What am I doing in the ‘hai?
This was Matt’s question when he flew to Shanghai for new year. It’s my first Christmas and New Year spent away from my family and was getting ready for a cold and friendless existence until my friends came back from their holidays. He was like, “Come to HK!” but HK doesn’t appeal to me so I was like, “Why don’t you come over here?” And he did, to both our surprise! I was excited, my first friend to come visit.
I am the lousiest tour guide ever. I have no sense of time nor direction, don’t know the cool places to go, nor can I speak or read mandarin. Like, he wanted to go to People’s Square and we were walking around asking for directions (coz it’s useless to take the cab if you don’t know the Chinese name of the place) but still couldn’t find the park. Then I saw a park nearby and said, “Here! Here!” He’s not convinced, “Is this People’s Square?” “No but it is a park and it has people. That’ll do.”
We went to Cloud 9 at the 87th (or was it 89th?) floor of Grand Hyatt, the highest bar on earth. It was so high you feel like you’re in a plane. It was awesome! A bit pricey (a glass of champagne costs rmb140) but within reach if you’re working in Shanghai, just no shopping for the next two weeks.
Next day we went to Hangzhou, a city outside Shang which advertises itself as the Most Beautiful city in China. It almost didin’t happen because Hangzhou is supposedly an overnighter but Matt was being a prince and wants to spend new year’s in Shanghai. But miraculously, Ken got roundtrip day tickets at the last minute. But me being me, we went to the wrong train station and missed our train. When we finally got to the right station, Matt asked how many stops to our destination and I didn’t know. I was upset for being such a dippy. He was being sweet, “Don’t worry. I knew this was gonna happen so I already said goodbye to everyone before coming here.”
We arrived in Hangzhou and bought a map and with my trusty English-Chinese dictionary and almost non-existent Mandarin managed to tell the taxi where to go. We went to the famous West Lake which is enormous! My fave part is going boating around the misty lake. It was very peaceful (if you don’t count the boatman who keeps talking to me every 5 minutes as if I’d miraculously get what he’s saying if he talks long enough.) We didn’t know where to go after that, Matt kept staring at the map, figuring out where we are. I said, “You’re the more experienced traveller, why can’t you reap the map?” He passed me the map, “It’s in Chinese.”
So we just walked around the lake talking about everything under the sun, from how sine and cosine are important in Preferrential Index (what?!) to rating 2006 to how do Filipinos sleep in such hot weather? (”By closing our eyes” I replied).
It was funny how people were staring at Matt. Not discreet stares but really rudely staring. The kid from the next table went in front of him while we were having lunch and just stared like she saw an alien or frankenstein! He tried to shoo her and she would run away then come back again two minutes later and stare at him again. Maybe they seldom see a white man. Or maybe they thought we were little red riding hood and the big bad wolf. Hahahaha.
Know where I spent my first New Year’s countdown away from home? At the back of the cab. Stuck in traffic. The train back to Shanghai arrived past 10pm plus it’s hard to hail a cab (plus it took me forever to change, hehe). I really wanted to see fireworks and all we got were bits and pieces of fireworks not blocked by skyscrapers. I felt bad because I love fireworks; and when Matt flew a thousand miles to spend New Year’s in the ‘Hai, the back of a cab may not be in his priority list. Anyway, I managed to get us in a bar overlooking the Bund, no mean feat on New Years.
The next day we took the maglev train to the airport. It goes up to 431km per hour, meaning you arrive in the airport in 8mins. Being a lad’s lad (euphemism for retrosexual), Matt was giddy with excitement. “I can ride this again and again but I need to bring lotsa underwear!”
That night, my friend Colin and I lounged around at Velvet Rope (best Arugula Margherita!) and he was telling me about his trip to Angkor Wat. (I wanna go to Angkor Wat.) The ruins were gorgeous (I wanna go to Angkor Wat!), shopping and nightlife is fab (I WANNA GO TO ANGKOR WAT!) and to watch the sunset you have to climb the ruins like rock climbing but without any rapel and one tourist recently fell down and died (okay, I wanna go to Bohol.)
Colin also recalled what he did in Hangzhou. “The Sakura garden is beautiful! Did you go there?” Er..no. “What about the tea garden where they serve all kinds of tea?” Er…nope. “What about the pearl market that sells pearls at 80% off?” Ummm.. no. All Matt saw was.. 
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But hey, he did fly over to see me, right? Quite literal but well… job done.
