Bouncing back from misery

Sleepless flight

We had the weirdest and shallowest take off out of Auckland. We seemed to hover over the lights of South Auckland and it took quite a while before we were away from suburbia. This must have been the Boeing 777 that thought it was an propeller aircraft (or an Airbus A340).

I had trouble sleeping on the flight. I had been too lucky too many times with being able to travel horizontally in the recent years. I had a very good seat in Premium Economy which was unfortunately it wasn’t as good as horizontal. The squab was so hard I had a sore bum. But the meals were very good. In particular the black-sesame panna cotta was awesome (but not quite as awesome as the red bean cheesecake I made recently).

Levitating into the city

Landing at Shanghai’s Pudong airport at 0730 felt strange. It was so flat, rural and somewhat green (from my window anyway). I expected the skyscraping apartments that I saw coming into land some eleven years ago but that was at Hongqiao airport which is a little closer to the city. I shelled out CNY40 for the Maglev (magnetic levitation train) ride into the city. The top speed was 300km/h and the total ride only 8 minutes, after which one had to continue by metro to one’s final destination.

On the Maglev into town.

Feeling like crap

It was only 1000 by the time I checked-in at the Phoenix Hostel and fortunately I was given a room immediately. With a throbbing headache from a near-sleepless flight, I needed a lie-down big time. After a shower I managed to sleep nearly two hours. The sleep didn’t seem to do me any good. I felt just as bad. Travel is meant to be enjoyable; I can’t remember the last time that it wasn’t. For now, I felt like I was in some kind of inconsolable misery.

With my worms calling out for food, I forced myself to go out and orientate around the neighbourhood. It wasn’t the glitziest of areas and there wasn’t much I felt like eating (‘cos I couldn’t read the menus and there weren’t any pictures). Fortunately I saw some xiaolongbao (little dumplings filled with meat and soup). The first one spat at me as I bit into it; the trick is to bite and suck at the same time so as to avoid a mess. Bite and suck, bite and suck and repeat; eventually I downed the whole basket of them.

Xiaolongbao for lunch.

Bouncing back

I felt slightly better after food and proceeded to Shanghai Railway Station to buy my bullet train ticket for my upcoming journey. I had chosen this station rather than any of the other big ones because there is an English-speaking counter in case it was necessary. I’m quite proud of the fact that I successfully transacted completely in Mandarin.

I was nearly back to my normal self by now. It’s amazing how one can bounce back so easily from inconsolable misery in just a couple of hours. I think food really helped. Having done the chore-of-the-day I didn’t feel like doing anything new, so I re-lived my trip from eleven years ago with a walk along the pedestrian mall of Nanjing Road and then the Bund.

Then I remembered the scene from Yu Garden (in the old Chinese part of town) where a whole group of women behind glass were smashing crabs and picking all the flesh out as filling for dumplings.  So off I went  hoping to see that again and eat some crabmeat.

Well, Yu Garden turned out to be packed with visitors, local and foreign. The scene that I wanted repeated was nowhere to be found. The crab dumplings were there but not the bevy of workers smashing the crab to pick out the meat. Maybe it’s not real crab meat any more?

Finishing up Day One

It was nearly 1700 by the time I walked back to my hostel feeling completely worn out. At around 1800 I went to look for dinner but found a massage place near the hotel. The staff were sitting on small stools having their dinner but one obliged with an hour massage for CNY58 (NZD12). He was probably one of the best I’ve had.

He upsold me a cupping and scraping (gua-shar) treatment as well. Then came the twisting … a reverse piggyback where we were back-to-back with our arms intertwined at the inside of the elbows, then he lifted me up and bent himself forward so as to have me in a back-bend arch. What amazing strength for a small person. The extra half hour cost me another CNY50 (NZD10).

I’ve been left with plenty dark-red cup-sized marks all over my back.  You guys may have seen enough photos of me with those from previous blogs!

Second time around, Shanghai isn’t quite as captivating. But to be fair nothing grabs me after a long sleepless night flight.