Shanghai, China

Friday to Wednesday, 27 October to 1 November 2006

Shanghai is a good break after a few weeks of roughing it. We are staying with Caitriona, one of Dara's friends from college, who works in the Irish consulate. Her official title is Vice Consul but "Substitute Mammy" should be added to this, as she takes great care of us. Ham and cheese sandwiches and rashers, sausages and Barrys Tea breakfasts never tasted so good.

On Friday we go to the Blarney Pub's monthly Irish night. Irish expat pubs often have the tacky "Seamus O'Shenanigan's" look about them. The Blarney is authentic though and the scene there is typical of alot of Irish pubs on a Friday night: plenty of flushed-faced Irish shouting at each other about the decline of their parish's underage hurling. (Shanghai hosted the Asian Gaelic Games a few weeks ago and Michael O'Muirceartaigh did a bit of commentary for the games, waxing lyrical about Cáit's libero role in the Shanghai Ladies' defence.)

Cáit gives us a quick walking tour of Shanghai. It's great to have a local showing us around and a big improvement on our usual routine of standing at street corners holding street maps at weird angles. The tour takes in Dongtai Lu antiques market, the Bird & Insect Market (seeing the bizarre accessories Chinese keep for their pet crickets), the old streets which are to be levelled in advance of the 2010 Expo, and the Bund. We notice that, like other places we have seen in China, alot of Shanghai toddlers wear what we like to call "split-arse pants". Toilet training here skips the whole nappies and "Junior Huggies" stages. Instead parents prefer their toddlers to "go commando" and have a discreet slit on the backside of their trousers. No matter the place, should Nature come calling, their kids are able to answer immediately.

We also do a bit of shopping. DVDs are very cheap: 1 Euro per DVD. You get what you pay for though: the quality varies and DVD covers are thrown together - for some, it looks as if a non-English speaker downloaded reviews from the internet and did a cut-and-paste job. For "Wedding Crashers" the glowing review is: "This is a one-gag movie which runs out of steam after the first 20 minutes". For clothes, No. 580 Nanjing Xi Lu is one of the last counterfeit shopping markets on Shanghai's main shopping strip (the city is keen to improve its image and has tried to shut down alot of these). We try to improve our haggling skills but the shop-owners here are big on emotional blackmail and try their best to make you feel as if you are ruining their livelihood if you don't pay the sky-high tourist prices. The trick of bargaining as far as you can and then threatening to walk away to the next shop works sometimes. (The price for a Mizuno driver plummeted from 60 to 20 euro when we started to head for the exit of one golf shop.)

We had a great few days in Shanghai so a big thanks to Cáit who was the perfect host. It'll be difficult to get back to roughing it...

For more photos click here.