Stranger No More

With no great plan for my several week Spring Festival Holiday I was excited when Mark asked if I wanted to go to Shanghai to hang out with Cameron with him. My friend Roberto who used to live in Chengdu lives there now so the prospect of seeing Roberto again, (Very Cool Dude), added to the appeal of a visiting China’s largest city.

As the holiday approached I heard from Mark that he was having cash flow problems and wouldn’t be able go. Since tickets hadn’t been purchased I wasn’t too worried but I was now without plans. After a little thought I decided to head East anyway and contacted Roberto to see what he was up to.

Mark had planned to meet up with Cameron, a buddy of his from Scotland who lives and works in Shanghai that I met a couple of times last year. Since we’d met before I shot Cameron a text message and despite Mark not coming he was very welcoming. His text messages guided me from the airport to the maglev train and through the subways where he met me. I was just going to put my bag at his pad while I waited for Roberto to get free but after a Taiwanese lunch with Cameron and his girlfriend Jasmine. She wasn’t inclined to go back to work in the afternoon and took me to Xiangyang Lu market where you can buy clothes. Y’know, designer stuff for extremely cheap. It was great of her to go with me and I bought a few things before we left to meet up with Roberto.

Cameron had to work until six so the three of us had coffee and talked for a couple of hours before heading back to Cameron’s pad, located to in the French concession, to meet him before heading to dinner. It was decided that we would go to hot pot and I took this as to be something of a treat for them and went along happily enough. We went to a busy place and things looked good. It seemed that everyone enjoyed the meal but having just come from Sichuan my taste for hotpot is a bit spoiled. It was the worst hot pot I have ever eaten. Roberto seemed to enjoy it but gave room to the possibility that he has been gone from Sichuan too long.

The next day the rain continued steadily but R and I decided to head to the Bund and get a view of Jinmao Tower and the signature Oriental Pearl TV Tower. A walk from Renmin Square to the Bund was easy enough since the rain seemed to have diminished the weekday crowd. When we arrived at the Bund, the riverside park area, it was remarked that he had never seen it so deserted and the view across to the New Pudong area was obscured by clouds. We kept laughing and saying what a fantastic time we are having. In order to further elevate our fantastic day in the rain we grabbed a bus and headed to Jing’An Temple where there is a, get this, a Burger King. With real Whoppers. In fact, as if they need to promote them, it was a buy one get one day! Hooray! After gorging ourselves on this taste of home we began the subway/busride back to R’s pad.

We wrapped up the evening pretty quietly by playing duodizhou at a small bar across the street from R’s before calling it a night. Given that it is a three player card game we didn’t begin to play until a couple of women that were there joined us. R was still new to the game and the gals helped him figure out the strategy. It was a nice end to the day. After a pretty easy 5 or 6 beers I had the brilliant idea that Roberto should shave my head. Y’know, easier to deal with in the rain.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 11:30 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.