i'm alive, the man with the second face

hong kong. it's pretty busy, the air tastes of petrol and it's pricier than one of those ice cream based oysters you buy at the coast. why do they cost so much? it's essentially frozen cream and wafer. not gold. it's 11pm and i've just bought a volleyball for $135 . i don't know why. i'm confused.

i promised some genuine travelling advice. here it is. you need a visa to get in to china from hong kong. they're not the same place apparently. so i'm waiting on having my visa accepted before i can leave this place. "it's common knowledge" i was told by the helpful visa woman. the fact that all argentinans carry dice in their hats 'just in case' is common knowledge. the chinese visa situation - less so. more advice. apparently you can acquire vietnamese visas after 5.30pm from a man behind a shop in nanning. that's where we're going. they'd better sell them, otherwise we'll be stuck in the arse end of nowhere with a swiss army knife and a volleyball - and that's only going to end in tears.

enough advice for one day. hong kong's definitely worth a visit. myself and young matt are going to the beach tomorrow and we visited ocean park yesterday which is a theme park for kids (and men who like roller coasters and ice cream). again, some great sights but i still haven't purchased an electronic picture capturer so no one else can see what i've done. i'll buy one tomorrow.

other than that i've been on the ferry that connects where i stay with hong kong island about 13 times. it's only $2 a trip so i'll be doing that a few more times. we went disco clubbing in a private members bar last night which we were allowed in because we were with a rich chinese gay man. it seemed normal at the time but now i think about it it's not that normal.

finally, there was a chinese guy on the train the other day with 'listen, i'm majoring in pirate' written on the back of his top. this is my current favoured response to people trying to sell me things. good. stay classy san diego.

no dogs, no chinese

i'm in shanghai at the moment. i've been here on and off for about 9 days. i didn't know much about shanghai before i arrived, but it's a bit special. i'd definitely come back. its like something off alien, only there are no aliens and its not in space. id love to add photos of what it looks like but i haven't replaced my camera, so bang shanghai in to google and see what it brings back. that's what its like.

i'm unsure of my abilities as a traveller. ive looked at other peoples blogs and theirs are different to mine. some would say different, some would say better. i don't really have any advice or tips or amazing stories to tell. the most amazing thing ive seen in the last 10 days was matt bendall, my current travelling partner, claiming he wasn't hungry, then he ate a large big-mac meal, a double cheeseburger and a quarter pounder. that's amazing. no one else mentions mcdonalds in travelling blogs, but everyone goes there.

i tell a lie. i have seen something amazing. the bund sightseeing tunnel. the tunnel runs beneath the haungpu river in shanghai and connects the main part of the city with the skyscraper madness part. the tunnel is the one of the best and shittest things i've ever experienced. there's no sight-seeing involved what so ever. you board a capsule, which myself and the boy matt were lucky enough to have to ourselves, then it begins to move slowly under the river in the pitch black. suddenly, random light bulbs in the tunnel start flashing and an alan partridge esq voice over spouts "meteor storm". later on partridge pipes up "under the sea", and some wavy lights appear. then , best of all, some electronic rings start shooting down the tunnel and partridge yells "electronic rings". yes alan. yes they are. so, 65 yuan for the sight-seeing tunnel. no sights, but worth every penny. if you were on acid you'd be having visions for the rest of your life. if you had epilepsy you'd be dead. well done shanghai. you win this round.

we probably spend 35% of our time sleeping, 20% of our time chatting rubbish and eating food, 35% of our time chatting rubbish and playing pool, and 10% of our time doing travelling things whilst chatting rubbish. that's not bad really. that's nearly 3 hours a day visiting museums and the like. i've done the following:

• rode a bike around beijing - there aren't 9 million bikes in beijing. that song's a lie.
• walked round the temple of heaven in beijing. i've been eating 3 magnums a day since ive arrived in china. i've even got a magnum budget i can spend on other things if i don't have 3 a day. recently i was told the milk in magnums is contaminated with evils and its killing thousands of chinese. i've stopped eating magnums. i ate 4 magnums in the temple of heaven. it was a great day.
• visited the birds nest stadium - busy and closed.
• took a pedalo on the emperor's lake in the summer palace - very nice
• called in at the sex museum in shanghai - rubbish
• travelled to shanghai airport on the maglev train - it goes to 431 kph. loved it. the train, not the airport. it's not a bad airport, we just caught the maglev back to the train station. basically we spent all day on trains. geeks.
• walked around the french quarter in shanghai - cultured
• looked at pottery in Shanghai museum - old
• travelled to nanjing and visited the memorial museum - worth a look
• travelled to suzhou and visited some gardens - tranquil
• drank cocktails on the 87th floor of the jinmao tower last night for matt bendalls birthday - expensive. but obviously worth it. matt ate a dodgy crab the other day. it's still alive inside his body.

finally, i saw mao in his vinegar cage. there was definitely tension. i looked at him. he looked at me. i told him i loved him. he said nothing. dictators can be so cruel.

i'm going to put more effort in to my next post. people have been complaining.