I decided to make a trip over to Century Park during Golden Week, I don’t normally go over to the wilderness (Pudong) unless I’m catching a flight or err… arriving on a flight so I figured I’d better go and see what all the fuss was about. Actually, when I say “decided to make a trip” what I mean is that my friend kept dropping successively less subtle hints about wanting to go over the course of two days (while I simultaneously dropped very unsubtle hints about NOT wanting to go) until I gave in and took her there for an afternoon.

It started badly on the metro, both lines 1 and 2 were almost as busy as the 8am rush hour on a Monday morning, we squeezed on though and things quietened down after Lujiazui (pronounced Loo-Jar-Zooey apparently). We paid our way into the park and immediately tried to hire a bike and then a boat but everything was already hired out and the queues were huge so we gave up and took off on foot. The park was packed and we pretty much had to resort to walking on the grass because the pathways were a heaving mass of bicycles / tandems / tridems? / electric cars / pedal cars / pedestrians / rollerbladers / wedding photo parties, all slowly manouvering around each other.

I quickly came to the conclusion that it’s called Century Park because visiting there more than once every hundred years is more than anyone can bear.

Actually, despite the crowds we still had fun there and met up with a couple of friends wrestling with a tandem on the crowded paths. The evening ended predictably, at a bar (in Pudong no less), drunk and singing, actually virtually screaming, along to 80’s rock belted out by a Phillippino band.

Anyway, here’s a few random photos from the day:

There’s always Chinglish!

Ethnic Chinese in traditional clothing

Weird “It’s a knockout” type sets

Huge topiary

Children learning all about driving in Shanghai

Barbecue Entrepeneur – actually located outside the park and selling barbecue skewers to people who hired boats! Only in China do you queue for an hour for a boat and then sail across to the barbecue man and waste 10 minutes waiting while he cooks your food.

Bit of good old Chinglish at the airport, apparently the Chinese says “Various Snacks”

Hotel staff wearing 1950′s UFOs / World War 1 German helmets

Actually, I know how this is going to pan out, the strange object (the hat) was revealed very early into the plot, later during my stay the hat will develop into a key plot element, perhaps a door will be revealed to which the hat is the key, or invading aliens will be repelled by lasers shooting out of the top, or maybe I’ll knock it off when I’m drunk and throw it like a frisbee into the hotel gardens (before being pummelled to a pulp by his burly colleagues).

Draconian Bar Rules

The fact that they need a sign to remind you not to bring weapons into the bar tells me everything I need to know about Bangkok. Presumably in other bars it would be perfectly acceptable to wander in armed to the teeth, I need to find these bars, the one above was somewhat sterile..

Anyway, I almost forgot about chopsticks completely when I saw this in front of me in a queue at the airport

“Call to arms for all chunkily penised bous to do her right and do her good”

They should have scrapped the rest of the nonsense and just gone with that, in HUGE RED CAPITAL LETTERS

EDIT : What do you call Chinglish from Korea?

Hmm, I really need to figure out how to upload images properly…. In the meantime, click on the image to see it larger