Day 2- Shanghai; or The Misadventures of Brent and Karin

I had brought rechargeable batteries and a battery charger for my camera. My charger blew out last night after plugging it in to the wrong voltage socket. We went in search of batteries this morning which started a long series of unfortunate events.

  We asked the front desk about buying more batteries, they didn't seem to know what we were talking about and suggested we could find anything related to electronics at the electronics mart, Metro City. Brent's eyes lit up at the thought of a market of electronics. I wasn't convinced and suggested we revisit the local mall a block away from our hostel. We headed to the mall and on the bottom floor there is a grocery store and we did indeed find batteries there. The seed had been planted though and Brent needed to see the electronics market. We ditched out plans of seeing the "Venice of Shanghai" when we realized we'd have to take the metro to a bus and then ride a local bus for an hour and a half. Didn't sound like fun and the buses aren't English friendly as the train stations are. So we headed to Metro City the supposed Mecca of Electronics. We took the train across town and got off at a bustling downtown stop and immediately saw Metro City. Brent heard angels singing, I did not.

Metro City, the round ball in the middle of the picture.

When we got inside we found that it was another mall. The malls that we've seen here has a theme for each floor. One whole floor devoted to skin care, one floor for eye glasses, and this mall also had a floor for electronics. We browsed around and Brent decided this wasn't what he was looking for. He was disappointed and I was kinda happy because now we can get on to other stuff. I wanted to visit the Shanghai museum and I also wanted to see antique street. We probably only had time for one so we decided on the museum since it was pretty hot and muggy and threatening to rain. We reboarded the metro and made our way back across town to People's square and the museum. We had to walk a bit after exiting the train to get to the museum and we were drenched with the humidity. Then we saw the very long line of people waiting to get in to the museum. Based on that long line we had at least an hour wait of standing in the humidity and threatening rain for a chance to get in the museum which probably had 3 times as many people inside already. We changed out plans again and decided to go to the Antique Market.

Shanghai Museum. Look closely and you can see the umbrellas of the people waiting to get in. I hear there's cool stuff in there.

But first we ducked in to a mall because rain looked imminent. here there were stalls and vendors all on the first floor selling trinkets and gadgets. I am ashamed to say this garage sale bargain hunting queen was no match for the Asian barterers. I stopped to look at some fans and the vendor started in on me. She told me the fans cost 79 yaun which is like $13!  I smiled and nodded and started to walk away and she grabbed my arm and pulled me back and told me to make an offer. I typed 15 on the calculator and she typed 25. I typed 18 and she typed 25. I shrugged and walked away, because really I didn't want them. Then she said ok ok, 18. I was the proud owner of a $3 fan that I can get in the dollar store. Grrr! Another vendor smugly sold me a hair trinket I didn't really want for $1 and then I just wanted out of there. Brent on the other hand, did a good job getting a cool IPhone case that he really liked and got a good deal on.

Brent holding his own at bargaining

We decided to walk to the Anique Market, it didn't look that far away on the map. We walked until it started to rain and we decided to take the metro the rest of the way. We took the Metro, about a 2 minute ride to the Antique Market. When we emerged from the underground tunnel of the Metro we found that it was storming. We stood in the shelter of the entrance to the Metro for a few minutes and shrugged and laughed and decided to get back on the Metro and head back to the hostel. We got off at our stop and walked back to our home in Shanghai in the rain.

   When we got back to the hostel we were just drenched with sweat and rain so  I decided to do laundry. for 5 RMB you can use the coin operated laundry in the Hostel. For another 10 RMB you can get some laundry soap. And then for the dryer, you have to put in 1 RMB for 5 minutes of drying time. I washed our clothes and then put them in the dryer and put in my first RMB/Yuan. It's around 20 cents. it ran for 5 minutes and stopped, I put in 2 more Yuan to see it if would run for 10 minutes straight. It ran for around 15 mintues. I put in another 2 Yuan and it ran for over 40 minutes. After over an hour of drying our clothes were still as wet as when I got them out of the washer. I should have known it wasn't working with the time being so off. I had wasted over an hour and 4 Yaun! Now I have clothes draped all over our room hoping they will dry in the 100% humidity as we are boarding a plane tomorrow to go meet our son.

So ends the misadventures of Brent and Karin.
Until tomorrow...