A Night to Forget

1,2,5,6,11... I hope each and every insect that bit me yesterday dies a slow and painful death. As I stood in the bathroom counting each bite in my collection, I anticipated another shower from the tap above. It's a powerful shower except it doesn't have a head. Ali got up early this morning and then declared that she was going to make her way to the train station on her own to buy our tickets to Shanghai. This saved us a lot of time and meant that I could shower and get packed up ready for her return. Ali purchased two tickets for the 17:30 train to Shanghai so that we could spend some time in internet cafe just around the corner. We arrived at the train station in perfect time and waited at the departure gate. The train stations in China are like airports. Every train has a flight number and an allocated departure lounge. The journey was fine except the best tickets Ali could get were standing and so squatting on the floor (which I am very good at now) for two and a half hours got a little uncomfortable. Ali was fortunate enough to get a seat. At 8:00pm we arrived in Shanghai for the second time and decided not to pay the ridiculous prices for not so pleasant budget accommodation. Instead, we thought it would be a great idea to stay up all night. After all, Shanghai is a big city with a seemingly large or suggestive night life. We assumed it would be easy to find late night bars to keep ourselves awake. Much to our surprise this wasn't the case. Once we had exhausted ourselves walking around pretty much all the main streets, we tried to locate a bar hoping that it would be the start of an entertaining, alcohol inspired very long evening. We found one place that sold expensive drink but closed at 2:00am. We stayed there for as long as we could. The luring neon signs filled us with false hope as we walked to the ends of small dark streets thinking they were late night bars. The only redeeming aspects of this misguided adventure was the fresh air, exercise and occasional street vendor cooking interesting food.