New in town

While I didn't have someone to take me out last night, I still went anyway!


My first night out in Shanghai since this time last year and my third night out solo. Going out on your own is usually absolutely rubbish when you're someone like me. I'm not really that outgoing, talkative or even interested in meeting new people (sound like such a grouchy old man), so when I go out alone it usually ends up with me drinking alone at the bar for an hour, walking circuits around the facilities a few times, finding some seating and then going home early. It started a bit like that.



I went to The Shelter to the 'micro 4th Birthday', a minimal techno night featuring a few European DJs and a guy called B6. This guy I knew, well knew of. He is one half of the Shanghainese Synthpop/Electro band IGO and I'm a massive fan. Check out a tune here

Since I have done next to nothing whilst in Shanghai thus far, I thought I'd at least go and see what it was like... treating it more like a gig than a night out. I got to The Shelter at about 11:45ish and paid the 40RMB to get in (about £4). You're greeted with a very claustrophobic but totally awesome tunnel into the main club area. As you could probably guess from the name, The Shelter used to be a bomb shelter. This gives it a pretty unique look and it's underground styling and decor make it one of the most badass clubs I've ever been to. Loved everything about it. Drinks were pretty cheap too, bottles of Tiger Beer were only 15RMB so I stuck to them... it would have been pretty expensive if I went for spirits. So I spent the first hour standing around near the bar, sipping my Tiger and people watching.

It wasn't that busy. I was kinda just standing against a pillar for a while, watching this bald DJ guy play some pretty dull techno. I don't really like techno, it's too samey and there is a severe lack of imagination (well the stuff I've heard anyway). I went to the bar to get another drink and then started talking to this guy standing next to me. It turned out he ran the night! So that was cool, had a word with him and said that I came mainly to see B6. I asked him when he was playing and he pointed him out to me, this B6 guy was standing like a metre from me. He was obviously not as big of a star as I thought, he was just chilling with the crowd. I got the host to introduce me and I just went all fan-like and said how much I loved his work. I'd had a few Tigers by then so I decided I'd give him some marketing advice!

If you've listened to the song above you might pick up the sort of 80s synth vibe. Since Le Roux is doing so well in the UK charts right now, I thought I'd tell B6 that he should think about exporting his music to the west. He told me that in China the scene wasn't very big and that it was difficult to gain a lot of success in Shanghai. Maybe that's why he seemed like such an ordinary guy. He was described by someone ages ago as one of the pioneers of the alternative Shanghai music scene, so it really shows how small the scene is when he's so normal.

After that I had a few more beers and bumped into a guy I recognized from the hostel. We had a chat about shit, home, work, interests.. the usual. I was really feeling the alcohol at this time and when he went to get a drink I moved to the edge of the dance floor and waited for things to kick off. I don't remember how it happened but I got chatting with this photographer for SmartShanghai. He was wicked, he introduced me to loads of people nearby (whose names I forgot the second they told me, remember I was pretty lashed). He took some pictures and I joked around with him a bit, then B6 came on and the party got started. Had a dance which was fun, he was pretty awesome. Had a trumpeteer with him, overlaying some brass melodies. It was sweet.



I had lost complete track of time by now, the club didn't have a closing time so it kinda went on and on. I don't remember how I got home, I think I might have walked.. wasn't too far. When I got back to the hostel I saw a Chinese girl in the TV room and thought I'd say hello. I tried to talk my appalling Mandarin and she was very accommodating. I think I kept saying "Cao ni!" which means "fuck you", and trying to work out how to say things were shit. I shouted the merits of the Beijing dialect and she taught me lots of stuff (which I've already forgotten). After a couple of hours it was 7am! I told her to be my tutor but I can't remember if she accepted, I got an email address but I can't read it! So that's a bit annoying.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening which started from nothing. So glad I went. It's definitely improved my mood here, I've been very worried about having things to do and making friends but last night really helped me settle down. Haven't had so much fun for a long time!

Getting settled

After I landed in Shanghai and the bus arrived at Longyang Lu (Lu = Road) I jumped into a taxi and made my way to Captain Hostel, a nautically themed youth lodgings in the Bund area of town. When I learn more about the city I'm living in then I'll probably take you through a geography lesson. I use Hostelworld for my hostelling needs, it's a quality site that has tons of reviews for hostels all over the place and you can book through there instead of just showing up and praying they have space. I'd booked a good week or so in advance so all was meant to be good...

Once I lugged my suitcase out of the back of the taxi, the handle snapped. This bad boy had 2 handles, one on the top for holding vertically and one on the side for horizontal. Back in 2008 during my second trip to China, the vertical handle was busted as me and Nick (my bud from Manchester) rampaged through Beijing West Train Station attempting to catch a train that was obviously long gone. And now in 2009, the horizontal one has gone. To be honest, it probably couldn't have gone at a better time. It lasted the plane journey and I was 10 metres from the hostel door so I guess it was good that it went then and not when I was dragging it through the metro.

I got into the Captain Hostel and I'd heard from a number of reviews on Hostelworld that the staff were rude. Now I didn't really get that impression. They were terrible at English and they seemed to be the most unenthusiastic workers I'd ever met. If a lack of enthusiasm = rudeness then I must be really rude! I'm not gonna bust their balls on that. However, the overall stay was just pfft...

pfffffffffffft

That's all I can say about it, it was utter guff (ok that's something else... it was also shite). The room at first seemed alright, it was an 8 bed dormitory with comfortable mattresses and a nice little seating area in the middle. The room was full of stuff, but there wasn't anyone there. The main reason I chose the Captain Hostel over more positively reviewed hostels is that it apparently had an awesome rooftop bar. Now one thing was awesome, this view....




It's pretty baller. It's like having a bar on the riverside of Hong Kong (although HK's view is far superior to Shanghai's). I was pleasantly surprised as to how nice it actually was. I ordered a beer and a pepperoni pizza which came to 90RMB. Now that is like £9. Stupidly I ordered the beer without checking the price, and pizzas are always pretty expensive. Now my pizza was 45RMB, understandable. But how on earth a pint of Tsingtao (a shitty Chinese beer) costs 45RMB is a question only God could answer. That's like £4.50 for a pint of shit beer. And I thought Sweden was expensive...

So I ate my pizza, an atrocity that cause any Italian to probably keel over and die. It was rubbish, like a freezer pizza but not even the same sort of quality as a Ristourante. Thankfully I'm only a quarter Italian so I just died a little inside, a quarter of the amount of a real Italian I'm sure. The bar wasn't really that good to be honest. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was expecting like a proper bustling pub/club style affair. It had the potential but it wasn't very busy. It was reputedly extremely cheap too. Pfft.

With the bar being a bit of an anti-climax I head to my room to have a little read and then go to sleep. That was when I noticed the Air Con wasn't working. What was a nice chilled room before was now pretty hot. Imagine when the 7 other people returned home. Furthermore, there was what appeared to be a closed window onto the street. It was closed...ish. That means a ton of mosquitos were flooding in and eating me alive. I must have got about 10 bites in an hour. In addition to that, the room was on the street level next to the road. You could hear EVERYTHING. Every car, every pedestrian... everything. And Chinese drivers looooove to use their horn.

I lasted an hour. As I tried to sleep, I was sweating from rage, desperation and heat. I arrived in a new country, for the rest of my life and I felt like I was sleeping on the street. It was probably worse as it was so freakin hot.

I went to reception to talk to the softly spoken dude who checked me in. He probably wasn't naturally softly spoken, he was just so unenthusiastic that he probably didn't want to waste the effort of putting some volume into his voice. I asked if they had any other beds in any other rooms. He said "no". That's it. Of course I take his lack of English into account but there was no "sorry" and no sympathy whatsoever. I can see why no-one ever showed up in the room, because they wanted to get away from it. It was exactly like when I was in Hong Kong with Nick (but that's a story for another day). So I thought fuck it, and left.

I found another hostel on Hostelworld, one with a nice 90% approval and remembered how to say the name. It was the Le Tour Traveller's Rest Hostel. If the taxi driver didn't know where it was then I'd have been screwed, also if they had no room. Thankfully the taxi driver was pretty awesome and took me right to the doorstep, just had to keep repeating the name of the street and number. Doubly good was that they had room.. and the hostel is just awesome. Here's the front:



Doesn't look like much but the air conditioning works, they have free WiFi (Captain charged 20RMB an hour!), they have a table tennis table, they have a pool table, they have 24 hour DVD and TV rooms. And the staff were friendly! I usually don't care but after flying for so long, dealing with the shit in the other hostel and getting a taxi in the middle of the night. It helped. This place was like heaven after what I'd experienced in the nautical farce 20 minutes ago. So at around 1am, an hour after I left Captain's I dropped off to sleep in a silent, air-conditioned room.



.....



That was two nights ago.

Since then I've done pretty much nothing. For the first time ever I've started to experience jetlag. The tiredness at silly hours, the general apathy to anything at all times. I was hoping when I arrived at the Captain's to get a bit tipsy that night and talk to some people in a buzzing bar environment. I can't be arsed to talk to anyone! I must look like the weirdest traveller ever right now. I've just been sitting around reading, surfing the net and watching Wire in the Blood (awesome show). Of course they don't know I'm here for a year and a half. There is no urgency for me to do anything. In fact, it's probably better I just sit around waiting for jetlag to wear off and then I'll have stuff to do when I'm lively and eager for shit to happen.

I think I'm going to set out my plan tomorrow. I didn't get the uber-job I applied for, which was very disheartening. I had a plan for when this happens, but it involves waiting for lots of stuff to happen. I hate being in this limbo. Going to work out everything that's got to get done tomorrow. For tonight, I might go out to some techno night. This DJ is playing that I slightly know, so I'll prob have a few drinks and maybe have a chat with some people.

See you tomorrow, if I get home that is.