August 13
Picking up from my last post, I got into Shanghai fairly late by my standards (around 10:30PM. The difference between my standards of time and Shanghai's standard of time would be a recurring theme of my time here), but thankfully the metro was still working. As much as I love the Shanghai Metro system (I think it might be my favorite in the world), the one thing that I absolutely can't stand about it is that it shuts down so early; external lines start closing around 9PM, central lines stay open until 10:30-11PM. This means that anyone trying to have any semblance of a nightlife has to take cabs everywhere (not that it's an issue to find cabs, but I'm a huge believer in the use of subways and subways are much easier to use when you don't really speak the language). While I was on the train I spoke to my friends Alex and Chris about our accommodations for the weekend; apparently their friends Rachel and Cindy were staying in a huge apartment in Shanghai and Alex and Chris suggested that we cancel our hostel reservation to stay with the girls. When I got to the apartment (an adventure in and of itself, as no cabbie had apparently ever heard of the street it's located on) we realized that "huge" was a relative term and that it was time for us to grovel our way back into the hostel (which we did, thankfully). As much as I appreciated Rachel and Cindy's hospitality, one of us would have had to sleep on the dining room table and another in the bathtub, which was just not happening.
After getting settled at the hostel, we headed out to begin our nightlife at 12:15AM. I'm used to seeing things begin to wind down around this time, but the energy of the group was infectious and I just went with it. After a few false starts (at clubs that were rejected for one reason or another) and one very tense argument with a cabbie, we ended up at a club called Muse where we proceeded to party and dance until 3:30, which is when things apparently begin to wind down in Shanghai. Either way, I was just thankful for sleep at that point.
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| The beds in our hostel room. It's a good thing none of us suffer from night terrors because I very well could have punched Chris in the face as we slept. | The bathroom in our room. While it was a very efficient use of space it was a complete and utter design disaster. I ended up locking myself in there by placing my backpack in the wrong place and blocking the sliding glass door. |
