Day 2 - April 14, 2012 - Shanghai Exploration
The midday sun is bright in the atrium outside of our window, we've woken up at noon but only slept for 4 or 5 hours. We smoke a cigarette to ease the vodka's punishment of our brains and leave the hotel on our way to brunch. SASHA's is an incredible outdoor patio restaurant in an area called the French Concession, a nice neighborhood of central Shanghai. The buffet is plentiful and delicious and the sun feels good as we enjoy our meal with beers and juice. Dodio’s friend Charlie from Brisbane joins us and is a great guy to share stories with, so we wind up taking advantage of the unlimited beer and indulge to the fullest, setting out to meet Laura in high spirits. Charlie leads the way through the Shanghai subway system to his friend and fellow student Sirinat's apartment in a nice area on the Pudong river. We enjoy some refreshments in her living room and both she and her friend Asma, a spirited Parisian, decide to join us at the clubs tonight. We bid them farewell and head back to our room for yet another round of warm-ups. "Warm-Ups" with an Italian usually include strong drinks of vodka and a card game called Scopa, and before I know it Charlie and the girls are in our room waiting for me to finish dressing. After some fashion advice is dispensed we depart for M1NT, a very high-end club at the city center. Charlie has put us on "the list"so we ascend quickly to the bar, immediately impressed by the enormous shark tanks that line both sides of the hallway to the dance floor. The bar itself is like any other we've ever been to, holding too many people paying too much for drinks, but we manage to have some fun anyway. It dawns on me quickly that we're probably the poorest people at the bar as it is populated mostly by Chinese women in their 30's and 40's who most likely have six-figure incomes. A particularly pathetic table of rich men keep harassing the nearby girls, at first offering them drinks but eventually resorting to physically grabbing and dragging girls towards their bottles and terrible dance moves. We decide the scene is dead and head for Shelter, an immensely cool drum-and-bass bar set underground in an old bomb-shelter basement. As is custom, we pound shots of tequila with beers while sitting in a back room, our rowdy presence attracting others until the low-ceilinged room is full of people. With each new entrant a collective HEY of shouting and ruckus would commence, also seeing Dodio standing and yelling "PARTY ROCK IS IN THE HOUSE" at totally inappropriate times. More shots, more beers, more yelling. The atmosphere is at a fever pitch when a young Aussie kindly asks to borrow a chair from our table for his girlfriend. "ANTISOCIAL! ANTISOCIAL!" goes up the chant from the unruly group, then followed by the young couple unexpectedly JOINING our table. More shots, more yelling, more shots. Apparently we've killed Sirinat who mush be physically carried out by Charlie and I upstairs to a cab, the driver of which gives Charlie the dirtiest of looks suspecting sexual misconduct. This is hilarious because sweet Charlie is gay as Christmas and as chivalrous as they come. After stopping at yet another bar we stumble out and cab it home at 4AM.
