Flight monitor over North Pole
View from hotel window
View of hotel from nearby
Arrived safely in Shanghai after a smooth flight over the top of the planet. Slept a few hours on the plane, reclined in my comfortable business class seat. After a slightly sketchy cab ride into the city, I arrived at the hotel, right in the heart of downtown, and adjacent to the People's Park, and the Bund, a major shopping area. It's hazy and hot here, just like Tampa, but even more hazy.
After getting settled into my nice, 30th floor room, I took a walk around to check things out. Three different people, young university student types, called out to me: "hey, happy buddha, you like beer," which struck me as funny. Two different sets of college-age girls stopped me to ask where I was from. Apparently, they like to practice their English. So we chatted about what I was doing there, what they were doing there, what they studied, and so on. Nice to have someone to talk with.
But needless to say, I was pretty tired, so I was walking around People's Park in a daze. Ate Cantonese dinner in one of the hotel's 10 restaurants. Pretty empty except for me and two or three other tables. Food was fine, but chopsticks were not working so well, as my hands, like the rest of me, were very tired. Came upstairs, and fell fast asleep.
More to come later today.
5 comments:
that's rich.
you shall forever be known as "happy buddha"...
you like beer, don't you?
That's sweet you're in the Bund, it's a super historical area. A few years ago I read a pretty good crime novel by a Chinese writer that's set in the mid-'90s boom and gets into the ugly side of the development you now see all around you.
OK, I screwed up the second link in that last post: crime novel. My bad!
what an impressive and whirlwind trip - some of your pictures are really wonderful
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