Fireworks in Pudong / Review - Megabite / Review - Big Bamboo

Last night we trouped over to Century Park in Pudong to watch October National Holiday Fireworks. I think this holiday is about National day, which was on Saturday. Anyhow, the whole country takes somewhere between 3 and 5 consecutive days off work, and generally travels.

I understand most people that can, escape Shanghai. There is then a massive influx of outsiders, who come to gaze at Shanghai's bright lights, and to my experience, raid Ikea.

It was interesting to see country folk on the metro, looking like crap, but with gold chains, Rado watches, and receiving text messages on flash titanium nokia mobile phones. Living in the countryside, they clearly have come into some money somehow.

Before we went to the fireworks, we ate at a food court in Raffles City, called Megabite. Raffles city is a mall on the east side of People's square. Conveniently, it's the kind of food that they put out display models for, and you can pretty much point at what you want to eat. Originally we wanted to go to Crossroads Cafe also within the food court, to eat singaporean food like laksa and mee goreng, but All American Ray was somewhat excited about not ordering from a menu, and pointed himself out some sort of rice and meat served up in a pineapple. Dinner for about 20 RMB.

Getting off the metro at the Science and Technology park (architecturally beautiful, i'd say if you were to visit the Century park, definitely stop at this metro stop for a wonder around the S&T park first), we proceeded towards the music & fireworks display. We had a fine view from the approach, so didn't bother passing the ticket barriers, and joined the 1000 or so other visitors to watch.

The fireworks were good, but not fantastic I'd say. They had a few big ones, but I missed the really big ones. The intention could have been only to impress those people who were in the middle of the park, having paid 70 RMB for standing room, or 150-180RMB for seated tickets. I hope I see a more impressive display along the bund one day.

Towards the end we sloped off to Big Bamboo, directly behind the Portman Hotel on nanjing xilu. Inside we played table football, darts, pool and shufflepuck, all for free. Admittedly we paid 40 to 60 RMB per drink - my pints of guiness came in at 65 RMB (4 pounds). It was a lot of fun playing the games with friends. Our bill came to about 100 RMB each, which isn't too painful, but then when I convert it back into pounds, actually it's a fair amount. To do this any more than one a week, one could easily blow off a fair amount of money.

It's easy to forget how hard it is to earn money over here. So it's all the harder when you go to an establishment where the prices are even more than they should be back home.

Big Bamboo is fairly unique in Shanghai. There are hundreds of the local equivalent though, be they Karaoke KTV clubs, or seedy wine bars. At both these types of establishment, they have dice games for you to play, and waitresses who double as game players whilst encouraging you to spend more. Somehow... I prefer to stick with my own company... but I seem to have to pay for the priviledge.