This will be briefish, since I'm on a public computer and the keyboard is slimy and the light is dim, so I can't really see the keys. :(

Last night I slept on an overnight train! I feel truly oriental . To fill the gap between waking late and leaving early, I went to Beijing Zoo to see the pandas. I kind of wish I hadn't. I'm not an activist, but that zoo hasn't the awesomest aura. There are cracked windows on some cages, a lot of the areas are only concrete or mud, and no-one heeds the "No feed, no climb, no hit glass" warning. The bears looked so sad and the wolves were half mad. I had to leave early.

The pandas had their own special area, but it wasn't much more than the above, and one panda was clearly a bit psycho. It was just swinging its head side to side at the back door of the cage the whole time.

Onto brighter topics. Beijing (main) train station is chaos at night! Whoopee! I'd say I'd have managed by myself, but I was very glad to have Ying with me. I swear, that girl will have a halo by the time she's finished with me. She walked me to my bed, which was actually very nice. I left my backpack on the end and had raised feet some of the time, but there was room beside it to stretch out, which was lovely . I was in a soft-sleeper carriage with three other people, one of whom (a Chinese boy) slept the whole time. He was on the top bunk opposite me, and under him was a retired parliament worker man who had a bit of English. Over me was a Mongolian boy who spoke Mongolian, Chinese, Russian and perfect English, so we spent a few hours having a bi-lingual conversation, before turning in for the night.

I slept erratically. The pillow was made of some kind of incredibly tough beads, and the room was quite warm. I was wearing my earphones, so I had no noise interruption until 6am, when the old man was leaving for somewhere that was not Shanghai. At 7:30 I used the bibi (I think) , and we were there just before 8. I found my way out of the station and onto the subway easily (if you discount the clumsy backpack dragging and banging into innocent bystanders), but I took the wrong exit out of Lu Ban Road Station and spent a few exhausting minutes hauling myself over the rubble on the paths on Quixi street, looking for a hostel that wasn't there.

Evidently I found it, but I think this is me and hostels DONE. It's slimy and worn and I feel like everything's dirty. I know that's the general idea, but ni maith liom e. :P I have a double private room and en suite, which simply means they managed to shove a double bed into a tiny, irregularly shaped room and put a toilet in there. There's a shower on the wall, but it's the breed of shower that wets everything in the room but the showeree . Had a shower and slept for a few hours, since starvation and exhaustion were just too much to deal with right then.

When I woke, I made my way to Nanjing road, with vague notions of strolling The Bund and sipping some coffee in a little French restaurant. However, Facundo was right the last day: Shanghai is a building site. The paths are ALL dug up, even in the posh areas, and for no obvious reason. There's boarding and scaffolding and drills everywhere. There's even scaffolding outside my 1st floor room, and builders walking around on it, so I have to keep my curtains closed. :(

I saw the building with the three balls and tried to take a photo that didn't include tram wires or scaffolding or boarding, but was relatively unsuccessful and profoundly disenchanted with the city. I walked back to Nanjing road, and was so close to collapse, that I abandoned my French coffee plans and staggered in the door of the first McDonald's I came upon . Posed for some pictures with some teenyboppers in the middle of my cheeseburger, then left and strolled towards Nanjing West.

I was getting fed up of the hawkers - "Lady rolex, dvd, t-shirt" EVERY. TWENTY. SECONDS. So I broke my boycott and went into Starbucks, where they addressed me in English and I leapt over the counter and kissed them. ...Well, I gave a happy little sigh and went into the little room off the side reserved for orange-mocha-chip-frappucino drinkers. There was only one seat available, opposite a guy about my age, so I motioned to it and he nodded and said "Yeah sure". He wasn't Chinese so I chanced it and asked if he knew about international phone cards. It turned out he was Danny from Chicago (but all Irish roots, of course) and he's been over and back to China a lot, studied Chinese at Yale and is planning on living and working here for a couple of years. I thought he was crazy. He thought I was crazy. We had a lovely conversation in fluent English for about an hour, then he pointed me towards a China Mobile outlet that spoke English and we parted ways .

It turned out to be a long way away, but on the long way, I pulled into a Radisson in full blown Westerner mode and demanded some IC international phone cards. They were only delighted to give them to me, and I snatched them and ran across the road and phoned my head chef to request nourishment advice. The card didn't last long, but it was nice to talk, and I had calmed down a bit after the chat with Danny, so it wasn't hysterical either (which would probably have caused an even bigger scene than I was already causing in my goldfish-bowl phone box). I wandered down Nanjing road (which isn't ALL pedestrianised, as you may have been lead to believe!) and found the China Mobile shop. I'm not sure what I agreed to or signed my name to, but nothing more than my name and passport number were required, and it was only about E22 AND I CAN TEXT, HURRAH!

And THEN, to make my day even brighter, I found a Marks and Spencers! I dashed up the escalators in record time, scattering tiny females tottering on tinier heels and bag-laden boyfriends all sides. I bought biscuits and crisps and fizzy orange and fizzy sweets and all sorts. Party in my room tonight! Woo!