a shanghai moment....

Hello all,

It's Saturday morning here...and somehow I seem to unable to sleep past 8 here...even though I went to bed at 2 last night...with a little alcohol buzzed and all. Where do I begin about yesterday....it's another day in Shanghai and another huge learning curve.
Josh and I decided to go into the city via the subway station. Of course it's a long walk to the subway station, another reason why josh insists on getting a bike to join the million of crazy chinese on wheels. but the subway station is very clean, very nice, albeit can be crouwded at certain stop. We get off at the Ji'an Temple station exit and went up to the ground was immediate greeted by wonderful civilzation. Now this is what I sort of expected an international city that Shanghai claimed to be to be like. We strolled the streets, finding the Kerry Center where it is said to have a gym with a revolving rock climbing wall for josh, but no luck. We couldn't find the gym inside this building. :(

Josh and I had lunch at Always Cafe, this cute little restaurant close to the subway station.It has a set price lunch so I had rice with beef wrapped in Lotus leave for RBM25. We had a nice table by the enclose patio to people watch while eating. Josh oogle at the asian girls because there are plenty of them around, and catch rare glimpses of white men but not many attractive one...more Eurotrash than anything really. In fact, so far, Shanghai has been good to Josh with the visual eye candy department of women...me however, living in a dessert here.

Then we walk along Nanxi Road via one of my guide book walking tour and saw....gorgeous shops. You got your Burberry, Gucci, Hermes and all sort of high end stores with not alot of people shopping in them because of the high prices but plenty of people on the side walk. We saw a Ferrari dealer ship where Josh basically had his visual orgasm and was being an utter and complete straight boy. It was basically sex on wheels for him. He went ballistics at these cars that while I thought were nice and hot looking, I couldn't appreciate it on the sexual level that he did. We continue to plow along into this sea of people on the side walk and as josh was commenting about how he haven't been hustle at all so far since we have been to Shanghai....we found the real Shanghai for tourist. The street gets impossibly crowded and every 5 seconds, someone is asking Josh and I if we wanted " shoes, dvd, watches"? They don't even have the real product with them, just cards of the product...i don't even know where they keep them if we had say yes. I put on my sunglasses and try to fiercely stomp my way out of the masses to no avail. We finally reach Remin Square...the largest green area in downtown Shanghai and yeah....no. We also reached People's Park and yeah....this is the crazy Shanghai on steroid. Think Times Square, but million of Chinese and imagine being hustle at every 15 steps you take for " addidas, rebok, watches, t-shirt?" It's a very cool public square though I must say...granite walk way and everything. However, some part they do allow cars to drive through the square also.....that's dangerous. Josh and I trekked on, getting out of the square, into more crazy side walk cramp with Chinese and heading toward the Bund to see the symbol of Shanghai. The Pudong skyline with the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Jinmao tower.

We finally reach the Bund where you can see all the old colonial buildings on our side of the river facing across all the new architecture of Puxi/Lujiazui area....and then this is where things get ugly for me. One thing is that the monsoon smog ( yes, monsoon smog) is so thick that you feel like you're looking at some freakist grayish fog on the other side of the river. And on the Bund, the hustlers for shoes and watches are replaced by a new breed of hustlers, and my least favorite. These hustlers pretend to be your friend and come up to you and start chatting with you in English and ask all sort of question. My guide book has told me about them already so I knew what to expect, but what I didn't know was how ANNOYING they're. These hustlers ultimate goal is to be friend you and then get you to "hang out" with them where you have to spend money in restaurants and shops etc...where you end up paying for everything. So as Josh and I stands on the balcony, me trying to take pictures of the gray skyline, 2 Chinese came up to us, a guy and a girl, and started talking. Josh, of course, being the friendlier of the two of us, chatted with them a bit and they started yapping. They asked us where we're from, blah blah blah, wouldn't stop asking question. Then they turn their attention to me specifically and keep asking if I was Chinese because I look very Chinese. This is where I got pissed off. In my head, I'm thinking " Bitch, if you're going to hustle me, don't insult me by calling me Chinese and that somehow along the way my ancestor is Chinese." To add salt to the wound, after me keep telling them that I'm not Chinese, they ask if I was black...???? WHAT??? Josh thought this was hilarious however because he sees how my facial expression keeps slowly turning into being complete pissed off. I quickly ended that shit and drag Josh away. We went further down the Bund as Josh is laughing his assed off about what they just said to me, we stopped for me to look at the guide book to see what else we could do at the Bund. Big mistake. As soon as we stopped, 3 ugly girls attack us and start yapping again. The usual bull shit begins with where we are and such, then one more time, attention is turned into Trinh's ethnicity. I apparently look Chinese again, which I said no, but then one of them asked: " You're no Chinese? You born in Mexico?" This was probably the high light of the conversation for Josh because he thought it was HILARIOUS as my face went completely pissed off and I excuse ourself to go. We couldn't handle being hustles at anymore so we start walking back. We decided to go back to one of the subway station that we saw in Remin Park to go home and of course, we had to walk back to the impossibly crowded side walk and gazillion hustlers asking us for shoes or watches. That 2 hours walk of just not more than 2 miles really exhausted me. We went home...another really long walk home to our apartment in the outskirt of the city with nothing interesting around.

We now realize how outside of the tourist/downtown Shanghai we are, and while it has nothing interesting, at least we're not being hustle at walking the street. We got home, rest our weary feet and watch Lucky Number Slevin on the pirated DVD collection of our. Josh feel asleep on the couch while I started to try to cook in our kitchen with 2 tiny pots and 2 pans. It's impossible to cook rice in the pot because it keeps burning it. Then I chop some meat but then realize we don't have salt in the house, well, only seasoned salt, and what the previous interns had was this Ojomoto stuffs that I'm familiar with at home, but these are definitely not salt. They're like chemically altered salt that has a different taste of saltiness and i don't like it. So after struggling with the rice, finding a giant cockroach chilling by the garbage can, I decided to go to the Brilliance West Shopping Center of our next block down to pick up some more grocery. I told Josh that I can do this by myself so I left and this is when Trinh begins to have his moments....