Keep on rocking in the free world

On arriving in Shanghai I quickly found myself firmly returned to the backpacker trail having been removed from it more or less since Japan. Lots of foreigners were milling around and waiting for taxis at Shanghai airport and similiarly at the hostel I'd booked myself there were lots of Western faces around. My first half-day in Shanghai was relatively quiet just spent seeing a few of the sights; going down the waterfront which on one side is lined with fine colonial banking buildings from the early 20th century while on the far side of the river these are faced with their early 21st century counterparts, HSBC now in a shining tower as opposed to a finely crafted stone building. Yesterday things picked up and I got chatting with some of the people in my dorm room. Dorm rooms aren't always ideal for getting a good night's kip but they are great for meeting people and it only cost 50 yuan or a little over 3 quid, so it wasn't likely to break the bank either. The youth hostel I was staying in was located on the far west of the city centre so I spent the day exploring this area, although one of the main streets turned out to be filled with shops selling bags, fake watches and clothes and each was accompanied by at least one person to confront you with a laminated pictoral guide of the wares they had to offer and each offered various levels of persistence. This is fine on the odd occasion but after 20 or 30 times it becomes tiresome and I ended up heading for the next road down in order to escape them. I didn't discover much of note aside from a building built by the Soviets as a sign of inter-communist friendship no doubt which looked as if it had just been picked up from St Petersburg and dropped in the middle of Shanghai. Very odd indeed. The evening proved of more note though, as a truly international group of us from the hostel headed to a couple of bars a little distance away. It proved a cheap enough night even if the surroundings weren't entirely to our liking. The most surreal moment was in the second bar having "keep on rocking in the free world" played, the irony of which I suspect was lost on the locals but not us.

Needless to say this morning started slowly and sightseeing only kicked off after lunch once I'd properly awoken and moved hostels. Although the first hostel was fine the location was proving to be awkward as it required a bus ride or metro trip from the centre of the order of around three-quarters of an hour. This combined with my unfailing ability to go the wrong way once arrived back at the local metro station didn't help matters. In my defence may I state for the record that the area around the metro station and hostel is a mess of major roads and overpasses heading in every direction. Crossing them requires enough determination and grit (Chinese drivers are perhaps the least forgiving in the world) without having to be troubled with matters such as navigation as well.

And so it was that I managed to book myself in to the outrageously popular downtown hostel for my last two nights in Shanghai. I'm not staying here longer as there claimed that they'd managed to get around more or less everything that deserved a visit in a single day and if you put a full day in it's probably not too far from the truth. As a result tomorrow rather then spending another day trying to extract yet more from what is now becoming a somewhat diminished collection of things to do in Shanghai itself, I'll be taking the train an hour away to the town of Suzhou whose canals and gardens will hopefully provide some welcome relief from the seriously overcrowded, traffic congested and polluted streets of Shanghai. This will likely be short lived however given that on Monday evening I'll be taking the sleeper train to Beijing where I've had less difficulty booking myself into the most recommended downtown backpackers haunt. I've optimistically booked myself if for just four nights to begin with as a number of travellers have said to me that Beijing aside from the main sights isn't really the sort of city you enjoy hanging around in, so the plan is to get around the sights as quickly as possible and work out where to move on to. I might head to Xian for the Terracotta warriors and its other attractions or I might find a smaller destination to spend some time in en route.

Following my first rather unsuccessful experiences I've found the internet access to be somewhat more reliable. Some websites such as BBC News are definitely out but I can access other news sites such as the newspapers. I've not tried out Skype yet. It was installed at the last hostel but not here. I'm not sure if there's a reason for that. Hopefully I'll be able to try it out soon with the new headset I bought in Hong Kong which means I'll be able to plug into any internet cafe PC that allows me to use Skype and assuming it's not the middle of the night at home I can make some calls.