Breakfast on my final day in Shanghai was another depressing experience. A few minutes after I finished the meal I started feeling a little strange, and by the time I checked out of the hotel I had a full on stomach ache and was feeling very weak. I hoped it was just the nasty breakfast passing through my system and that I wasn't coming down with something.

My train for Beijing left at about 7:00pm, so I still had pretty much the whole day to do something with. I decided to take it easy and do something that didn't require much effort - visit the Shanghai museum. I don't mind the occasional visit to a museum, but generally when I'm travelling I prefer to be out and about, instead of wandering round inside a building. However, on this day a museum trip seemed like a perfect idea for my ailing body.

I didn't want to carry my backpack around so I caught the subway to Shanghai station and checked it in to the left baggage office (using some very rudimentary Chinese and a lot of sign language). Then I caught the subway back to the museum, which is located in People's Square. The museum was neither huge nor small, and it had a variety of exhibits including calligraphy, coins, personal stamps, pottery, metalwork, clothing, furniture and an exhibition of Ducth artwork on loan from somewhere. The museum was quiet, warm and there were relatively few people there. It was a very relaxing place to wander around. It was so relaxing that one of the guards fell asleep and slipped off his chair while I was walking past. He was pretty embarrassed. I spent a few hours walking though the museum, which included a fair amount of time relaxing on their comfy sofas.

The musueum.

A kid riding his tractor in front of the museum.


Ink paintings. I don't really have much interest in art, but for some reason I like this kind of painting.


Dark, warm and a great place for a nap.


Calligraphy.


Outside the museum.


Shanghai skyline.


Shanghai traffic.


After the museum, I spent an hour or so wandering through the shopping centres around People's Park before deciding to head out of the centre of the city. I took a subway in the direction of Shanghai station, picked a random station to get off at and then spent much of the rest of the afternoon wandering around that area. There was nothing of particular interest in that part of town, it was just a residential area. However, it was eye opening to see the way that rich people in high rise buildings living side-by-side with very poor people in slums.

This picture was taken while I was walking across a bridge. On the left of the bridge (out of picture) there are clean, classy apartment compounds with private parks and lakes. On the right there are dirty, smelly ramshackle buildings. People seem to be surviving, but it can't be a very good life in a place like this. There were people cooking cheap food (30 cents for a bowl of noodles, including free servings of sliced onions, bamboo shoots and Hepatitis), people selling old, rusty pots and pans, people giving haircuts (less than a dollar, shampoo extra), people mending clothes etc. Everyone was making a living the best way they could.


At around 4:00pm I'd finally had enough of Shanghai so I headed to the station. I caught the subway there and ended up at the North Entrance, where the long distance buses leave from. However, my bags were in the office at the South Entrance, so I wandered around trying to find a passage from the north to the south. For some reason I couldn't find a passage from the north the south. I don't know whether it was just well hidden, or whether there really wasn't a passage. The only way through was for people who had a ticket (and I wasn't ready to use my ticket yet). So, I had to walk all the way around the station just to get from north to south. This may not seem so bad, but the station was HUGE. It took about half an hour just to walk around it. By the time I got to the south side I was exhausted. When I arrived at the south entrance I had plenty of time to spare, so I decided to go check out some of the dodgy looking shopping centres that surround the south plaza. While I was wandering around I noticed a sign saying 'Shanghai Foreign Bookshop' in English, and I decided that it would be a great idea to get a book to read on the train. I spent about 20 frustrating minutes walking all the way around the outside of the shopping center almost three times before I finally found the bookshop. It was actually just the back room of a small convenience store. Surprisingly, they had a few bookcases full of mostly English books. There was a mix of new and used books, and they were fairly cheap. Although there wasn't much to choose from, it was way more than I expected from a bookstore in Shanghai. I ended up picking up a cheap copy of Jack London's 'The Sea Wolf', an adventurous tale about a young man stranded in a dangerous and exotic environment. It seemed appropriate for my trip.

I still had about 2 hours before the train departed, so I picked up some dinner and breakfast supplies (I wasn't sure what the food situation would be on the train), picked up my backpack and went off to look for a comfortable place to sit among the hundreds of people waiting in the cold, dark plaza in front of the station. However, as I walked past the front of the station I noticed a sign saying 'soft ticket waiting area'. Realising I actually had a 'soft' ticket, I walked through the soft entrance, had my ticket checked, had my bags x-rayed and found myself in heaven. It was a large waiting area filled with huge, comfortable leather sofas, a bar, a restaurant and even a piano (but nobody was playing it). Best of all, it was warm and quiet. There were few people there, so I helped myself to a sofa in the corner and sat down to relax. There are about six evening sleeper trains from Shanghai to Beijing every day, and five of them leave between 7:00pm and about 7:30pm. So, as it approached 7:00 the room started to fill up with passengers (mostly Russians for some reason), but I was lucky enough to have my corner to myself. By now I was tired, my stomach was still a little funny, and I was a little sick of Shanghai. I was tired of the constant crowds, the constant noise, the constant pushing and general rudeness of the people. I was also a little disappointed that there weren't more historical things to see in Shanghai. I was really looking forward to seeing 'ancient China', but there is very little of that in Shanghai. It is mostly office buildings, shopping centres and boutiques. This is fine sometimes, but it wasn't really what I wanted to see this time.

Anyway, at round 7:00pm I boarded the train and left for Beijing. The train was much newer and cleaner than the previous one.




I was in a clean and 'soft' cabin with three other people, a young guy, a woman my age and an older guy. I spent quite a while up on my bunk reading before the girl asked my something in English. It turned out she spoke English really well, so I stopped reading and chatted with the others. They were all very friendly, and it was nice to chat with them. They had lots of questions about where I was going and where I'd been. Sometime during the evening I wandered off in search of the dining car. I found it empty, except for a Chinese guy sleeping in one booth and some train conductors having a little party in another. I decided to get some dinner and ordered a beef dish with rice. Amazingly, even though it was train food it was cheap and delicious and it really hit the spot. I started to get sleepy so I headed back to my bunk. I read a little more then turned off my light. Before I fell asleep I was invited to play cards with the older guy (who seemed to have taken an unusual liking to me), but I was too exhausted so I had to decline. I fell asleep looking forward to seeing Beijing and not having to eat a crappy hotel breakfast.

Sometime around 6:00am the conductor came to wake everyone up. The train was due to arrive in Beijing around 6:45am, which was much earlier than I had expected. When it arrived, I said goodbye to my new friends, left the station and found myself in another wide open plaza. It was still dark and it was colder than Shanghai. Looking around I couldn't see that much but for some reason I just knew that I would enjoy Beijing more than Shanghai. I guess first impressions are very important. My first impression of Shanghai was a dirty plaza filled with noisy, pushy Shanghai people. My first impression of Beijing was a clean plaza, crisp air, much fewer people, a city just waking up and full of potential. I felt renewed.



I strapped on my pack and headed off in the direction of my hotel. It was at least a few kilometres away, but I felt like a good walk. The next hour or so was amazing. Beijing and Shanghai are both in China, but they are very different cities. It was amazing walking around watching the city wake up. Everything in Bejing is on a huge scale. City blocks are huge. Streets are huge. Major roads are usually have about 5 or 6 lanes in each direction. They are so wide that there are no pedestrian crossings (it would take too long to cross). You have to walk through tunnels under the road. The buildings are also big, but actually they are more wide than high. Compared to Shanghai, there are very few tall buildings.

The best part about walking around that morning was that there were very few people around. It almost seemed like I had the city to myself.




After an hour or so walking I found myself in one of the main commercial areas in Beijing, a pedestrian only mall called Wangfujing Road. By now I was having Wang problems of my own. I was dying to go to the toilet, nothing was open and I couldn't find a public toilet. I spent about 20 minutes in utter agony before I finally stumbled across a public toilet down a side street. After doing my business I walked out, pulled out a map and started to look around for a landmark that would help me find out where I was, thus helping me to find the way to my hotel. In one of those incredible coincidences, as I was looking around I realised that I was actually standing 10 metres away from my hotel, which was located next to the public toilet I had just used. Hmm... things were looking good for the Beijing leg of my trip.

Seeing as this is a weekend entry, I think I'll just talk about some random stuff. I'll continue with China during the week.

Firstly, last weekend was a good weekend. One reason was this...
The English soccer team that I support (Spurs) won their first trophy in about 8 years, beating arch rivals Arsenal in the semis then slightly less arch rivals Chelsea in the final. This was after an up and down season in which the manager was fired and a new manager was brought in. Obviously the new manager is doing a good job because he's only been there for a few months and he's already won some silverware.

A few weeks ago I went to Sapporo for a birthday getaway weekend. While I was there I did some shopping. I had a chance to go to the new Costco warehouse and stock up on some food items. In case you don't know, Costco is a big, American, wholesale type supermarket, which looks like this:

You have to be a member to get in and membership costs about $50 (ouch). But, once you're a member, you can shop there for a year and you can bring up to 3 friends with you. The best thing about shopping at Costco is that you can get lots of stuff that just isn't available at regular Japanese supermarkets. The downside is that you have to buy in bulk. There are no small sizes of anything. I ended up spending quite a bit of money but I was able to save lots in the process. For example, during winter I have the same breakfast every weekday - hot oatmeal with fruit (berries or a banana). If I buy oatmeal at a regular supermarket it's pretty expensive. A 300g box costs a little over 300yen. At Costco, I was able to buy two 4kg boxes for a total of about 2,400 yen, saving about 75% in the process. I really like Costco, it's just unfortunate that it's so far away (over 3 hours by car). One interesting thing I noticed in Costco was that Japanese people have trouble wheeling around the massive western style shopping trolleys they have there. At supermarkets in Japan, people usually just use a basket, or if they have lots of things they can get a mini trolley like thing that can hold two baskets. At Costco there were trolley jams caused by people stopping in the middle of aisles or randomly leaving their trolley in a stupid place. It was actually pretty frustrating, so hopefully they'll have gotten better by the next time I go there.

Another bit of shopping I did was at a used car parts shop. There's a nationwide chain of shops that sell decent used tuning parts like wheels, exhausts, turbos, intercoolers, blowoff valves, stereos, navigation systems etc. I usually drop in when I'm in a city that has one of these shops. For ages I've been keeping my eye out for a new exhaust for my car. There's nothing really wrong with my current exhaust:

I just thought it would be nice to have a bigger, cooler, slightly growlier and more intimidating one. Finally, during my birthday trip I found a Trust Power Extreme II catback exhaust that was in great condition, fit my car and was relatively inexpensive. I figured it would be the perfect birthday present for myself (something I wanted but didn't really need) so I got it. Last Sunday I spent a few hours installing it and now I have a nice new exhaust that looks cool, sounds cool and adds a handful of horsepower.

I installed it on Sunday, and it was actually my third attempt at putting it in. The first attempt was the Monday after I got it. I had a few hours spare after work and I thought I'd get under the car and see how hard it was going to be to get the old exhaust off. After half an hour of trying to get the rusted bolts off the old one, I gave up and decided to try again later in the week. So, on Thursday afternoon I went to the local hardware shop (yes, surprisingly, my town actually has a small hardware shop) and picked up a can of the Japanese equivalent of WD-40, which is called CC-20 or something like that. I gave the bolts a nice coat of CC-20, let it soak in, then had another go at getting them off. This time I was actually able to loosen them a little, before I had to call it a day because of bad light and freezing temperatures. One of the great things about where I live now is that I have my own garage. Actually, since my neighbour doesn't have a car I can use her half two so it's really a double garage. Unfortunately though, there are some problems. First, the lighting is terrible. I have to work with the garage doors open just to be able to see anything. Once the sun started to go down it was just too dark to work. Second, the garage has concrete floors, concrete walls and acts like a freezer. If it's -10 outside, then it's usually about -20 in the garage. This leads to another problem. When I park my car, the snow and ice that has collected under the car and in the wheel wells melts. Then, during the night it freezes, which means the floor of my garage gets covered in ice. This is a big problem, not just because it is damn cold when I lie down on it, but because it's probably not a good idea to be working under a car that has been jacked up on a patch of ice.

So, for my third attempt, I decided to stop doing it half-arsedly and do a proper job. I waited until Sunday, when I knew I would have a whole day free, and I did some shopping on Saturday afternoon. I picked up a decent halogen worklight so that I could actually see what I was doing, got another pair of jack stands to go with the two I already had, and a few other odds and ends that would make my job easier. Once again, the major problem was the cold. I was rugged up in thermals, a jumper, work overalls and some work gloves, but my hands would get so cold I had to stop every few minutes to war them up. Despite this, the third attempt was much more successful. I gave up on separating the two parts of the old exhaust and just pulled them off together. The only real problem was getting the muffler off the three rubber hangers that hold it on. I spent about half an hour pulling, pushing, wedging, prying and using brute force with no luck. Finally, in a moment of genius, I sprayed them with some good old CC-20 and they slipped right off with almost no effort. Wish I'd thought of that earlier. Anyway, getting the new one on was no problem (except that the old bolts to join the end pipe and the mid pipe didn't fit the new exhaust - I had to go MacGyver a solution using bolts from my apartment) and sugery was a complete success. Here are some photos from the operation:

Hope those little red stands really can hold my car up.


Look at all the ice and snow under there.


The old thin, curvy exhaust and the new straight beefy one.


It started snowing so I had to shut the doors.

The finished result:
Like most Japanese aftermarket exhausts it sticks out at a slight angle (left and up), almost looking straight at you when you walk up behind the car. I think it looks better, and it definitely sounds pretty cool. It's certainly not LOUD, but it's powerful and deep enough.

Finally, in other news, I was reading The Age website a few weeks ago and I read a story about the Underbelly tv show that was banned in Melbourne. Seeing as I hadn't seen any Australian tv in over a year and there were no good movies out at the moment, I decided to get the first two episodes off the internet. I have to say, Underbelly is a really great program. I can't remember the last Australian made tv show that I watched and thought was actually decent. When I was back in Aus last time, tv was dominated by reality garbage and dodgy serials with crappy budgets and even worse acting. In contrast, Underbelly seems to have a reasonable budget and some decent acting, with a great mix of familiar faces that have appeared on Aussie tv over the past 20 years or so. Some of the characters are great (...some are a little stupid) and the stories are good too. Sometimes it's very dark and serious (like the Godfather), and at other times it's dark but a little more comedic (kind of like Goodfellas). Interestingly, the mix actually works. I've watched the first nine episodes and I'm looking forward to the rest. Probably the most enjoyable part of watching the show is seeing all the Melbourne locations - "Hey, look, a tram!", "Hey, I've been there!", "I remember that restaurant!", stuff like that.

That's all for now.