The Road to Shanghai

The flight from Auckland to Shanghai was uneventful – no spilt booze, no crying babies, no sudden dash for the loo. Air NZ put on a good show, for us in cattle class (one of these days I must fly up front with the nobs). Each seat had its own screen, so I was able to watch several movies, in between dinner, breakfast and the odd caffeine and booze deprived sleep. The Bank Job, starring Jason Statham, focuses on a group of 1970s small time crims set up by MI5 to rob a bank. The object, to recover pictures of a royal having hanky-panky in Trinidad. Unfortunately, it is also used by a high class madam to store her explicit films, as well as a local sex magnate to hold his copper bribe ledger. And partway through the job a ham operator overhears the crims’ walkie talkie chatter. I enjoyed the film, but it would’ve been better if Air NZ hadn’t kept interrupting with announcements in English then Mandarin. Lightweight but fun is a good way to describe One night in Vegas (Ashton Kuchner and Cameron Diaz). Two strangers meet in Vegas, get drunk and married, wake up, get ready to split but then one wins $3,000,000. And the divorce judge makes them stay married for six months, with counselling. Predictable but they carried it off. Got halfway through Leatherheads (George Clooney and Renee Zellweger) and the plane started landing. 1920s America: college football gets huge crowds and pro football is struggling. A college player, and war hero to boot, is lured to the pro circuit. Zellweger is a reporter out to uncover the true story of his heroics, Clooney the pro player trying to save his team. This felt like a 1930s comedy, when they couldn’t show much but could imply a lot and I was enjoying it. Wonder how it ended.
Shanghai, after wet and miserable Auckland, was hot and muggy: 25+ and threats of rain. Delicious. Breezed through Customs, immigration, money change, and onto the Maglev. It was early in the day, so only doing 300km/h. While this sounds fast, the steady acceleration and smoothness of the ride made it seem much slower. I decided to use public transport to get from the airport to the hotel. This might have been a challenge, but mercifully, the public transport system is in two languages – Mandarin and English. And then a helpful local wrote the name of the hotel for me in Chinese, so after changing metro trains at an interchange, it was a matter of falling over a taxi and waving the piece of paper at him. The hotel was waiting for me. The desk clerk spoke English, so my very limited Mandarin wasn’t needed. First order of business was a shower -12 hours on a plane made me feel unclean. Then sight-seeing.
International rule number 1 – don’t sight-see when you’re low on sleep. Every man and his dog tried to sell me cheap watches, shine my shoes or otherwise deprive me of money. But always politely. So Shanghai was a bit more expensive than I wanted. I took a few photos, and then lost the cables for the camera, so sorry, until replacements arrive, no pictures, only words . Breakfast at the hotel was interesting. Decided to do the old ‘when in Rome…” thing, and had a typical Chinese type breakfast. The micro-gherkins were a bit sharp, but all in all, tasty. But the coffee was worse than McDonalds’, and that’s saying something.
Then back to the airport for my first taste of Aeroflot: would it be Soviet grey or have they entered the Capitalist era?