Shanghai arrival and first night

After deplaning, I headed over to immigration. This time, there was an extra stop to hand in your health declaration card. If you declare that you are, or even look sick, they take you to a quarantine/examination area. I was feeling a bit tired, but fine. I then made my way over to the main immigration line, which was filling up fast. There were about 200 people ahead of me, but behind me, the line quickly grew with about 500 or more people getting there after me. By 4:00pm, I was through and had my luggage.

At this point, I left the secure area of the airport where I needed to find my driver who would be holding up a sign with my name. I was not prepared for the swarm of people there, all holding signs with names. There were so many people, in fact, that the exit path zig-zagged around and around, so that all of the people with signs could be seen. I eventually found mine, and was whisked over to a waiting area until my car pulled up. Normally, the cars I have been driven around in over here haven’t been the greatest, this time, however, I would be making up for that as the large brand new black Mercedes pulled up. Sweet! I climbed into the back where ultra soft leather seats and some bottled water awaited me. The driver didn’t speak English, but between the beautiful car, the CRAZY driving, and the scenery, I had enough to keep me occupied for the hour drive to my hotel – the Courtyard Marriott. Even rain and fog doesn’t keep the driver under control, as I was actually nervous that the car I was in would get scratched (or totaled!) Did I mention how nice the car was – man! Shanghai has many more modern and Western cars than Dalian, and the large city actually looked pretty nice (through the fog/rain). The roads were heavily tree-lined, and I didn’t notice too much blight on my route, in fact, there was a ton of new construction and beautification efforts going on. I have since learned that the 2010 World Expo will be here this summer – and they are aggressively “cleaning up”).

After checking in, I got up to my room and took a couple pictures (which I will post w/in a day or so). It was now about 5:15pm local time, and I called a friend/coworker of mine, Jeff, that works here in Shanghai to come and meet me for dinner. At about 6pm, we met in the hotel lobby bar and after a couple of Heinekin’s , took a taxi to a Szechuan (spicy) restaurant. We got out in a steady 40 degree rain in the dark and he soon realized that we were dropped off in the wrong spot. We trudged a couple of blocks in the dark and eventually found the restaurant. The main floor had standard western style seating and no lazy susan. We ordered some Jasmine tea, a crispy fish (squirrel-shaped mandarin fish – google some pics), some vegetables, and some HOT chicken (rated 2 peppers – but absolutely my upper limit for hot). This was way hotter than anything I have ever had in Dalian – wow. After a couple of Tiger beers, I was getting tired so we grabbed a taxi back to the hotel. It seems that taxi driver didn’t know my hotel (it just opened a couple of months ago) and Jeff was frantically yelling out left turn, right turn, and u-turn. I finally made it back, said goodbye to Jeff, and headed up to bed. After about 30 minutes, I finally fell asleep around 10:30pm (8:30am Sunday, CST). What a long day.