The cycle tour through ShanghaiToday is the 15th of September. This day started in No.88 Club which was covered in the last day report. At about half past twelve a few people decided that they had enough for the day. It took some time to wait for a taxi which would take the five of us for a little extra money. When we passed the police on the road, Labrinus was told to keep his head down so the police did not notice him. Once in the hotel we decided to get a good night of sleep because it would be a waste not to use the luxury rooms to their full potential. The result of this long sleep was that I was still in bed while the rest of the group was visiting the tailor market. As far as I know, no strange things happened; some bets were made and Tom used his charms to chat up some nice ladies. With two persons we made our way to the subway station where we would meet the rest of the group. Next we were studying the subway map when we suddenly heard the shouting of "soep, soep, soep" in our ears... Maarten also happened to be at the subway station and spotted us. After the subway exit we had to walk a few kilometers to the starting point of the cycle tour through Shanghai. At the starting point three tour leaders waited for our arrival. For them it was unusual to see such a large number of Dutch people in Shanghai. I did not have breakfast that day so I bought a roll of bread with a small package of powder in the wrapper. I assumed that it was powered sugar, but it turned out to be moisture absorber with the inscription "If contact made with eyes or mouth, please contact physician". The cycle tour separated us in three groups because the study tour group was too large. Our cycle tour leader was a Belgian lady with the age of 31(as we got to know through a bet) who was living in Shanghai for around six years. The instructions for cycling through Shanghai were: stay together in a group, take priority and make a lot of noise(ringing the bell alot). Especially the last thing happened to work very well to get priority. During the tour we saw a lot of Shanghai: a French styled district, being leftover from a French colony, the old city and all kinds of specialty shops with building materials like pipes and tubes. Of course during the cycle tour somebody came up with a bet: the first person who would get a Chinese person on the back of his bike would get the stake. Even Robert participated while he did not have a luggage carrier on the back of his bike. During the tour we made a stop at "New Heights", a nice restaurant situated near the river with a nice view of the Bund. Shortly after, Ingo convinced a lady to jump on the back of his bike and therefore won the bet. After a short trip back we reached the starting point again to end the impressive cycle tour through Shanghai. The next stop was a restaurant in the neighborhood to get some of the lost energy back. In the restaurant Tom gave parting speech to summarize the events that we that we experienced in China so far. The food was very good as usual. After dinner we went to a comedy show named "Kung Fu Komedy". We did not exactly know was we had to expect from the show but it became clear that it was stand-up comedy in a nice and sociable cafe in the URBN Hotel. We managed to get hold of the first two rows. In total, three comedians had an act with Paul Ogata as final act. When the comedians notices that 20% of the audience was studying electrical engineering and was from the Netherlands they soon turned to jokes about drugs, cheese and robotvagina's. The quality of the comidy was high and we had a few good laughs. It was a fantastic day. |