), we got our 3-bed room, and were quite happy with the facilities. We dropped of our bags, picked up a map from the helpful girls at the front desk, and went off in search of something we would recognise.
It didn't take long. The ShaTan Hotel that we stayed at was only a kilometre or so away from the Forbidden City. We walked around the moat that surrounded it, stopping to take pictures here and there, and had a quick discussion about whether we should go in or not. We decided to move on, as we still had two days left to come back and see that area. We wandered further down the road and found ourselves at Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square is massive. I didn't realise how big the place was until I laid eyes on it - it really is extremely large. It was originally built back in the 1600s, but only came to be it's current size back in the 1950s. We took a few pictures in front of the gate with the big poster of Chairman Mao, and then wandered around the square itself. In the middle of TS is the Monument to People's Heroes, which is a big pillar dedicated to all the people who died fighting in the revolutionary struggles of China during the 19th and 20th centuries. Unfortunately we were unable to get anywhere near it, as the steps leading up to the monument itself were guarded by a couple of soldiers. We walked past the monument and the multitudes of hawkers trying to sell us watches or cameras, and up Chairman Mao's mausoleum. This imposing structure is the final resting place of Chairman Mao, and would have been interesting to visit...but it was already closed for the day. The security arrangements were also quite strict - you needed to leave all cameras, bags, phones, wallets etc at the entrance, and you required official ID (e.g. passport, which we didn't have with us) in order to gain entrance.
After a quick bite to eat (not very many places to get food or drink around the entire TS area) we wandered past a few of the other major buildings (Great Hall of the People, National Museum of China) and decided we'd seen enough of the area. Our next stop was the Bird's Nest stadium and the Olympic area. We looked vainly for a taxi for about half an hour before giving up (terrible layout for tourists - massive 6 lane one-way roads surround the entire area, and there are fences blocking access to the roads, so even if you could manage to flag down a taxi, you'd have no way to actually get into it) and finding the nearest subway station. We had to take three different subway lines to get to the Bird's Nest stadium, but it ended up being extremely cheap (40c AUS to go to any station on any line) and didn't take too long. The stadium itself had it's own station (obviously built for the millions of people visiting during the Olympics), and only five minutes after getting off the train we were at our destination.
The Bird's Nest is an amazing piece of architecture - a stadium that has a unique appearance, it's the largest steel structure in the entire world and cost almost half a billion US dollars. And just like Tiananmen Square, I was amazed at how large it is. We were interested in going inside on a tour, but we all the gates were locked and we couldn't find anyone that could tell us if tours were even on offer or not. At any rate, we had no opportunity to go inside, so we simply took a bunch of pictures and moved on. We wandered down the rest of the Olympic Green (lots of open space as you would expect with so many stadiums and Olympic venues around) and had a look at the Water Cube before sitting down and relaxing for a bit. At this point I called Edward, a guy whose number I had gotten from someone I met in Shanghai. Edward is a Beijing local that hires himself and his nice car out for trips to the Great Wall. We arranged a time for him to pick us up the next day, and ater a few more photos and a quick cup of noodles for Cookie, we decided it was time to get back to the hotel.
After a quick shower and change at the hotel, we were ready to head out and get some dinner and have a few beverages. We didn't really have any plans on a place to eat, so we just went to the Workers Stadium, a large soccer stadium which supposedly also had a bunch of bars nearby. Upon arriving we found a half a dozen bars within a short distance...and an Outback Steakhouse restaurant. For those of you that haven't been overseas and had the pleasure, the Outback Steakhouse is a restaurant that claims to be 'Australian'. In the past, they've had dishes like 'Kookaburra Wings', and 'Roo burgers'...things that we obviously don't eat in Australia. Add that to the fact that they don't actually stock any Australian beer, and the place is a bit of a joke. However, we were hungry, and they do sell some decent burgers there, so we went in and chowed down on some grub. After a few quick beers, we decided we'd try out one or two of the nearby nightclubs to see what they were like.
The first thing that turned me off was the fact that each place had a cover charge - never like having to pay to get into a place. We went down into a place named VICS, got a funky ultra-violet stamp on our wrists, and entered...to the booming sounds of R&B music. For those of you that know me well, you'll know that I hate that particular genre of music, so I was not impressed, to say the least. The atmosphere seemed ok, although the place was pretty empty (it was about 9pm or so) and we ended up only staying for a couple of beers before leaving. We tried out one of the other bars (MIX), which was right next door and had an extremely similar decor and style of music. At this time I suggested we go looking for a club that I'd read about during my extremely brief investigation of places to go in Beijing - Club Banana. This proved to be more difficult than we had expected.
We got into a taxi and I showed him the address (in Chinese) that I had written down. He initially said 'ok', and started driving, but after a while he asked to see the address again and that's when the problems started. He drove us to a major road that he seemed to think was the place, and couldn't find any buildings which matched the number. He then stopped the taxi and rang someone on the phone (I couldn't get through to the club on my mobile to get directions) to try to find the place. When they didn't know where it was, he stopped at a nearby taxi rank and asked another driver for directions. When they didn't know, he gave up. We ended up going right back to where we started, and while it didn't cost us much (only $AUS6 in total), it was a pain in the backside. We were going to give up and walk around to try to find somewhere else, but I suggested trying one more taxi driver...and this guy actually knew where he was going.
We rocked up at the funky-looking Club Banana a bit after 10, and were quite pleased by what we saw. It's a massive multi-floor club, with a smallish dancefloor and bars on different levels. The music was much better than we'd been subjected to earlier (much dancier which suited the three of us just fine), and the place was extremely busy which added to the atmosphere. Shotty tried to take some pictures of the place at one point, but one of the DJs on the stage got out a laser pointer and pointed it right at us, and a staff member approached us pretty quickly to ask that we put our cameras away. It was a bit odd. Anyway, we picked out a good empty spot with convenient access to the bar and a bit of space for some dancing if the mood took us, and proceeded to while away the next few hours listening to some good tunes. We could have ended up staying there until the early hours of the morning, but considering we were going to be climbing the Great Wall the next day, we prudently decided at around 1am it might be best if we went back to the hotel and got a decent night's sleep.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
11 days of mayhem - day 6
Friday the 10th of April was a massive day/night. The boys went out and did some shopping around Shanghai, while I worked my behind off in preparation for a long weekend in Beijing. I got home at around 7pm, and after a quick change we went out in search of Kakadu.
Kakadu is a small Aussie bar over in Puxi, near Xin Tian Di. Well, at least we thought it was. We'd been given a card by Sam, a girl we met the day the guys arrived, who was in charge of putting together an 'Aussie Drinks' night each Friday night. The card had directions on how to get to the bar, but we showed it to two taxi drivers and they didn't know how to take us there. Finally we just asked to go to Xin Tian Di as we figured we could just walk the rest of the way from there.
After getting directions from a helpful porter and walking for almost 20 minutes, we made it to the bar. We entered to find a much more business-type crowd than we were expecting - it seemed like a much more mature crowd than us, although there were a few people around our age. It was a sponsored event, which meant that beer was half-price between 6:30 and 9:30pm...although this ended up meaning that beers were still $5 per bottle, which I suppose is a pretty reasonable price for an imported beer. It gave me the chance to have a Coopers Pale Ale and a few Pure Blondes, which I haven't had since I've been here, so it was a nice change. We stayed around for about 2 hours and entered into a raffle...and Shotty actually won something. Not the grand prize of a trip to Tokyo, or the second prize which was 4 slabs of Aussie beer...he won a bottle of win and some meat vouchers, which he promptly gave to me. Not being a wine drinker, and not having an oven to cook the meat in meant that the prize was not really very useful. We gave the wine to Sam and the meat vouchers...well, they're still around here somewhere and have expired by now. Never mind.
I had planned on taking the guys to Windows Scoreboard for some cheap beers and pool-playing, but Sam mentioned that she and some friends were going to another bar named 'The Spot', which is on the famous Tongren Rd bar strip. Turns out Friday nights is free margarhita night for ladies from 10pm onwards, so we figured we'd go along and see what it was like. As you would expect when there are free drinks on offer, it was absolutely packed, so we got a table near the entrance and got ourselves some pizza for dinner. We had planned on having a (reasonably) quiet night, since we had to get up by 8:30 on Saturday for our flight to Beijing. Unfortunately, the best laid plans can often go awry. The Coronas at The Spot were tasting fantastic, so we got stuck into them. Shotty and Cookie did a few shots with some of the other people that we met there, and the night was off and running. We spent a few more hours at The Spot and were then whisked away to Velvet Lounge, another bar that stays open for most of the night.
That place was the busiest bar I've ever been to in my life. The somewhat common practice over here of no bouncers on the door meant that people just kept piling in. It was almost like being at Derby Day during the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival - too hard to get anywhere and very difficult to get a drink. Nevertheless, we ended up staying there until just after 4. We had previously considered staying up for the entire night and going straight to the airport in the morning, but a shred of common sense prevailed and we got out of there to grab a couple of hours sleep before our trip.
Kakadu is a small Aussie bar over in Puxi, near Xin Tian Di. Well, at least we thought it was. We'd been given a card by Sam, a girl we met the day the guys arrived, who was in charge of putting together an 'Aussie Drinks' night each Friday night. The card had directions on how to get to the bar, but we showed it to two taxi drivers and they didn't know how to take us there. Finally we just asked to go to Xin Tian Di as we figured we could just walk the rest of the way from there.
After getting directions from a helpful porter and walking for almost 20 minutes, we made it to the bar. We entered to find a much more business-type crowd than we were expecting - it seemed like a much more mature crowd than us, although there were a few people around our age. It was a sponsored event, which meant that beer was half-price between 6:30 and 9:30pm...although this ended up meaning that beers were still $5 per bottle, which I suppose is a pretty reasonable price for an imported beer. It gave me the chance to have a Coopers Pale Ale and a few Pure Blondes, which I haven't had since I've been here, so it was a nice change. We stayed around for about 2 hours and entered into a raffle...and Shotty actually won something. Not the grand prize of a trip to Tokyo, or the second prize which was 4 slabs of Aussie beer...he won a bottle of win and some meat vouchers, which he promptly gave to me. Not being a wine drinker, and not having an oven to cook the meat in meant that the prize was not really very useful. We gave the wine to Sam and the meat vouchers...well, they're still around here somewhere and have expired by now. Never mind.
I had planned on taking the guys to Windows Scoreboard for some cheap beers and pool-playing, but Sam mentioned that she and some friends were going to another bar named 'The Spot', which is on the famous Tongren Rd bar strip. Turns out Friday nights is free margarhita night for ladies from 10pm onwards, so we figured we'd go along and see what it was like. As you would expect when there are free drinks on offer, it was absolutely packed, so we got a table near the entrance and got ourselves some pizza for dinner. We had planned on having a (reasonably) quiet night, since we had to get up by 8:30 on Saturday for our flight to Beijing. Unfortunately, the best laid plans can often go awry. The Coronas at The Spot were tasting fantastic, so we got stuck into them. Shotty and Cookie did a few shots with some of the other people that we met there, and the night was off and running. We spent a few more hours at The Spot and were then whisked away to Velvet Lounge, another bar that stays open for most of the night.
That place was the busiest bar I've ever been to in my life. The somewhat common practice over here of no bouncers on the door meant that people just kept piling in. It was almost like being at Derby Day during the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival - too hard to get anywhere and very difficult to get a drink. Nevertheless, we ended up staying there until just after 4. We had previously considered staying up for the entire night and going straight to the airport in the morning, but a shred of common sense prevailed and we got out of there to grab a couple of hours sleep before our trip.
Monday, May 4, 2009
11 days of mayhem - day 5
Been very slack in getting these online! Onto the next few days before the trip to Beijing.
The guys spent Thursday the 9th on a day trip to Hangzhou. The 90 minute train ride meant that they didn't get back until after 8:30, and they were both buggered from a busy day of walking. We wandered 10 minutes down the road to a noodle place that sells big plates of noodles for around $AUS2-3 each, and ate until we were stuffed. Once we got back to the apartment Cookie decided to call it a night so that he could recover, but Shotty was pretty keen to go out and do something so I took him to De La Coast.
De La Coast is a funky little bar just at the end of The Bund. I'd never actually been there before, but had read good things about it on some expat websites so figured we may as well give it a try. One thing in its favour - a full moon party was on that night, and they were having a $CNY100 open-bar night. That equates to about $AUS20 for as much alcohol you can drink between 9pm and 2am. Including wine/spirits, not just beer.
We got there just before 10pm...to find the place completely dead. There were roughly 5 other people in the entire place when we walked in. Unperturbed, we decided to stick it out and get our money's worth. The DJ was spinning some pretty decent tunes, so we grabbed a table near the (tiny) dancefloor and started downing the beverages.
An aside here - one of the things that everyone gets caught out with at bars in China are the reserved tables. You walk in to a place and see some big empty tables and go over to sit down...only to have a staff member come over and tell you that the table is reserved for people willing to spent a certain amount of money. Usually there's a price for the table, and then a 'minimum spend' on drinks etc. On an open bar night like the one we were at, you simply pay a set price for the table...and I guess it works out to be pretty reasonable if there's a big group.
Anyway, Shotty and I had just about the whole place to choose from, so we got some prime real-estate. While things initially looked pretty bad, within the next hour a steady stream of people came in, and before midnight the place was packed. Around this time we bumped into the manager of the place, a Californian guy named Rudy. Rudy invited us over to his VIP area and started organising drinks for us. Not such a big deal since it was an open bar, but it was nice having drinks brought over for us instead of having to go get them. We started things off with something that I almost guarantee I will never try again - a double-shot of tequila. A 60ml shot glass full of the evil liquid. They didn't have lemon and salt, and instead gave us lime to suck on after downing the shot. As Shotty put it, it's the only shot he's ever done where he had to gulp twice - you do the shot, and it's still not finished!
We stayed in the VIP area with Rudy until the place closed. The DJ really was playing some good tunes, so we had a little mini dance-off between the three of us at one point (in our own little area, not out on the main floor). A Japanese guy that Rudy knew arrived soon after this, so Shotty and I took it in turns to dazzle him with our extremely limited knowledge of the Japanese language. And when I say limited, we were able to introduce ourselves and say how nice it was to meet him...and that's about it. Awesome.
Finally the place shut just after 2, so we wandered out the front and got into a taxi. Did remarkably well in resisting the urge to kick on at another venue, but considering I was having Monday off I knew I had to show up to work on Friday, so we decided to go home. A good thing too, as I was pretty shabby the next morning. We ended up drinking a lot more alcohol than we thought we would in the space of 4 hours :)
The guys spent Thursday the 9th on a day trip to Hangzhou. The 90 minute train ride meant that they didn't get back until after 8:30, and they were both buggered from a busy day of walking. We wandered 10 minutes down the road to a noodle place that sells big plates of noodles for around $AUS2-3 each, and ate until we were stuffed. Once we got back to the apartment Cookie decided to call it a night so that he could recover, but Shotty was pretty keen to go out and do something so I took him to De La Coast.
De La Coast is a funky little bar just at the end of The Bund. I'd never actually been there before, but had read good things about it on some expat websites so figured we may as well give it a try. One thing in its favour - a full moon party was on that night, and they were having a $CNY100 open-bar night. That equates to about $AUS20 for as much alcohol you can drink between 9pm and 2am. Including wine/spirits, not just beer.
We got there just before 10pm...to find the place completely dead. There were roughly 5 other people in the entire place when we walked in. Unperturbed, we decided to stick it out and get our money's worth. The DJ was spinning some pretty decent tunes, so we grabbed a table near the (tiny) dancefloor and started downing the beverages.
An aside here - one of the things that everyone gets caught out with at bars in China are the reserved tables. You walk in to a place and see some big empty tables and go over to sit down...only to have a staff member come over and tell you that the table is reserved for people willing to spent a certain amount of money. Usually there's a price for the table, and then a 'minimum spend' on drinks etc. On an open bar night like the one we were at, you simply pay a set price for the table...and I guess it works out to be pretty reasonable if there's a big group.
Anyway, Shotty and I had just about the whole place to choose from, so we got some prime real-estate. While things initially looked pretty bad, within the next hour a steady stream of people came in, and before midnight the place was packed. Around this time we bumped into the manager of the place, a Californian guy named Rudy. Rudy invited us over to his VIP area and started organising drinks for us. Not such a big deal since it was an open bar, but it was nice having drinks brought over for us instead of having to go get them. We started things off with something that I almost guarantee I will never try again - a double-shot of tequila. A 60ml shot glass full of the evil liquid. They didn't have lemon and salt, and instead gave us lime to suck on after downing the shot. As Shotty put it, it's the only shot he's ever done where he had to gulp twice - you do the shot, and it's still not finished!
We stayed in the VIP area with Rudy until the place closed. The DJ really was playing some good tunes, so we had a little mini dance-off between the three of us at one point (in our own little area, not out on the main floor). A Japanese guy that Rudy knew arrived soon after this, so Shotty and I took it in turns to dazzle him with our extremely limited knowledge of the Japanese language. And when I say limited, we were able to introduce ourselves and say how nice it was to meet him...and that's about it. Awesome.
Finally the place shut just after 2, so we wandered out the front and got into a taxi. Did remarkably well in resisting the urge to kick on at another venue, but considering I was having Monday off I knew I had to show up to work on Friday, so we decided to go home. A good thing too, as I was pretty shabby the next morning. We ended up drinking a lot more alcohol than we thought we would in the space of 4 hours :)
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