Thus Far

It's been a month and a half on the road and I'm feeling pretty damned good about things. I'm navigating subway lines, remembering street names and orientations and communicating well in Chinese and Japanese which, of course, means I can say 'please', 'thank you' and 'beer'. It's not bad. I can walk into any Chinese establishment and say in Mandarin, "Hello, beer please." When the beverage arrives and I politely say, "Thank you", you'd think I've been speaking Chinese my whole life.

These days it's Shanghai, a modern metropolis teeming with westernized city folk enjoying the rising standard of living in Chinese cities. It's clean, efficient and freakin' boring. It's like Vancouver... though I've never been there. Vancouver could be a blast, I don't know. In truth, we haven't yet made our way to the riverfront. That's tonight. It's supposed to be geared toward Chinese tourists from the more rural parts of the country, so that sounds kind of fun. Then there's Pudong on the east side of the river. That's the skyscraper part of town you saw in one of the new Bond movies or Batmans or whatever. It looks cool. There's like a 120 story observation deck in one of the buildings. Crazy, no? We're also thinking maybe a river cruise. Apparently, that's one of the best ways to view of the city. I like boats, so...

We did find a beautiful old working class neighborhood the other day consisting of dirty, narrow streets and nonexistent sidewalks. It's a short walk southeast from the North Sichwan Street stop on the 10 line. It was around dinner time and there were loads of pop up tents sheltering grill after grill of smoking meat on a stick type deals. That and the many small restaurants made the area my favorite so far. We wandered into a place and ate sweet and sour bear. It was tasty.

Later...

Ok, the riverfront was awesome. It was a dizzying mix of old alleys and blinking lights on a modern promenade. The view of the cityscape from the boardwalk was like living in 'Blade Runner'. The damnable cold compelled us to curtail our outing sooner than I would have hoped, however, but I can't be terribly upset about that as we will living in a beach hut on a Malaysian island in two weeks. Aloha, suckers!
-Ken