Some Final Thoughts on Shanghai

I heard that Shanghai is sometimes called the Whore of Asia. With the number of prostitutes there, it wouldn't be a misnomer. So many massage parlors look very shady (i.e., with scantely clad young ladies rubbing themselves on the windows when men walk by); so many "hair salons" are opened all night long and I've haven't been harassed so much by touts to get "lady massage", except maybe in Thailand. Well, overall, China seems to be quite a "pimping" place in general.

A weird episode occured in the elevator to my serviced apartment in Shanghai. There was this guy listening to a crap MP3 from the speaker of his cell phone (I hate losers who do that). He was also singing along. I could barely control myself from telling the guy to turn off his damn thing when all the other people on the elevator starting along in a cult-like manner.

I haggled a pair of shoes from 360RMB down to 70RMB. I think I bought the shoes more because I got the price down so much than because I really wanted them.

On my way out of Shanghai, I took the maglev train to go to the aiport. That train is pretty cool: it hovers over the tracks without touching them through magnetic levitation (hence its name). The peak velocity was 431km/h. Pretty sweet. Imagine having Montreal, Toronto, Boston and New York linked by something like that.