Apparently it's more difficult to pack for a 8 days than I remembered. As wife sat in my room folding all my button down shirts so that they didn't resemble paraplegic origami like the first few I folded, my lil angelic daughter and I were looking rather sceptically at the proposed two suitcases I was to use for this little adventure. One was large but not huge, and the other was less than large. It became apparent that some adjustments might have to be made to the packing strategy. God do you really need that many shirts?
After it took two of us to close up the big suitcase, I brought down a scale to weigh the baggage, I imagined I was well over the allotted 20 kgs we were allowed to carry without penalty...only by a little bit. The two bags together came in at 70 kgs ! Including my computer and the stuff in my backpack, I had packed more than my body weight worth of crap. I did some adjustment and packed as per allotted weight accordingly.
Afterwards I showered, shaved, put on some obnoxiously bright clothing, said my goodbyes and left for my next great journey.
It began as all great journeys do, with a smaller and much more manageable journey. I had the good graces to fly out of Kolkata airport.
On the plane to Bagkok...I slept...moving on.
After a brief stop in Bangkok I was on my way again to Shanghai. I stayed up just long enough to watch the ground and Bangkok disappear under the clouds before I passed out. I went under and didn't recover until some mush in a compartmentalized plastic tray was staring at me from my tray table. It was a good start to an otherwise arduous flight, I slept straight to the first meal. My communication with my neighbour was a sort of combination between head nods, guttural clicks, and drooling on my tee-shirt. Sometimes to add inflection I'd scratch myself or roll my eyes.
After another meal and another few solid hours of sleep I began spoken communications with the life form next to me.
We landed without fanfare and I stepped foot on Chinese soil for the first time, it was incredible...how much the International Airport in Shanghai resembled every other international airport in the world. Went through customs, changed some money over, and went out into the massive crowd outside the arrival gate to find a placard with my name on it.
Toward the end of the line a Chinese dude had a little sign with my name on it, he spoke English, well a little bit, with a massive accent, so I decided to just get in the cab and keep quiet for a while. As we streaked out of the airport, sticking mostly to the passing lane, I let the city fill me, the traffic, the trucks with piles of hay between the cab and the cargo, the horns with their high octaves from tiny cars, and the endless squealing of breaks that needed changing.
Everyone had warned us about the smog before we left but my first day here, the sky couldn't have been bluer, dotted with white puffy cumulus clouds. My eyes slid from the right window to the left, letting the geometry of the city unfold into its grids and towers and slums around me. From my vantage point, slightly above the city on an elevated highway, it didn't seem much different from any other city but the one thing that stood out in my mind as a we're not in Mumbai anymore moment. It took a little while for the cab to hit traffic, but hit traffic it did; and one thing I did notice was some odd configurations on motorcycles and mopeds in the city. For instance one might see a motorcycle body with one wheel in front, two in back with a canopy hovering over the rider/driver and a little table on the back. People in this city have somewhere to go, those who can't afford a car get a moped, those who can't get a moped get a moped/bike combination, like an electric bicycle with pedals and a motor, and those who can't get one of those get a bike. I haven't seen a single rickshaw to my complete and utter dismay.
We pulled a few turns, ran a few red lights, and finally pulled into my humble hell hole; the Motel 108 in Pudong District. I rolled my luggage a whopping 12 feet from the front door into my new room on the 8 floor. It's actually not such a bad place, about the same size as my room in Dubai.
I dropped off the luggage and then went across the street for noodles. My noodles were unbearably spicy and I got through about a third of the bowl before my stomach went on the warpath. Something was rising through my bowels and it wasn't happy thoughts. Once I stopped eating the devil's noodles things were beginning the slow decent to normalcy, however, it was fast approaching 10 PM or 9 PM. The important thing is that it was getting late, and a decision was bearing down on me, would I spend my first night in Shanghai resting off the plane ride, or attacking and burning the city to the ground? Finally I decided to venture out in the Shanghai night, with no expectations, loan money to burn, thirsty gullets, and open minds, when I got into the taxi I told the driver where to go, to a street with "a lot of shops where foreigners go." For day one that was good enough for me.
Suddenly a phrase from a Chinese history book popped into my head, in the nineteenth century Shanghai was known as The Whore of the Orient.
I wandered down the street a bit trying to gleam a little insight from anyone sober enough to walk in a crooked line and were given directions to a few of the more substantial good souvenir shops. I moved down the street a few blocks where the sights ranged from a 20 foot statue of an Indian, (feathers not dots) a bowling alley/trance club combination, a Turkish restaurant/Hookah bar and a myriad of Irish pubs, a T.G.I. Fridays, and about a dozen crones offering massages with what I imagine would be the happiest of endings to a blind man. I clearly had stumbled onto Gringo Ground Zero in Shanghai.
There was an epic metal fence around the street corner opposite me, and the inside of what sounded like a hugely crowded establishment was completely obscured by huge shrubs. As I turned the corner a horde of tired looking Chinese woman offering massages came charging at us like some kind of hooker cavalry. I ducked, dodged, weaved and fled in terror and pretty soon I was in the courtyard of Zepatas, Mexican restaurant by day, expat sanatorium by night. I was completely surrounded by large white men looking down the shirts of short Chinese women. Half of the patrons wore suits, and the other half looked like grungy, drunk, and loud. I was happy with the turn of events...and then 80's rock emanating from the bar area.
I stayed on for some undisclosed amount of time before getting into a cab. The cab sped off into the night, through the dizzying maze of a new city on the first night. I made a recap of the night as the taxi flew past the half dozen establishments I'd frequented that evening and after about 17,000 apartment complexes flashed by the windows we were back home.
Soon after I got back I decided it was about time to collapse in my new bed.
Welcome to Shanghai.
Rest of the Odyssey I'll continue some other day.... :)
With love and Regards,
MANOJ KUMAR OJHA
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