We walked into the Old Town and bought some strange and spicy concoction from someone in a shack on the side of the street. It was bread with a weird sugary thing in it and far too much chilli and a drink of soya milk.
We took this into the park down the road where the locals were doing there thing. Old people were stretching. Many people were sitting around or playing games. Others were playing Diablo which was entertaining for the kids. Not as amusing as me, it seems. A kid with a mohawk came and stood three feet from me and STARED. It was a cool moment and I got some excellent shots too. In the parks it is nice to see everyone relaxing and doing their own thing.
We then headed for Lloyd's gym which had good views of the city, making the cycling machine slightly more interesting. It was at the top floor of a very open shopping centre which meant that their air conditioning was lousy - not ideal in a gym. Sweat-tastic. The machines were all a bit broken but it was done on an American scale. Some girls had their arms in cling film to help them sweat the weight off.
After a generic Chinese lunch we went to Shanghai Train Station to buy tickets for the following day. The English-speaking queue went at half the speed of the others - and people would move from one queue to another fairly freely. It was absolutely roasting. Actually, Shanghai was roasting; this place took it too far.
Back towards the apartment, we stopped by the animal market, which threw up no surprises. Lots of animals being treated badly. Lots of crickets too, for some reason. You see guys on bikes carrying hundreds of little cages each containing a cricket. They had some sweet turtles, kittens and so on. To be honest, I was mainly concerned at not catching a tropical disease.
After a shower, we went for dinner with Amelia and her cousin Tracey at a great restaurant, again in a shopping centre. Really delicious german style cabbage with pork, garlic etc... other nice vegetable and fish dishes. This was a great meal and came to something like £25 for the four of us. Yes, I could get used to this. The girls disappeared straight afterwards and Lloyd and I went back to the bar from the previous night to play pool.
When Lloyd suggested playing doubles with the girl standing by the pool table and her friend, I thought it was strange because I was pretty sure that she was a prostitute. After a game and a half, she made it clear that she wanted a different kind of "doubles" and we left pretty sharpish, first having an Erdinger as nightcap in the safety of the pub over the road.
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