China day 6: Shanghaied!

The really disturbing part is that no one noticed the 4am morning anymore. I think the routine-ness of it, combined with a little jet lag allowed us to settle into a stupidly early morning groove quickly. If anything we were ready early this morning, early enough that we could sit back and enjoy most of our breakfast boxes in the hotel lobby before we even had to board the bus. The flight once again was effortless, and the onboard breakfast far less entertaining now that everyone already knew to avoid the congee. After the icy winds of Beijing and the murky smog of Xian, seeing both sunshine and fifteen degrees upon arrival in Shanghai made us ridiculously happy. Sunglasses! No gloves! A driver who won’t quickly learn “more heat” in English! Sweet.

We had thought we were going to the hotel like usual, but to our surprise the tour started right from the airport talking us directly to the Bund. At the time this seemed horribly inconvenient, as we all had our carry-on bags to leave on the bus, and the constant concern that something was going to happen to our valuables as we left them behind with the driver (nothing happened, they were totally professional and secure, but still, we worry). But this was before we had any concept of how big Shanghai really is. 23 million people in a space quite a bit smaller than Beijing, this is a city of skyscrapers. Everything is tall. More than 4000 skyscrapers dot the skyline, and anywhere you go, no matter what direction you face, it looks like you’re staring at a downtown skyline. It’s like Hong Kong with slightly more space in between the buildings, or Singapore time fifty. To drive anywhere here takes about an hour, all on super clean, neatly organized highways that snake through the city like tangled spaghetti noodles. Compared to what we had seen this far, this hyper-modern metropolis didn’t even feel like China anymore. It felt like a new planet. Picture every major city centre you can think of, then squish them all together and you get Shanghai. No wonder they took us straight to the sightseeing, if we had gone to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and driven back, we would have lost most of the day right there just in transit.

The Bund is amazing. The best first impression of Shanghai ever. We were all in love. A sunbathed waterfront promenade, marked by the massive white sails of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, with the futuristic Pudong towers on one side and the historic 1940’s era European concession buildings on the other. Old meets new and the only way to keep them seperated is to have a wide river in the middle. The Pudong side looks like Las Vegas. Mainly because it doesn’t look real, more like a computer-generated, brightly coloured cluster of surrealistic buildings. The SimCity version of reality. The star of it all is the TV tower, the iconic Shanghai Pearl, with it’s distinctive “pink balls on a stick” architecture, but behind that the massive “bottle opener” tower touches the clouds, and in front of it the convention centre’s glowing globe (literally). It’s one bit of craziness squished up against another, and the overall effect is wild. Makes for amazing photos, too, and while we wandered, at least five wedding couples, in full attire, were getting their formal pictures taken against the perfect backdrop. In sharp contrast, the colonial side is still exaclty as it was back in the day (not kidding our hotel had a portrait taken in 1955 on the wall, and aside from the addition of cars, it looks exactly the same today), with grand stone buildings topped with clock towers and oxidized copper roofs. This classical street would look incredible anywhere, frozen in time, but facing it off against the over-the-top eccentricity of Pudong only makes them more impressive. Seriously, google it.

Then the Shanghai museum. I’m sure this museum has a fantastic collection, unrivaled by anything in China. We saw about 1% of it. Not for lack of trying. Our guide took us there and gave us the twenty minute tour of the bronze section (fascinating, if not kinda similar to what we’d seen – and pretty much paid attention to – in Xian), then gave us free time to explore. But it was sunny and warm outside. Finally. And when you combine tiredness and a cool, dark museum, it’s not a good combination. We stayed inside for just long enough to use the bathroom (naturally) and then all congregated outside on the steps, stretched out in the sunshine. It was the pick me up the group needed despite being a horrible waste of a good museum.

The French Concession was next, old stone buildings and alleyways overflowing with trendy boutiques and pricey sidewalk cafes. We could have been in Cannes. The other agents went crazy, loving this place and it’s perfect European vibe. And 90% of the patrons at the cafes were westerners, too, so that seemed to be the overwhelming consesus. This was where the fatigue started to get to me, as I got really irritated that everyone was so excited to be in a district that was so un-Chinese. This is just a personal pet peeve of mine, but when I’m in Asia, I want to see Asia and all it’s colours and history and architecture. I love it over here, this is my comfort zone, and I keep coming back for more. So it drove me nuts when the others were thrilled to not feel like they were in China anymore. But then again, Europe might be their comfort zone, so they were equally as happy to find something soothing and familiar for them as I had been for the rest of the trip. It had to be the lack of sleep that caused me to internally overreact and have to bit my tongue the whole time we wandered the cobblestone alleys. I was glad from the French Concession we on went to the Jade Buddha Temple, because the peace and tranquility of a Buddhist temple never fails to calm me down and put things back in perspective.

Finally late afternoon we at last rolled into the Ramada Plaza Gateway hotel. By this time we were running on fumes and seriously needed some downtime to recharge. Really nice hotel, big (but probably classified as mid-sized in this city), with good sized rooms. Tiny bathrooms, though. This was the first place we’d been without bathtubs. After a short rest, during which I ran out and finally bought stamps for those postcards I’d been carrying around since Beijing, but just hadn’t had time to actually write or mail, we all regrouped for dinner. Apparently in my haste to get in touch with the people back home, I had missed the memo to dress up for dinner. Everyone came down looking really nice, a bit more formal with some more makeup than usual, and there I was in a hoodie and tank top. I felt like such a knob, but there was no time to change. At least it was my best hoodie!

One more identical dinner and then to the Shanghai Acrobatic show. I seriously cannot recommend this show more. If you’re going to Shanghai, go. Don’t ask, just go. It’s not that expensive, and is and hour and a half of pure entertainment. The things that these talented performers can do, like spinning a hundred-pound ceramic planter on their head, while balancing on a rolling beam, or soaring high above the crowd with no safety net, holding on one-handed to just a simple swatch of fabric and supporting another person by only their foot – we could not be sleepy during this show. “There’s no way they can do tha- oh my God, they did!” The finale was eight motorbikes riding formations inside a twenty foot sphere. We were seriously sitting there waiting for the scream the crash and the arrival of the paramedics. I’ll let you guess how that turned out. Needless to say, we were far more awake after this show than we were the cultural dance in Xian, and I actually managed to change into both halves of my pyjamas before falling asleep this time!

Tags: BlogSherpa, Bund, China, flight, French Concession, Jade Buddha Temple, museum, Pearl, postcards, Shanghai, skyscraper, sunny, tired

ATVs are the new black – Costa Rica, days 8 & 9 – the finale.

So, I’ve discovered I like going fast and I drive like a madwoman.   Plus, I’m capable of doing them both at the same time.  On roads that are little more than goat paths and have ever expanding water features as the rivers roll over them.  All the while giggling like a mental patient and hoping my thighs don’t stick to the seat.  I’m totally okay with all of the above.

Got up bright and early and were picked up by Chino, our super sweet guide (who tried to broker a deal to have me as his fourth wife.  I passed, but I did promise to hang out with him next time I’m in Quepos, although something tells me I’m going to “forget” this) and driven out to London, Costa Rica, population, like, 80.  It was tiny, but cute, with chickens and dogs wandering the street more than people.  We pulled into someone’s driveway (this seemed a little weird until we saw the fifteen ATVs parked there) and, after a quick training course in the fine art of not killing yourself on an ATV, we were off.

It was fantastic.  The path was steep and rocky and wet in places, but that just let you really enjoy what an ATV could do.  This was supposed to be off-roading, and it satisfied. I thought it had been purpose-built for the psycho tourists like us, but after the fact we learned that this actually was the public road in the area.  Fourteen families had no other way in or out of their little isolated village.  Wow.  We had also brought a change of clothes in case we got muddy and messy as the website had warned, but I discovered quickly that if you went faster (and cheered, that was an important part) then teh water sprayed outwards and kept me all dry.

Midway through we stopped and had an hour walk through a beautiful forest and across a suspension bridge that was nothing more than a bunch of metal ladders trussed together a hundred feet up in the air to a waterfall.  This is a perfect place to play and swim, but as it was just the two of us, we opted to just take lots of pictures and dip our feet instead of making the poor guide stand around awkwardly as we splashed in the falls.  Then it was back onto the ATVs and retracing our route back to the start.  On the way back he knew we were capable drivers, so the speeds were much higher, topping out about 50mph.  Sweet.  Only once, when I was trying to avoid some horseback tourists, did I confuse the break and the gas and nearly go shooting off into the jungle.  Leave it to me to only make a mistake when there’s a crowd of people to see it!

Did not want to give that ATV back.  I tried to just drive off, but it just would have taken me too long to drive it all the way back home, and it’s hard to find a good parking space for your ATV in downtown Vancouver, so I left it.

Spent the rest of the day hanging out at the hotel to escape the heat and avoid the torrential downpour that left me epically soaked even under my umbrella when I walked down to the local bodega for supplies.  After that, we deserved a nice dinner, so we cabbed it to El Avion and we got to watch the lightning illuminate the sky from our table under  a plane.

The last full day in Quepos started early, as we had a 6am pickup for our mangrove tour.  They have to start super early to hit the tides at the right times.  Luckily, since the sun rises and sets at 5:00 here, your body clock gets you up early anyway to greet the sun and puts you to sleep early, so that wake up call was not too bad.  The tour group was us and a French family that spoke almost no English, and on our two and a half hour boat tour we saw a few monkeys, some vultures and a couple of skinny raccoons, but that was pretty much it.  Three years ago I had taken the same tour and seen so many animals it was incredible, but today everyone was playing hide and seek from us and they won.  It honestly felt like a colossal waste of time.  And it finished at 9am, so we still had the whole day to fill.

Like every woman, we went shopping.  We got a great deal on a taxi and headed right down to Playa Manuel Antonio, the beach paradise.  I’m far too pale to be a beach bunny, and the sun here fries skin in the blink of an eye (half the people walking around are a painful red colour, and that had already happened to me once this trip, so there was no way I was going through that again), but there’s a few cute souvenir shops and a street market where you can get some good tacky tourist shit (I love this stuff!) as long as you barter for it.  We got a great carved vase for half the price we would have paid in the stores in Quepos.  Of course, today had to be the day it decided not to rain in the afternoon and we tried not to melt as we shopped, took the incredibly cheap public bus back to Quepos, shopped more, and then got all packed up and ready to depart the next morning.

The drive to San Jose was kind of anticlimactic compared to all our other Interbus transfers, as the roads were, well, actual roads the whole way, including an extended stint on a brand new highway.    Our driver took advantage of this by driving super fast, which actually didn’t scare me as much as it should have, I loved the speed.  Clearly the ATV ride has broken my common sense when it came to speeding in this country.  Soon we were back at the Casa Conde, where we discovered our pickup time the next morning for our 10am flight was 515am.  Great.  So we dropped our bags, had some dinner, watched a tiny bit of TV and went to bed early to prep for our 430am wake up call.

Our airport transfer the next day was even early.  He showed up at 5.  Luckily, we were ready anyway, but that got us to the airport at 545.   Cranky and tired and hungry we checked in for our flight, cleared security and hit the food court for a giant cinnabon breakfast.  Normally I wouldn’t  eat 1500 calories of sugary goodness for breakfast, but it just seemed to be a fitting send off for our time in Costa Rica.  It had been a hot, sweet and sticky(with both sweat and rain) trip, and was thoroughly enjoyable.

Pura Vida!

Tags: ATV, beach, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, crazy speed, hot, mangrove tour, Manuel Antonio, Quepos, sunny