Boooooring

Imagine the most uneventful day of your life. Now imagine you are in Shanghai. Then you have a pretty good idea of what my day today was like.

I was woken up this morning by someone who spoke Chinese at me. I have no idea why they were calling me, or what they wanted, but they did wake me up at 6:30, and that makes them not my friend.

I got out of bed, got ready to go and took a taxi over to where I was supposed to meet the tour guide. When I got there (there being a very nice hotel lobby), there was no tour guide. When I waited for over an hour, there was no tour guide. Indeed the only tour guide looking person didn't speak English and was rather annoyed with me for keeping on pestering him.

Anyhow, I took a taxi BACK to my hotel, and proceeded to do nothing. Well, not quite nothing. I found a Pizza Hut, where the waitress spoke English, and I just about cried I was so happy. This is the first time I've gone into a restaurant and they spoke any English. Also, I had PIZZA.

Other than that, I laid around, played games, watched TV, and chatted on MSN. I also found that I am near a historical site, some guy named Shangcheng's former residence, but I couldn't find any information about him, so I decided against visiting it.

I'm a little cheesed off about the lack of a tour guide. I still don't know what happened, because the company that organized my tour just sort of coordinates everything, and no one person knows anything except how to get me to the next person. So I am still trying to track down the specific tour agency that was supposed to take me around Shanghai today.

Tomorrow morning, I am embarking on a very long train journey. By the time I am done, it will be afternoon on the following day, I'll be in Hong Kong, and I'll have my suitcases back. So, the chances of me updating my blog tomorrow are exactly zero, since I will be hurtling across the countryside for most of the day.

One last thing about Shanghai though. It has by far the best traffic of any city I've been to so far. People still drive like maniacs, but there is a method to it. And they've implemented some clever systems to keep it under control. At some intersections they've actually got people who stand at the crosswalk and won't let people by until the walk light has turned. They also keep cars from randomly driving through the sidewalk when there are pedestrians on it, which happens a lot here.

I'm pretty excited. Except for picking up my luggage, which promises to be somewhat hairy, everything is all roses between me and coming home. I've got the day on the train, two days in Hong Kong and a day on a plane, and I'll be back in PG.

No pictures today. I have some, but I'll upload them next post. They're not terribly thrilling, since I didn't exactly go anywhere.