So last night I finally left India and flew from Chennai to Kualu Lumpur in Malaysia, the most pristine airport I have ever set foot in, and at that moment I knew I had left India far behind. I arrived in Shanghai at 14:30 today and my friend Jim picked me up at the airport and I was talking to him about how I was going through protein withdrawal after 2 months in India and that I hadn't eaten pork since early January and that I was fiending for it like a junkie coming down from a 2 week meth bender. By 16:30 I had already eaten 16 pork dumplings which came out hot and steaming and marinated in delicious chicken broth and the second batch were topped with shrimp. Dim Sum rules.
Then we walked around a bit and I was completely amazed by how modern and huste-bustle Shanghai is and how inordinately wealthy. It appears to my unschooled eyes to be the NYC of Asia, full of energy and bursting with money but unlike NYC Shanghai is undergoing change at an unbelievable rate and they are currently working on 16 new subway lines and everywhere you can see construction. I love it already but I think it's way too expensive to live here (modestly sized apartments go for $1.3 million in this neighborhood and the dollar continues to fall fall fall) unfortunately but the next 3 weeks should be a blast. Plus Jim has a massive surround sound stereo system and a huge projection screen tv and tons of movies and as a result it'll be a goddamn miracle if I even make it out of the house tomorrow especially since I got about 3 hours of sleep since Saturday morning and it's Sunday night and I'm still buzzing. There's a yoga studio around the corner but it unfortunately doesn't appear to offer Ashtanga but there's yoga all throughout the city. You can buy DVDs for a buck including recent movies and I'll see what I can do about making up for lost time since I haven't been to a movie theater since I left Philly.
For dinner we got a bunch of Chinese dishes and I sampled slices of beef, cashew chicken, fish and 2 more kinds of pork. Rule of thumb when traveling: visit places where you love the food!
HOORAY FOR PORK! going to PR in a week and will surely eat pork there! pork pork pork!
Posted by: vicky | March 02, 2008 at 11:19 AM
Man, your post reminds me of how much I miss the pork vermicelli at Vietnam...
Posted by: Alex Reynolds | March 02, 2008 at 07:05 PM