Democratic People's Republic of Communist China - Part 7 - Shanghai Day 5

Another day - another painful morning session of crap chinese TV. Today - there was some crazy "Chinese Language" show on CCTV 9 (English station) - with a white girl and a chinese girl talking about how wonderful the Oriental Pearl TV Tower is. The Chinese girl said "the Oriental Pearl TV is the pearl of the yangzee" and the white girl said "Now I know why they call Shanghai the Paris of the Orient"... Gawd - you probably need to be some blind guy from the 1960s to think that the Pearl TV Tower is all that - and if I hear somewhere is the Paris of the something I'm going to puke... I've already been to the Paris of the East (Hanoi), the Paris of the South (Buenos Aires) and the Paris of the Paris (Paris) - and I've sort of heard that Melbourne is the Paris of something (no way jose!)...

Anyhow - we got up and organised some train tickets to our next destination - Nanjing. We were feeling lazy (and thought we could afford the 20RMB service fee aka $3.20 AUD) - so we got the hotel to book some tickets for tomorrow.

Getting a bit tired of our local stale bakery - we decided to venture to the more upmarket "Bread Talk" on Nanjing Lu. Bread Talk fortunately (or unfortunately) translates everything into English - so it takes the guessing game out of the Asian Bakery deal... That said - I decide to play it somewhat riske and order a "sweet potato earth roll" which wasn't too bad...

We made tracks to the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art near the People's Square. It was really small (really small) but it had a interesting painted BMW car collection (well - I found it interesting but Ant didn't). Ant bought a Piere and Jules photo collection (not sure if I got it right but all of the photos look like a village people video).

We wandered back to the French Concession (well you know what they say - all roads lead to the French Concession) so we could check out the "Site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party". It was a small museum dedicated to the establishment of the "First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party" and it was also the site of the "First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party". The muesum was interested as it had a short bio of all those who attended - most of which either became trators and were murdered or were just plain murdered... The gift shop was full of communist kitsch gifts - but strangely enough - we didn't buy anything.

As we were in the area - and we had Communism on our minds - we headed off to the "Short Flag" shop which houses a collection of communist themed t-shirts and stuff... I bought an AK47 t-shirt (one for wearing on the plane) and a Little Red Book shirt whilst Ant went crazy and bought three t-shirts (including a shiny Mao shirt) and a book... Ahoy comrades!

We made a quick pit stop at a cafe called "Curry House" (which I don't think is affilated with the ones in the Canberra Centre) for some curried slop... It's this whole Chinese quasi-exotic food thing which something gets lost in the translation in a big way... We were sitting next two a "sealed room" where some old dude was "opening a can of whoop-a$$" on a poor girl - but it could have just been a casual chat for all we know.

Ant got the added bonus of integestion from Curry House so we had to take it easy and walked in the direction of the nearest metro. There was also a Buddist Temple close to the metro so we decided that we should kill two birds with one stone.

On the way - there was a "Adult Health Shop". Unlike Western sex shops (which are usually boarded up or in a basement so you can't see the wares from the street) - this "Adult Health Shop" had big windows at street level so anyone could see the rubberised women downstairs bits...

When we got to the metro/temple - Ant was feeling rather crook - so I went instead to the temple whilst Ant waited around outside. Inside the temple - there were heaps of people lighting candles and burning stuff - but I found it rather confusing and wasn't sure what was and wasn't on limits to the public.

We had a bit of a rest at the hotel - where I finally understand the references to "Vote for Pedro" after watching Napolean Dynamite.

After the rest - Ant had a crazy idea for dinner - Taco Bell Grande... which I also decided would be OK. (not sure if we were on drugs at this point!). Taco Bell Grande was a sit down version of Taco Bell (sort of like the old school Pizza Slut Restaurants) - and is also part of the KFC/Pizza Slut conglomerate of Yum Restaurants... All the staff looked kinda wierd - Chinese girls wearing big sombreos - making maragritas... At $5AUD a pop - I had 2 maragritas - and they weren't the slushy machine variety but the dinky-di cocktail variety... It beats the Montezuma Maragritas from Canberra (which according to their menu - they have the second best Maragritas in the world)... So according to the Montezuma Menu's logic - Taco Bell Grande in Shanghai have the best Maragritas in the world.

How better to top off a Taco Bell Grande experience then to go to a Big Echo and do Karaoke Box until your throat bleeds! The song selection at Big Echo was pretty bad and strange (when you think of "Dead or Alive" you think of "You Spin Me Right Round" - but it had some strange song instead that you have never heard of...) but they did have a english screen to make navigation and song selection somewhat easier. Highlights of the night included "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-lot, "Believe" by Cher (shudder), "All I want to do is make love to you" by Heart, "Blaze of Glory" by Jon Bon Jovi and alternative lyric version of "Don't Cha" by the Pussycat Dolls (just get the Jeffree Star version of Don't Cha off Limewire and you know what I'm talking about).