ChrisandCin

Its sad when you see a little kid who is sitting on the back of a cart riden by I guess his father in the traffic like this. The kid was right on the back of the flat bed part, and just one bump and he would fall onto the road and under the wheels of a car or truck as his father weaved through the traffic.

I took this last night at the U turn to come back into the apartment building at Rajarhat in Kolkata.

This overpass is really a joke, its the most scariest thing to drive across, its not straight at all, I am amazed it doesnt fall down….

(click them to enlarge)

I got another air conditioner to deal with the humidity and 35 C+ heat last week, and after paying INR 700 ( $15) to install it, this is the outcome, yes thats cardboard screwed into the window frame to fill the gap!!

Only in India!!

Shanghai – here we are!

Well we stayed right on  Nanjing Road in downtown Shanghai, we didn’t realize it at first but this is the main shopping area.

There are some good, some bad and much ugly though about this area. First and foremost the worst thing is all the con men and women, who are constantly coming up to you and trying to be your friend. Then there are the bars, and tea houses who overcharge. There was a tea shop across the road from the hotel that apparently was popular, tourists would go in and so called students would come sit with them to practice their English, but when the bill arrives the amount is around US$200 per cup of tea or coffee!

As we found out the hard way, only drink in the hotel bar too, we went into what looked like a nice bar behind the hotel only to get charged $200 for 4 drinks (apparently you buy one drink and you now own that keg of beer or bottle of scotch!) , and unless you want to meet your maker with some help from the burly doormen you pay the bill and leave never to come back. And cancel that credit card straight away!

There was some fun things to do in Shanghai, like the tv tower across the river, to get there walk to the river along Nanjing road, cross the road and go under the river via the tourist train, which is a sort of tram not a train that is this weird psychedelic experience , I gather its what it feels like to be stoned in the nightclub.

The tv tower has this cool Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory elevator in the middle, which actually brings you back down in… more fun if it went up… And apart from the awesome view up there , there is one level that has a glass floor, rather scary at first, but once you get rid of the vertigo its really fun to stand mid air . Its about $20 to go up the tower.

One great market along Nanjing road is the under ground market, actually it’s the only copy market we could find along the road, its full of all kind of knockoffs, and the shops have special secret back areas, so don’t be afraid when the door opens in a wall and you are taken into the secret room of knockoffs. Always to bargain start with half their price, and check the quality of the tshirts, some are good some are bad. The copy polo shirts are quite good copies and have lasted well so far. As far as the watches go, they aren’t so good, use them as a dress watch once a month you are ok, but don’t expect them to last if you wear it everyday. The knock off phones are so so, the iphones we got were crap, but the blackberry knockoffs were good, the ipod knockoffs are also very good.

But after some days and finding the eating here is very expensive unless you eat in Maccas and other fast food joints for every meal, it was time to leave. We did find the hotel restaurants were really expensive, for lunch we had 2 burgers that were really nasty, and 2 cokes, the bill was US$70 !! The cokes alone were $8 each, and in the Howard Johnson hotel the bottle of water in the room, all 500ml of it was $35 !! More on leaving in the next post.