Yes, a proon. And that sort of sets the scene for the trip in a foodie sort of way. As we embark on our two month European odyssey (via the Orient) it’s fair to say that the primary plank of cafe culture and local cuisine will feature prominently, along with the normal sight-seeing and obligatory trips to motorcycle factories.
Fi, Ash and Peanut kindly run us out to the airport on Saturday night 4 October 2014. The flight to Shanghai leaves at 23:59, and I’m anxious to be there in good time. Not for duty-free shopping, meals or seat allocation - it was my Dad, almost exactly 20 years since his death, and his words were still ringing in my ears, “You want to leave early - you never know if you’ll get a puncture or breakdown on the way to the airport”. Now perhaps 50 years ago with dodgy roads and vehicles that might have made good sense. And it still does if you choose to drive at peak hour in Auckland’s traffic. Saturday night? Time to spare browsing the duty-free and not buying a thing, apart from a little something special for Nikki.
To readjust our body clocks we know we have to keep ourselves awake as long as possible, and movies are the obvious choice. I choose “What we do in the Shadows”, a mockumentary about a group of Wellington flatties, with a little twist in that they’re vampires. Watch it - you’ll die bleeding. I rediscover just how good noise-reducing headphones are on the long 12 hour flight. With the roar of the plane reduced to background white noise, the strains of Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were here” lull me off to a decent night’s sleep.
Arrival at Pudong International Airport is somewhat fraught. We’re here for three days, so don’t need a pre-arranged visa, or do we? While other tourists pretty much walk straight through, we’re whisked away to a little holding pen with another couple of dodgy looking foreigners. I wonder whether I should have unfriended the Dalai Lama on Facebook.
But after reviewing our itineraries, and having written out the same contact information in triplicate, we finally convince them we’re not here to settle in China, get our passport stamps and are waved through. I thank my lucky stars Winston Peters isn’t on my friends list - we’d probably be sent back to NZ with a kick up the bum.
The hosts at our BnB recommended we take a taxi from the airport, but I had other ideas. Who wants to sit in a boring taxi which you can do in any city in the world when you can hop on the Pudong-Shanghai Maglev? Which introduces another plank to the trip - the desire to travel sustainably where it makes sense, with rail the preference.
Probably the fastest I’ve ever been on land is around 240kph during one of the many track days I’ve done over the last few years. Scarily fast on a bike, but as we clocked a bit over 300kph on the Maglev it was eerily quiet, and the only sensation of speed was watching the cars seem to go backwards on the adjacent motorway. Until the Maglev travelling in the other direction went past… at a relative speed of 600kph, blink and you miss it.
After a change at a subway station we emerge eyes blinking into a warm and humid People’s Square. Now to find our apartment. The final plank of our trip is using Airbnb to book our accommodation. Hotels are pretty impersonal places, but BnBs allow you to meet with and at times stay with the locals. We’d tried it on a recent trip to Australia and it worked a treat, so it’ll be our default accommodation option for this trip.
With a little blue dot on my iPhone guiding us unerringly through the back streets of Shanghai we finally get to Heidi and Istvan’s place. Nothing flash, and the sights and smells of Asia certainly assault your senses as you make your way through the courtyard. It’s only 10am and the room won’t be ready till 1pm. We stash our bags - there’s some exploring to be done.
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